<p>So conference papers are useless?</p>
<p>“So conference papers are useless?”</p>
<p>MITchris will be the best person to answer that question. Most of the conferences accept any abstract submitted by a person associated with an institute or university and are not selective. Meeting abstract is typically called CV stretcher, and in most cases, a prelude to submission to peer review journal. To my knowledge, MIT does not accept published paper as an appendix but will take a look at the paper abstract. Caltech, in contrast, welcomes an attached manuscript, probably because the reviewers in Caltech are professors themselves.</p>
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<p>I think that this misrepresents and misunderstands the MIT admissions process. Many of the MIT admissions officers are MIT graduates, and additional admissions materials are reviewed by appropriate faculty (eg music faculty reviews music portfolios). I personally think that submitting a paper is foolish, as it does not actually tell MIT all that much about the applicant. So you were the 6th author on a valuable paper, which means what precisely. You are much better off wirting about what it is that you did, and what you learned from it. That, coupled with the abstract, can tell MIT much of what it needs to know. This is particularly true as it is difficult to tell from the paper what any individuals contribution to the outcome was.</p>
<p>"I personally think that submitting a paper is foolish, as it does not actually tell MIT all that much about the applicant. So you were the 6th author on a valuable paper, which means what precisely. "</p>
<p>If you are the sixth author, the manuscript is not yours. I don’t think it appropriate to submit somebody else’s manuscript. If you are the first author, it is quite negligence for MIT to ignore the work. Paper does not tell about a person, but about the work of a person. </p>
<p>“I think that this misrepresents and misunderstands the MIT admissions process. Many of the MIT admissions officers are MIT graduates, and additional admissions materials are reviewed by appropriate faculty (eg music faculty reviews music portfolios).”</p>
<p>MIT graduates do not qualify them as experts in a vairety of science fields. I have serious doubt that admission officers have the expertise to evaluate original works, particularly those without graduate training. Refusing to accept original work clearly suggests that the work will not be evaluated by MIT faculty.</p>
<p>@MIT Chris</p>
<p>Can you please post some statistics for MIT graduate school? I’m particularly interested in Civil Engineering Department acceptance rates. I was trying to find information about it without any success so far…</p>
<p>Sorry, I don’t have those either! The grad departments handle their own admissions processes.</p>
<p>^ I thought you guys were a hive mind… :(</p>
<p>You mentioned differences in gender acceptance, so if I’m a girl and considering applying to MIT for either Physics or engineering, do I have an increased chance than if I was to apply for liberal arts?</p>
<p>Ahhhh… Now this qualifies as possibly the most F of our FAQ’s. Students apply to MIT, not to a department or a major. The process and criteria are the same. You get admitted to the institute and once there you are free to select a major from across the entire university.</p>
<p>Ahh okay that makes sense, thank you</p>
<p>@Willy27 - </p>
<p>No.</p>
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So, can I safely assume 90% are Academic or AMA stars?</p>
<p>I mean Canada is one of the bigger represented populations, but I haven’t seen a SINGLE person who was accepted to MIT from Canada – not on CC, not among friends of friends, not among any secondary school graduation placement statistics of top private schools in my country!
I guess it is just members of Canadian Math/Chem/Phy/Bio Olympiads. I beg you to refute this with hard stats :)</p>
<p>Geographic distribution of enrolled international students, both undergrad and grad, can be viewed here: [Enrollment</a> Statistics: MIT Office of the Registrar](<a href=“Statistics & Reports | MIT Registrar”>Statistics & Reports | MIT Registrar)</p>
<p>In the 2009-10 academic year, there were 25 undergrads and 184 grads from Canada.</p>
<p>One of my best friends at MIT was Canadian, and she wasn’t an Olympiad participant (nor did she have other international-level ECs).</p>
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<p>Works out to be around 6 admits a year. Not exactly encouraging.
But mollie, surely she had outstanding grades, charitable work, or … something?
Do you know what she thought the match factor was?</p>
<p>Well, she was certainly very smart! 
But I don’t recall. It certainly wasn’t anything unbelievable.</p>
<p>Reading those stats makes me feel like I wouldn’t have gotten in if I applied 2 years later O_O</p>
<p>Wow, I just noticed that around 1-2 applicants are admitted from my country per year. Awesome.
Think I should be discouraged? :D</p>
<p>You know, one thing I’ve always realized is that we don’t have a lot of options for ECs in my school. I’m not sure if it’s a country-wide thing (certainly might be) but options are still limited, and I’ve done what was available to me (bar drama) and some things on my own time (and, not just to get into college, I might add). For example, my school doesn’t have many clubs, our sports program is seriously horrible, and I’m not sure we have a debate team. Think this could be held against me?</p>
<p><em>sigh</em>
So few spots … unfortunately I will have to pass for undergrad;
but MIT still has a special place in my mind, and I will definitely return to this dream for grad school. :)</p>
<p>Quote from ultrasurf, post 46: “There’s actually around 10,000 AIME qualifiers and ~500 USAMO qualifiers per year.”</p>
<ul>
<li>This year the USAMO has been cut down to 270 participants, and an additional 230 spots are allotted for students in 9th and 10th grade taking the USAJMO. This means that in each grade somewhere between 100 and 200 students will have qualified for the USAMO sometime before senior year.</li>
</ul>