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<p>There are lot of reasons why otherwise highly qualified students will be turned down by MIT. Valedictorians with otherwise stellar ECs, near perfect SAT scores, boatloads of APs are not especially advantaged applying to MIT. You may remember the Polish student accepted to all Ivies a few years ago, was turned down by MIT (which was ironically his first choice). </p>
<p>On the othet hand, many of the students that MIT actively seeks out may not be excellent candidates for HYP such as the student admitted this year who who built a nuclear reactor. MIT will look at much more lopsided candidates than HYP. MIT will also dig much deeper into the “fit” with the school. </p>
<p>BTW, HYP are NOT the top overlap schools with MIT. Caltech and Stanford are more common, even Chicago because of the ability apply to both EA. As an interviewer of MIT applicants, I very seldom see applicants to Yale for instance. Even Princeton is more common than Harvard as it has stronger engineering. Think of it this way: CC conducts every year a cross-admit battle for HYPSM. MIT was even with all the other schools including Harvard, but the numbers of cross admits is VERY low. CC can barely find 60 students TOTAL admitted to more than one school. Cross admits with of HYPS with MIT number less than 25 TOTAL, of these there were only 2 with Yale. You would probably find 10 times the number of MIT/HYPS cross admits with Caltech alone.</p>