The problem with looking at "stats" alone

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>(For those who don't know me, I'm a rising senior with an Admissions blog at <a href="http://jessie.mitblogs.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://jessie.mitblogs.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

<p>As you can see by my post count, I'm new here. One of the things I notice from looking around, and from reading the comments on some of the blogs, is the popularity of the "stats post". Some eager applicant posts a list of their stats - GPA, class rank, SAT scores, AP scores, maybe extracurriculars or major awards, and asks what their chances are of getting into MIT. Or, around the time when applicants are notified of their acceptances or rejections, furious rejected applicants (or their parents) post a list of their stats, and demand to know how they could possibly have been rejected. Frequently, if they are male, they then assert that they were rejected because of "affirmative action" in favor of less-qualified female applicants.</p>

<p>I can't speak for other schools, but if you are making a pure stats post, you are approaching MIT Admissions in the wrong way.</p>

<p>When I was a middle-school cross country and road runner, I used to get recruited by high school coaches. I didn't understand why they all seemed so interested in me. I was a very good young runner, but I wasn't one of the best, and I had poor form and was clumsy and didn't pace myself very well. Why were they talking to me instead of the girls who were a little faster and had better form to boot? I think it was my mom who explained it to me. She pointed out that a top middle school runner with perfect form and pacing wasn't very coachable, but that the coaches figured that with proper coaching, I could become a much better runner.</p>

<p>Admissions is a little like that. MIT wants the people who will benefit from the MIT culture and education the most, and will bring the most benefit to the MIT community. Stats ARE important, but that's because MIT is a difficult place and they need to make sure that the people they admit are able to do the work. Stats don't get you acceptance into MIT, they get you consideration. Once you demonstrate, with your application in full, that you probably have enough mathematical capability to handle 18.01 and 18.02, they don't care whether you got a 740 or an 800 on the math portion of the SAT, or whether your GPA was 4.0 or 3.92.</p>

<p>I saw that there was a thread before asking for MIT "hooks" and that there have been other threads asking "Is it possible for me to get into MIT without foo?" The answers to these questions are "There are no activities or combinations of activities which by definition will get you into MIT" and "Yes".</p>

<p>MIT doesn't have a checklist of activities and qualifications against which it runs your application to see if you match up. There are certain traits and values that are at the core of MIT culture, and those are what you should be demonstrating, but there are infinite ways to demonstrate them. Obviously, there's not some official list of these, but I would say that some of them are:</p>

<p>(Responsible and Informed) Risk-taking: Going to MIT is risky in itself, considering that you could go to a less challenging school and have an easier time earning a good GPA. Academic risk-taking, whether in research or choice of classes, is a basic part of MIT life (and frequently, so is non-academic risk-taking). You can demonstrate risk-taking with a difficult high school class schedule, with research, with various extracurriculars - something where you put yourself on the line and went through with it in spite of the chance of failure.</p>

<p>Creativity: Good scientists and engineers have to be creative. There are a lot of ways to show your creativity in an application. Maybe you did some great research. Maybe you invented something. Maybe you're an artist or a writer or an actor or a composer or design lighting and sound for high school plays - there are an astounding number of artistically talented people at MIT. Maybe you're a quarterback who showed great ingenuity in planning or calling plays.</p>

<p>Work ethic: As you might imagine, this is important at MIT. If you played the same varsity sport for four years and won the team "hardest worker" award when you were a junior, that shows work ethic. If you delivered pizzas or worked as a video store clerk for 15 hours a week while maintaining top grades, that shows work ethic, especially if you have a letter from your employer saying what a hardworking person you are, that shows work ethic. You could demonstrate your work ethic through theater, quiz bowl, your job in a research lab at your local university...anything, really, as long as you're actually showing it and not just assuming admissions staff will get it because you listed the activity.</p>

<p>There are a lot of other qualities I could go into - appreciation of hands-on work and learning, outstanding intellectual aptitude, a desire to use your knowledge in the world...but this post is getting long, and I bet you get my point, which is that it's not what activities you do (or how many activities you do), but what qualities you show with them, and whether those qualities are a match for MIT, that matters.</p>

<p>There's a myth that MIT only wants well-rounded people. Well, some MIT students are quite well-rounded, others not so much. The less well-rounded ones just managed to show their appealing qualities with fewer or a narrower range of activities. And believe me, you can be "well-rounded" in the sense that many people mean - have at least one each of sports, service clubs, academic clubs, and "leadership" positions - and come off looking like a boring and superficial resume-padder, not a desirable applicant.</p>

<p>So if you're going to post your stats, at least tell us something about yourself to go with it.</p>

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<p>Dear Jessie wow, this is an amazing post of yours! It's a real shame no-one has left any comments yet (with so many other (often stupid) threads full...)</p>

<p>I agree with everything you have said. Here are just my small thoughts:</p>

<p>I see many people with perfect/impressive/etc resume that didn't get in. Well, my theory is that this perfectness is often a proof that the person may be serious in appearance, but in reality, isn't:</p>

<p>For example, let's take physics.
I read that some folks, have already taken (and aced) quantum mechanics at their neighboring university in their junior year of HS. (I was one of those...) Well, one day I came bragging with my father (a physician himself) that I already knew quantum mechanics. He laughed a lot at me, asked me some questions, and made me understand that my knowledge of the material was EXTREMELY superficial (like I know the names, the formulas, etc but can do NO reasoning).
His point was that, in order that your knowledge of advanced stuff would not be superficial, you must first be a huge expert in the simple stuff (like mechanics, 18.01). And that it takes a lot of time to master (by which I mean, to learn how to reason) even such simple things as mechanics.
So my point is that, if the admission officer is someone who knows about science/education/etc (which he of course is), he can't possibly take much too seriously someone who has already taken X/Y/Z ultra-advanced-for-his-level courses. </p>

<p>Or for example, a huge number of leadership and extracurricular activities.
A lot of people state that they do like 10 EC. Well I can't possibly imagine how in the world someone would have time to do 10 activities and do them well. I think that even Mollie, who in my opinion has exeptional time management skills, does what, 2/3 activities?(Please pardon me if I am wrong on this)
I don't know, but if I were an admission officer, I would think that the person with 10 activities, isn't someone serious, but someone superficial. Because that's the problem: when you have too much activities, you can only do them superficially.</p>

<p>About Olympiads
Olympiad winners are of no doubt very very respectful and bright people. Yet one shouldn't believe that you're only bright if you have won an olympiad. In my opinion, olympiads only test a certain type of intelligence (for example, the speed with which you think) whereas there are a lot more forms of intelligence. For example, the elegance of a solution (it's hard to make something elegant when you are time constrained), or art and beauty, etc. Plus there is this thing: real world problems are VERY different than olympiad problems; they are conceptually MUCH harder.
So again, I am not saying at all that an olympiad winner should be discarded, in the contrary! I am just saying that non-olympiad winners should not worry about admission officers looking down upon them.</p>

<p>Essays
Personnaly, when I was writing them, I loved talking about philosophical concepts, about higher thoughts, etc. Plus, I was in love with what I wrote, and thought that it was something so profound/true/sensible and that it was of the calliber of famous philosophers.
Well, after showing my masterpieces to other people, I understood that the truth is that general thoughts are only worth that much and that I shouldnt be trying to impress people. Often an essay where a high school student is explaining the meaning of life and such, gets the reader (an adult) angry/ennerved.
The point of an essay is to show who the writer is. Much too often (just like right now), thoughts do not represent the true person, but only the conception that person would like to have about himself. Your actions, what you have lived/experienced, what you have made of it is the stuff that really show who you are.
So my point is that an essay should be very concrete and focused. General thoughts reveal nothing about someone besides his wordiness.</p>

<p>Damn, I can't believe how much rant I have gathered here... Well, actually this rant is the summary of the frustrating part of my college application process... (the pleasant part of which appeared only much much much later... no justice in the world...)</p>

<p>Many many good luck and cold blood to all the future applicants!</p>

<p>Greetings,
Dimitri</p>

<p>(Jessie, hope to see you next year!)</p>

<p>(pardon my bad english...)</p>

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<p>Jessie, thank you. Excellent post.</p>

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<p>That was indeed an excellent post. I hope all that enter the foray into bias in admissions due to AA, gender, location or other perceived failings of the system read this post carefully. The small amount of information posted in the chances, wait-listed and rejection threads do not begin to actually describe the qualities of an applicant.</p>

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<p>Jessie and SuperDimer both, excellent posts. I especially think the bit about the essays is relevant to so many of the "smartest" kids I've known. They should be written as though in answer to the question "Who are you?" You get 500 words, sure, but use them as though you were explaining yourself to a person in front of you - not explaining the meaning of life to the world. Ultimately, the essays I read that didn't really convey the spirit of the applicant landed the student at a school a tier below where their "stats" seemed to place them.</p>

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<p>Jessie, you've summed up the things I observe about pretty much all of the 20 or so students I know who've been admitted to MIT (many of whom are now attending!). I hope your post will become one that others will quote and point to in future: great insight and grounding. Thank you.</p>

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<p>I totally agree with what you said about work ethic. Work ethic can be derived from a variety of things, and like you said, MIT wants personal growth is they accept you. The key to personal growth is of course work ethic. How you decide to convey this is one thing, but "just be creative." I used to post my stats on some of the CC threads, asking for my chances. I've seen students post with the same stuff I had posted, except I told more about my "stories." This ultimately allowed other posters to get a little more insight, and I got better "reviews." I know some stuff that you write in your essays can be very personal, and telling it on a public forum isn't in your best interest, but make sure you're aware that without these things, you're not getting the best judgment from people.</p>

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<p>Very very good posts! Vu<em>Preuss</em>06, you are correct that not everyone feels comfortable posting information here. I use to have a screen name that had my actual name on it (and I know some of you have recognized me). </p>

<p>I agree that learning the basics is very important indeed. Something that's always upsetted me (I think I'm not using correct grammar here, someone help me) is when I learn all this advanced level material, I can't get it to just work. Sure, I can solve problems that the prof gives, and follow the text book, but it still doesn't click. I can tell when stuff clicks because I usually see it in a different way. If I go to a school like MIT or such, I'd probably retake almost every course I could exempt out of (assuming I'm even at that level to exempt anything) just so that perhaps another pass at the material will make it click. That is one reason I've always had trouble with chemistry. It never clicks, because I can't fully follow the reasoning (and often times the real logic behind what we learn is buried in more advanced chemistry courses).</p>

<p>That's one reason I think HS research is a very valuable experience; it gives you a chance to let things click and then progress. </p>

<p>Ok, my post is already so incoherent I forgot what the point I was trying to make was if any. Good day!</p>

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<p>(mostly inresponse to akadaddy: ) About stats not telling the whole story. Obviously, this is true. But that doesn't have much to do with the debate about affirmative action or anything else.</p>

<p>You don't need to believe scores and grades tell the whole story to use them to diagnose biases, for example. All you need to believe is that they correlate to some extent with things that you care about. And to discount score gaps in the cases of some minority groups, you need to believe that there is a systemic and predictable bias in scores or grades against those groups, which other groups don't suffer from. I think such biases probably do exist, but I think people often go too glibly from "scores don't tell the whole story about anyone" to a tacit "scores don't tell us anything at all."</p>

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<p>Ben, these gaps do exist not "probably" exist. No one said or implied that these tools should not be used. Scores are one important part of a complex puzzle. Lets drop this on this thread and leave it with OP excellent post.</p>

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<p>Agreed.</p>

<p>(When I said the biases "probably" exist, I meant systemic biases in the tests and grading systems. Obviously the score gaps exist. That much can be seen by computation.)</p>

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<p>Jessie,</p>

<p>You are wiser than your years. Excellent post indeed. My daughter is a member of MIT Class 2010. As I have advised numerous students in my area on the college admissions process, I always remind them that it is not just about the stats. MIT could fill their classes with people who have perfect scores in everything, but they choose not to do that for a reason. </p>

<p>Thank you for your eloquent post. I will be referring many people to your post as they prepare their college applications .</p>

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<p>Excellent post, Jessie. You are wonderful--you got right to the heart of the matter! I think that the MIT admissions process is much more comprehensive than most people would think. I have read some posts on cc written by students turned down by mit, and have been grateful that mit was somehow able to discern some of the negative traits of the applicants despite their stellar scores and achievements. I think that students interested in applying to mit would be wise to read the mit undergraduate page blogs, both the ones written by students and by admissions officers, to gain a better understanding of the admissions process as a whole and the culture of the school. I personally love the comprehensive approach of mit admissions--when my son and I came to mit for the first time at cpw, we both thought the students were the most wonderful people on any campus we'd been on, brilliant, friendly, funny, generous with their time (giving impromptu dorm tours), very down to earth good people overall, creative, and very respectful, kind and fun to visit with. Mit admissions is very clearly doing an excellent job finding these students.</p>

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<p>awesome posts. that was definately something i think a lot of people need to not just read but understand a little bit more...</p>

<p>it really seems that MIT is a collection of people who have a really soild understanding of things around them, and im not saying the math-y science-y stuff, im saying the things that matter, like wanting to be a part of things, wanting to be more of a person, to make an impact whether behind the scenes or not. i was actually smiling while reading the top 2 posts and it was so nice to see, all stats and being a URM and winning X awards and being in Y EC's aside, that the people that are going to MIT are the ones that see this awkward college game that many try too hard to compete with and decide, wait, didnt i have some personal values before all of this began? why am i trying to be someone who I THINK these people would like me to be? does this make any sense? not really. so, to any rising seniors out there like myself, please, just be what you are. of course id love to go here, and im going to apply, without a doubt, but im not in any position to give up my identity to do so. mayonnaise jars are supposed to contain mayonnaise, and colleges are very good at reading labels.</p>

<p>but anyway, thank you for explaining to me why i spend my excess time composing and interacting with people and not stressing over sat classes.</p>

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<p>How does MIT admission office look at a 14-year-old female applicant applying early action? This particular girl is going to graduate high school in 3 years because high school for her is not challenging at all. She is tired of busywork-like homework. She founded her own ongoing math camp to teach challenging math to gifted 4th and 5th grade school kids for free. Her stats are top 2% class ranking, new SAT 2350, SATII 800 (Math level 2), Physics 790, History 770, PSAT 226, all A's except one B+ at school. A fine young violinist. She spent 4 summers (including this summer) going to Mathworks and Canada/USA mathcamp. She won a bronze medal at a world math competition held in Hongkong in high school freshman year.</p>

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<p>Check out this</a> blog entry on early application/matriculation by Matt McGann, associate director of admissions at MIT.</p>

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<p>Mollie, thanks a lot for the website about underaged students at MIT.</p>

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<p>Two words; thank you... unless you count the first two, in which case it's four, but now with these new words.... it's many words!</p>

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<p>Wow! Can't believe I missed this post before :( Thank you so much :):):)</p>

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<p>So I've re-read all of the blog entries in the past week or so, since my job this month is to go through and put them into categories; I found this</a> great entry by Ben in December 2004.</p>

<p>
[quote]

This whole "is there a formula to get into MIT" thing that's been dominating College Confidential and the blog comments makes me sad. I understand that people want answers and explanations, but... alas.</p>

<p>Trying to define admissions with a formula is like trying to define life with a formula. It's like trying to explain poetry using calculus. It would take the human component out of it, which is perhaps the most important part.</p>

<p>Reading through this thread doesn't make me think of SAT scores or grades. It makes me think of the guy who fell in love with trains as a kid and worked so hard to include the world in that passion that Amtrak noticed and gave him a job before he could even drive. It makes me think of the girl who chose to commute an hour each way to attend a certain school, and the amazing friendship she developed with the bus driver that reinforced her dream of becoming a teacher. It makes me think of one girl's amazing photograph of a swing and how that image says more about the world than any test ever could.</p>

<p>Of course you need good scores and good grades to get into MIT. But most people who apply to MIT have good grades and scores. Having bad grades or scores will certainly hurt you, but I'm sorry to say that having great grades and scores doesn't really help you - it just means that you're competitive with most of the rest of our applicants. MIT is very self-selecting in that regard.</p>

<p>It's who you are that really matters. It's how you embrace life. It's how you treat other people. It's passion. And yes, that stuff really does drip off the page in the best of our applications. It's not anything I can explain - you just know when you read an application and a "perfect match" is there.</p>

<p>Please don't argue about stats, about race, about gender. Katharine got some static along these lines a few threads back. Read her response - in particular the part about what's important in life. If you don't see that Katharine belongs here, then you obviously don't know what MIT is about. (And for the record, Katharine's application could hold its own against that of any boy.)</p>

<p>Here's an equally important message: I saw the "perfect match" in a bunch of apps that we deferred. Please remember that we deferred a LOT of people who wholly deserve to be at MIT - folks who are passionate, who love life and the discovery thereof, who genuinely care about the people around them. The absolute worst part of this job is the fact that there are so few spots for so many qualified people, which means we can't take everyone, even if they belong here.</p>

<p>The best we can do is try to build a perfect class. Not the perfect class, but a perfect class. As Andrew mentioned in a different thread, we could build 2, maybe even 3 perfect classes out of our applicant pool, without question. If you've been deferred, there is nothing I can say here to make this fact easier to digest. But trying to pin it on anything else - race, gender, whatever - is just deluding yourself. So please stop harassing Matt; you're not going to get the answer you're looking for. I wish we could just give you a perfect black-and-white response, but the real world is never that simple.</p>

<p>If you take nothing else from this post, just know that getting deferred is not a personal reflection on you. At all.</p>

<p>Accepted, deferred, or otherwise - you are all amazing people. As I said previously, you'll make the world better whether you come to MIT or not. I know it's not a consolation, but it's still the truth.

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