To ben, matt, mollie, and all those wonderful MIT people

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>Hi Ben and Matt and Mollie and all those admission officers on this thread. </p>

<p>well i got rejected, but this thread is not about that. </p>

<p>I know how transparent you are in your admission process, but if you notice carefully the transparency exists only in the domestic application process. </p>

<p>when it comes to international applicants, there is a distinct lack of that. Here are some suggestions i thought you should consider.</p>

<p>Could you please officially announce the number of students you admit every year from each country and also the number who applied from each country.
I know you expect amlost all international admits to have some kind of international award, could you please tell us some of the awards that this years admits had?
please dont say you cant divulge that kind of information. </p>

<p>I found this on your not admitted blog
while the thread is generally harsh due to the frustration of the rejectee, there was one point that this person made which caught my eye
"</p>

<p>I mean in an application pool for international i am sure that 80-90% are indians and chinese. Doesnt this mean they desreve atleast 50 seats out of the 100 for intnls. or atleast 30? .
"</p>

<p>may i know what you have to say about that comment?</p>

<p>can you please list
a) some of the awards you came across that really impressed you and caught your eye
b)statics of international admissions
c)what made the admitted students special, internationals that is</p>

<p>and finally
** A BIG THANK YOU**</p>

<p>thanx a lot ben, matt,mollie for teaching us so much for sharing with us so much about your lives,for those wonderful blogs, for those patient answers, to those irritating and repetitive questions, for taking us through the same roller coaster ride that you went through.
I know you probably are taking a break now, and a lot of most needed rest.
Enjoy yourself, and reply to our posts when you feel like. </p>

<p>THANX A LOT...YOURE REALLY WONDERFUL PEOPLE</p>

2

<p>Thanks for the thank you. :)</p>

<p>But just to remind everybody, I'm not an admissions officer -- I wrote for the blogs, and I worked in the office last summer, but I have nothing to do with the actual decision-making process.</p>

3

<p>mollie, i thought your sn was mollie-bat-mit for the longest time until i found out your wrote a blog...just thought i'd throw that out there...</p>

4

<p>^ I did as well. :D</p>

5

<p>Hee, my fiance calls me Mollie Bat when he wants to be annoying. :D</p>

<p>But it is, indeed, my email address.</p>

6

<p>Thank you for all your hard work these past months. Hopefully you'll get a decent break between now and the next big event.</p>

7

<p>which blog on MIT is yours MOlliebatmit?</p>

8

<p>Mollie's is the only blog (so far :) ) listed as a Blogger Alum:
<a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/Mollie.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mitadmissions.org/Mollie.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

9

<p>no wonder i didn't get in, cause i didn't have any international awards. So the whole judge from context thing doesn't really apply to internationals? sigh</p>

10

<p>it's because international students are much much more selective...
so as a result the people with internaitnal awards stand out
(my intepretation)
When I visited MIT, a few current students told me there are soe internaitnal students who would have been accepted if they were put in domestic pool.</p>

11

<p>You don't need an international award to get in. I'm an international EC, and I regularly see people get in with no such thing. However, I also regularly see very, very talented, impressive students fail to get in. </p>

<p>There are two basic issues:
1) The admit rate for internationals is very low (roughly 4% lately)
2) The international pool tends to be even more self-selective than the domestic pool, so that small percentage tends to be drawn from an exceptionally competitive group.</p>

<p>There is no hidden message in that. I know that the overwhelming bulk of the truly impressive students that I see each year will fail to get in. That does not make them any less impressive.</p>

12

<p>My children are US citizens. And, my child was admitted to MIT. But I feel sorry for international applicants, who know that it's "harder" for them to get into MIT but don't know exactly how much harder, and whether their chances of admission will be hurt if they apply for financial aid.</p>

<p>I recently tried to help a friend figure out where her child should apply to college. If he had a green card, he'd be a very strong candidate for MIT. But since he won't have a green card, it was almost impossible to figure out his chances of admission to MIT.</p>

<p>Please publish more information about the characteristics of international applicants who are admitted and rejected. Otherwise, they will end up applying to too many colleges and wasting time and money in the process.</p>

13

<p>thanks a lot vamom3!!. That was exactyl what i wanted to say. I was under the fear that I was not getting my point through. </p>

<p>Ben, I hope you are reading this! Please tell us what you feel.</p>

14

<p>MIT is need-blind for every applicant, including internationals.</p>

<p>On the "International Applicants" section of the admissions webpage, it says

[quote]
International students are eligible for financial aid. As with US citizens and permanent residents, we consider every student for admission without regard to his or her financial need. In other words, applying for financial aid will not hurt your chances of admission. We admit the students best matched for MIT, regardless of their financial situation.

[/quote]
</p>

15

<p>I have seen students get in, and I have seen students fail to do so, and I truthfully cannot tell you which ones are likely to get in. As an EC based in London, I tend to see a cross-section of international applicants. In the last few years in addition to British applicants, and UK-based Americans, I have interviewed students from Kenya, Nigeria, a few other African applicants, and even one from Burma/Myanmar. Although I cannot predict accurately who will get in, I have seen enough decisions to have some insight. </p>

<p>A couple of years ago, one of my interviewees got in with no significant academic distinctions, but she came from a very economically depressed area, where very few students went on to further education, and she really had made the most of every educational opportunity available to her. </p>

<p>I really think that there is no different set of rules for international applicants than there are for domestic applicants. MIT is looking for the same things, in the same ways. The only differential is the admit rate.</p>

<p>Domestic applicants admit at roughly 12%, international applicants at roughly 4%. That means that it is clearly much harder to get in as an international applicant, but the Match criteria is exactly the same. I wish almost all my interviewees luck, but I do not hide that it is extremely difficult to get in.</p>

<p>That being said, MIT admits precisely 0% of those who do not apply. If a student feels that they would want to go to MIT and would enjoy the MIT environment, then I strongly encourage them to apply. But they shouldn't underestimate just how hard that 4% is.</p>

16

<p>domestic is higher than 12%</p>

<p>12% is over all, not domestic admit rate.</p>

<p>dont think there's no significance...last year overall was 14%, domestic 16%, internaitonal 4%.</p>

<p>besides that, great post Mikalye,
"same criteria, just harder" is exactly what I believe :D</p>

17

<p>hmm..</p>

<p>the point of my thread was that the admissions office should be more transparent about the process. we know it is the same criteria , much harder,</p>

<p>BUT HOW MUCH HARDER?</p>

18

<p>bump...........</p>

19

<p>I guess I don't understand what information it's possible to give.</p>

<p>You know that international students are admitted in a need-blind fashion, and that there is a quota such that only about 100 students in the admitted class can be international students. There are no quotas by country, and applications are evaluated holistically with the same criteria as other applications.</p>

<p>The overall admit rate is about 12%, while the international admit rate is under 5%. By that criterion, it is around three times as hard to be admitted in the international pool than in the domestic pool.</p>

20

<p>Here's some data that might help international applicants and their families.</p>

<p>First, average SAT scores (math, verbal and writing separately) of international applicants admitted, and the same data for international applicants rejected.
Second, the number of international applicants admitted and the number rejected who did compete at the international level (e.g., IMO).
Third, the number of international applicants admitted and rejected who had national (but not international) awards in math/science.</p>