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That’s now in my list of philosophical things to dish out ;)</p>
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<p>This is so true! The U.S. college admissions process is really unlike what is prevalent in most other countries and I have to say I owe most of my knowledge on the admission process to CC. In fact, I am grateful that MIT alums like mollie,Laura, Oasis,Mikalye,Piper and a wonderful college rep like MITChris are here to answer our questions.</p>
<p>Hi MITChris. I’d like you to know that your presence on CC is quite valuable. You’re one of the only few CC posters (your colleagues on the MIT section of this message board included) that i find reliable… I hope people like you will multiply on this forum. Cheers!</p>
<p>since i’m at it, allow me to ask something. </p>
<p>MIT is one of the highest performers in terms of yield rates. I applied to MIT about 10 years ago, and sadly, wasn’t accepted. I, however, got into some ivies, duke, rice, bowdoin, mudd and cambridge and warwick in the UK. I eventually enrolled in cambridge, which was at that time my 3rd choice. (I wasnt also accepted at berkeley, which was my 2nd choice.) but had i been admitted to all the schools that I applied to, i would have gone to MIT for sure. for me, MIT is the greatest school on earth in areas where they are present. having said that, it’s hard to turn down an offer from MIT. so, that makes me wonder where do most MIT admits who didn’t enroll end up studying. I can safely assume Harvard gets the bulk of them. But aside from Harvard, which other schools get those supposedly MIT students? any figures for Stanford, Berkeley and Caltech?</p>
<p>^I can answer that for one year (the year I worked in the admissions office, 2006, for the class of 2010). I assume the data is fairly consistent from year to year.</p>
<p>That year, the most frequent non-MIT choices were Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and Caltech (in that order). Those schools accounted for about 60% of students who chose to go elsewhere, and Ivy League schools other than HYP account for another 10%. State schools only account for 10%, which is really surprising when you consider the excellent engineering programs at, e.g., Berkeley and UMich.</p>
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<p>Not surprising to me - getting into Berkeley or U. Michigan carries very little prestige for those gunning for Ivies, MIT, Caltech, etc. And reality says a large number of those in that pool would a) rather not pay a ton to go to one of these as an out-of-state student, b) rather not “submit” to studying at the in-state school that everyone around me gets into AND is infamous for tough grading in math/science/engineering.</p>
<p>Departmental strength =/= undergrad prestige, and the latter seems to carry more weight in the hearts of students.</p>
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Yahoo! Answers is neither “the real world” nor a reliable source of information.</p>
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But Ken Thompson and Bill Joy were at Berkeley! :o</p>
<p>The original poster’s question is a really good one (I certainly wonder sometimes), and many good answers have been posted, but I think it is a question tightly tied to the question of why I volunteered to become an Educational Councillor (interviewer) in the first place. It really originally was to give something back. As a regional chair for the EC, every year I recruit a significant number of new EC’s for my region and most of them join for the same reason. They really enjoyed their time at MIT. They really enjoy talking about MIT, and they wan to try to convey the same joy in they place that they found to other prospective students. And one way in which they can do this is to offer to spend many many hours of unpaid work helping spread the word and assisting in the process. It takes maybe 5 hours for me to do one interview, and I do a bunch each year, plus all the other work that the EC requires. Heck I enjoy this.</p>
<p>And so, one of the reasons that I post on CC is precisely because so much of the information here is bad. If the information was good, then there would be no point to hanging around here. People do use this pool of half-informed commentary, biting sarcasm, and deep ■■■■■■■■ as a valid information source (scarcely believeable, but its true), and it is up to those who have some limited actual knowlege to help out.</p>
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<p>Time, just time. As an international EC, I will sometimes post on the international students forum, or occasionally post on a more general thread about interviewing, but I think I’m the most useful here.</p>
<p>If you want an example of a forum where people talk smack all day, beat down on new members who just joined and genuinely are asking real questions by calling them ■■■■■■, with a lot of mods that do nothing about the situation, please visit ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■.</p>
<p>(it’s really hard not to become snarky on here after reading SDN too much sometimes -____-)</p>
<p>But anyways - thanks for the passing mentions, but I decided to stay around after getting into MIT because CC was such an invaluable resource to me as a student going to high school in Taiwan. I went to a high school in Taiwan that had 5 AP courses and a graduation size of 55, and it was very difficult to know what the “mainstream” American high school students were doing. CC essentially, in the least cheesy way possible, became my link to American high school students.</p>
<p>Through CC, I discovered self-studying APs (I ended up graduating with 14 AP scores), Mathcamp (frosh summer!), SSP (junior summer!), even Siemens Westinghouse + Intel STS. Honestly, CC completely transformed the way I approached high school, and I still remain grateful to this forum. I am sure many homeschooled applicants may feel the same way too.</p>
<p>When I got into MIT, I think I had around 1440 posts, so I haven’t been posting all that much, but I hope to continue to contribute to this place that has given me so much (especially to new generations of MIT students! I think is like blogging for MIT anyway - I just don’t proofread as much for grammar before I hit “submit” =p). </p>
<p>I used to post a lot on the SAT/AP and College Admissions forums, but I realized my advice is probably dated by now, so I’ve stuck to almost exclusively this forum. And I do agree - we get the occasional thingmatrolljig in here - coughdatalookcough - but I really enjoy this forum and I hope it continues to help so many more prospective students. (I will definitely be very sad the day CC closes too…)</p>
<p>ps. I dedicated my 1000th post on this forum to Pton, because I really loved that school during application season (they were the only school to reject me too, incidentally -_- sigh). There’s no question who I’m dedicating my 2000th post to. =D</p>
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Wow, you’re almost there!</p>
<p>Your post highlights the value of cc for high-school students who are in the freshman year (or even sophomore year) in many U.S. schools. The top schools have math teams and science clubs where older students can advise younger peers. But as we often hear from posters, many schools in the U.S. have nothing like this, and in that sense, young posters in American public schools sometimes need advice as much as do homeschooled and international students. </p>
<p>Sometimes freshman posters on the board have been told to just “relax, you’re too young to think about this yet,” but I’m always grateful when students and alums here step up and answer the questions. I’m a liberal arts professor, and my daughter attended a top public California high school, so you would think that she would not have needed any advice whatsoever. But I’m a historian, so I was pretty clueless about MIT. In her case, the fact that she joined the school’s math team when she entered as a freshman made all the difference. It was the older students on the team, the ones applying to MIT, etc., that mentored her. The fall of her sophomore year, she asked me to drive her to an MIT admissions talk based on the suggestion given her by a senior boy on the team (who attended MIT the following year). That was our first admissions session, and by the time she left, she had mentally mapped out all the coursework she would take, the SAT scores she would need to “be in the range”, and so on.</p>
<p>I can see how some of the CC boards can substitute for this experience in cases where students don’t know anyone who can advise them.</p>
<p>^ Is your daughter not applying to Cal? Berkeley is a top school for math too. ;)</p>
<p>Our math program is indeed unique in how diversely strong it is, although MIT is one of the schools strong in many areas too. </p>
<p>However, she’s already a physics major at MIT, I think. I’m not sure but it’s quite possible MIT has more to offer for physics.</p>
<p>Further, if interested in math competitions, I would certainly wager a school like MIT or Harvard has students putting more energy and talent into those things.</p>
<p>I just joined because I’m an EC, I love meeting students, talking about MIT, and I want to convince people that there’s more to getting into or being successful at MIT than just taking as many math classes as possible.</p>