<p>A story I heard a while ago: a high school student built a small nuclear reactor in his room, and MIT did a documentary on it. But he was rejected from MIT when he applied.</p>
<p>A few people talked about this at my school, but I don't know where they got their sources. Anyone?</p>
<p>He was waitlisted.</p>
<p>Good Lord.</p>
<p>They must've evaluated his abilities beyond the nuke thing and didn't find anything particular... Given, designing a reactor is still such a big deal... they waitlisted him.......... One can only conjecture</p>
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They must've evaluated his abilities beyond the nuke thing and didn't find anything particular
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<p>Whatever. Building a nuclear reactor is amazing and cool.</p>
<p>No documentary was ever made. The student had mediocre grades in math and science classes and did not take a particularly challenging course load compared to other students from his high school who applied to MIT.</p>
<p>I'm surprised. Anyone who would take on the challenge of building a nuclear reactor should not have any trouble in AP classes. But what do I know.</p>
<p>He was on CC. His stats are there in the archive. Actually, his father was a professor(or something like that) at MIT(or somewhere like that); you can guess from where he got all the help in his project.</p>
<p>There are actually two people on CC who have been involved with nuclear reactors.</p>
<p>I assume the one who was rejected from MIT was this guy and not this one.</p>
<p>Well he goes to Renssaeler now with a scholarship. Not MIT or Harvard, but not bad at all. His posts say he was admitted to CMU as well. With a 3.4 GPA (and an SAT math score below 700) I'd say he has plenty to be grateful for.</p>
<p>The second one was involved in nuclear project; he didn't built one in his room as OP had asked.</p>
<p>Funny how he claims to have gotten 5th place at the National Science Bowl when a "5th place" doesn't even exist.</p>
<p>if i were the admissions officers, i wouldn't have waitlisted him for fear of getting blown up</p>