USAMO an anti-hook?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>According to information handed out by TJ's guidance department, in 2008:</p>

<p>79 students applied to MIT from TJ; 21 were admitted. (27%)</p>

<p>Average SAT of admitted students 2282,
Average GPA of admitted students 4.03, </p>

<p>Minimum SAT of admitted students 2140,
Minimum GPA of admitted students 3.742,</p>

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<p>@CalAlum.</p>

<p>That link is very surprising. I read on the MIT blogs that they do not consider what school you are from and do not compare you to other students from your school. Plus an admissions officer told us that when he visited our school. </p>

<p>^Wow, Godot had higher than the average SAT score and GPA of admits...and he also made RSI. And I highly doubt it was the essays or recommendation letters. Getting into RSI requires very good essays and recs (because everyone that applies has national awards)...and I dont think that a person that was admitted to RSI would write bad essays/have bad recs only a year later.</p>

<p>Also keep in mind he was a Siemens semifinalist, which probably came as a result of his research at RSI. I doubt he did anything bad at RSI if he was still able to get Siemens semifinalist...many people at RSI dont have the time to do a complete research project/write a complete research paper in only 5 weeks.</p>

<p>EDIT: RSI has an acceptance rate of <5% and it has better applicants than MIT (which has an acceptance rate of around 10%). So if he was top 5% in his junior year in a pool with better applicants than MIT, and he still won huge national awards his senior year (Siemens, Intel), I have no idea what went wrong.</p>

<p>But like everyone said already, it happens all the time. I know a guy last year who was USAMO/Siemens Regional Finalist (got 2nd so he was 1 spot away from National Finalist)/Intel STS Semifinalist (different project)/2300s SAT/3.95+ UW GPA/AP National Scholar (so he took hard classes and got 5s in them)/plenty of leadership roles/plenty of ECs that was deferred by MIT.<br>
He was later accepted but he was so mad (plus the fact that he was accepted to Stanford/Harvard) that he did not even consider MIT (im sure you can guess who he is if you just read the Class of 2012 RD results...he says in there like 5x how much he hated MIT for deferring him and how hes gonna prove them wrong). He was deferred over people that had no idea what the AMC was or never did any research. So basically, the admissions process is very, very random.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
^Wow, Godot had higher than the average SAT score and GPA of admits...and he also made RSI.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>....and USAMO, Siemens semis, Intel STS semis, USAPhO semis, USACO silver, etc...it just doesn't add up</p>

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<p>@Databox, that won't put you at a disadvantage.</p>

<p>@Geomom, I think more and more of the large public schools here in California are putting their students into state and national competitions and developing clubs and organizations to support research activity and robotics. Perhaps the days when a strong magnet school could expect to dominate the landscape are fading.</p>

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<p>Wait, he got USAPhO semis and USACO silver!</p>

<p>What?</p>

<p>EDIT: Hes not the only one and he won't be the last one.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/546625-consolidated-ea-rd-2012-results-thread-8.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/546625-consolidated-ea-rd-2012-results-thread-8.html&lt;/a>
was last year's results (you will see some interesting results). Its a crapshoot.</p>

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<p>hopelesslydevote definitely deserves a place on this thread...</p>

<p>


</p>

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<p>

MIT absolutely does consider the school you come from -- that's a major part of the context they consider you in.</p>

<p>You're not compared directly with others from your school, but when you're coming from a very high-quality high school like TJ, the admissions committee is familiar with the types of applicants who come from your school in a typical year. There's no explicit quota for people from any given high school, but your high school context absolutely matters.</p>

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<p>MIT</a> Admissions: The Selection Process: Application Reading, Committee, And Decisions</p>

<p>"You are not at any disadvantage if other excellent students from your school or area are also applying.". It says that on the 5th paragraph.</p>

<p>But if even if they are "familiar" with the school system, even using no explicit quota, could it not be considered a disavantage? I mean, I highly doubt, that they would have a 100% acceptance rate for a school like TJ, even if all of their applicants are better than most applicants that are accepted. I dont think you can be "familiar" with a school. I think they should just not know the school at all (maybe they should know the school size, average graduation rate...but not the school name). After all, its all about the applicant.</p>

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<p>If I remember correctly hopelesslydevote also got waitlisted at Stanford and ended up going to CalTech....</p>

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<p>Basically, my questions is "do they indirectly compare you to the school and the history of your school (and what you would expect from a student at that school)?" Because I find that highly unfair, especially if you attend TJ where if you dont have this USA<em>O award, you arent that good at </em>_ for a student at that school. Also, not to mention they say directly on their webpage that they do not practice this concept, even though the exact wording is very ambigious.</p>

51

<p>
[quote]
I dont think you can be "familiar" with a school. I think they should just not know the school at all (maybe they should know the school size, average graduation rate...but not the school name). After all, its all about the applicant.

[/quote]

Well, it's not exactly as though they can help it -- they're actually familiar with a wide range of high schools, even those which aren't as obviously outstanding as TJ. Some of the admissions officers who have been around for a long time are probably familiar with most of the high schools from which MIT hopefuls regularly apply.</p>

<p>And it's not necessarily all about the applicant. It's about what the applicant has achieved given his or her environment, and what that means for his or her likely potential. It can certainly be more impressive to have a host of national-level awards from one high school than from another.</p>

<p>Of course it's not primarily about your high school. But when you're talking about a 10% admit percentage, everything matters.</p>

<p>EDIT:

[quote]
Also, not to mention they say directly on their webpage that they do not practice this concept.

[/quote]

No, they say on the webpage that they don't directly compare students, which is absolutely true. Applications aren't read by school or by region, as they are at some other schools.</p>

<p>And not every student admitted from TJ (or the high schools like TJ) has a cabinetful of national-level awards. But saying they consider the context of your high school achievements does mean that they're thinking about what people from your high school are capable of achieving, and what resources they're given to achieve.</p>

<p>You're not at a disadvantage if other excellent students from your school are applying. You are at a disadvantage if other more excellent students from your school are applying, although it could be argued that's because you're at a disadvantage if other more excellent students are applying in general.</p>

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<p>Well put, molliebatmit!</p>

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<p>I should add that you are not at a disadvantage if you come from a lesser known (or in some cases unknown) high school. Although there are excellent well-known schools in my region that regularly send candidates to MIT, I see candidates from an unknown schools get in every single year. And the big name schools do not get candidates in every year.</p>

<p>When I see a candidate who looks great on paper who fails to get in, it is most usually an awful essay (more common than you think), a red flag in a letter of recommendation, or a completely screwed up interview. Somewhere, there is a block on the candidate, or at least something that does not motivate MIT to admit.</p>

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<p>Which high school has the most admission offer from MIT in the past several years?
Anyone have the stats handy?</p>

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<p>"high school has the most admission offer from MIT in the past several years"</p>

<p>Schools where the student body tend to stronger academically. Obviously.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Basically, my questions is "do they indirectly compare you to the school and the history of your school (and what you would expect from a student at that school)?" Because I find that highly unfair, especially if you attend TJ where if you dont have this USA<em>O award, you arent that good at </em>_ for a student at that school. Also, not to mention they say directly on their webpage that they do not practice this concept, even though the exact wording is very ambigious.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yes, well part of the thing about places like TJ is that they expose weaknesses where none would have been visible at another high school. People got B's or even C's in math or science classes who were really smart, either by slacking off one semester or just because they couldn't handle it. And then MIT didn't take them because they got a B in number theory or some likewise-difficult class. But there were always 10-15 people that actually mastered the material and those people got in. (At least this was my observation at my school, a public magnet school like TJ.)</p>

<p>The thing which seems to be happening now is that there is still some resistance to taking 50 people from one school, even though it is a magnet school. However, now they no longer care if there are blemishes on your application like lackluster grades/scores or the lack of impressive awards. So the RSI/USAMO/bio olympiad guy who aced all his classes and has 750+ on the SATII's may get rejected for someone who had mostly A's but couldn't make TJ's math team. The reason why? Because they still can't take everyone and now subjective things like personality is valued a whole lot more. Part of it may be the rash of suicides (one a semester) in the late 90's. People who obviously don't care all that much about class may be valued more because they are viewed as healthier people.</p>

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<p>"People who obviously don't care all that much about class may be valued more because they are viewed as healthier people. "</p>

<p>Oh... So I'm not healthy :D /sarcasm</p>

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<p>you snuck through...nothing we can do about it now!</p>

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<p>A few propositions:</p>

<p>a) The admissions reps do the best they can, based on the paper records AND their admissions philosophy. Their information is limited.
b) I sincerely doubt that there were many more excellent candidates than Waiting for Godot at his high school (Thomas Jefferson).
c) I think the decision instead reflects the current MIT admissions philosophy. The MIT outcomes for hopelesslydevote (now at Caltech) and piccolojr (now at Harvard) were similar last year.
d) I do not think that the decision should be interpreted as reflecting negatively on Waiting for Godot (compare him with the two people mentioned in part c, who had excellent outcomes elsewhere).
e) If I were making the decisions on admissions, I'd almost certainly call things differently, not with respect to AA, but with respect to the decisions about some of the majority males.</p>

60

<p>The Boston Globe ran an interesting feature today (link below) on the admissions process at two well-known LACs, Tufts and Amherst. While the criteria will be different at an engineering school, the desire to get a class with a variety of skills, backgrounds and personalities is probably universal. In particular, it was interesting to see the focus on kids that achieved above and beyond given their backgrounds and family histories. It's not just about the raw numbers - if that was the case MIT could just lay off its admissions staff and have students encode their stats to be cranked through a ranking program. Of course, it would just take the hackers at MIT one admissions cycle to reverse engineer all aspects of the algorithm.</p>

<p>Colleges</a> look beyond grades and test scores - The Boston Globe</p>