<p>"RE midyear reports that come in from here on out - for admitted students, they'll be looked at when the folders return to the records room to make sure that they're consistent with the app that got you admitted"</p>
<p>"It's not that you can't send it in; it's just that it is highly unlikely that the selection committee will ever see it. All of the folders have moved from the records room to the committee room - from this point on, an applicant's supplemental materials will be held in the records room until the folder is returned (which happens after a decision has been made)."</p>
<p>This is from another thread...both were said by Ben
Does this mean adcoms will NOT see my mid-year grade report. I expect mine to reach 18th/ 19th????</p>
<p>Applications are already in committee and it's possible that your case(s) have already been decided. He wrote somewhere that all the files are now in the committee room, and anything sent in now will only reach the records room. Well, it doesn't sound good. :(</p>
<p>No, you're not screwed if your report isn't in yet. Your mid-year report will definitely be considered even if submitted during/after committee, but likely not until after a decision has been made, now that the folders are in the committee room. I doubt that it would ever change a decision (in a positive direction) though, considering the scenarios:</p>
<p>(a) You have a bad mid-year report. </p>
<p>This won't help you in any scenario. :-)</p>
<p>(b) You have a great mid-year report which is consistent with your prior transcript.</p>
<p>If your transcript is already great, we'll assume that your mid-year report will be great too. We don't need to see it to make a decision, only to verify that our decision was correct.</p>
<p>(c) You have a great mid-year report which you're hoping will offset blemishes in your prior transcript.</p>
<p>If your record has enough holes that you're counting on one semester's worth of grades to make a difference, I honestly don't think it's possible, to tell the truth. I've never seen one semester of grades "save" an otherwise unqualified app.</p>
<p>Also remember that grades are just one of many things that we consider when deciding whether someone should be at MIT - certainly a very important part, but only in the context of everything else.</p>
<p>Smilekat - it won't make it into committee unfortunately. Many of the committee decisions will have been made by then.</p>
<p>a-bomb - not sure, do you know when they would have reached us? If it was before the beginning of this week, it's likely that they made it into your file.</p>
<p>Oh look, Matt posted about this very thing (thanks LSA). He says essentially the same thing I do, but it's a slightly different way of talking about the same overall process.</p>
<p>Hmm... I'm trying to gauge my friend's chances (deferree) and what you said unnerved me a bit. Would you turn away the picture-perfect MIT fit because of one year of "sub-par" (B's) grades? He has the drive, spirit, and accomplishments that will put me to shame, and I've never come across someone as born and made for the school (as silly as that sounds). In choosing to sacrifice his straight-A grades to pursue a very VERY time-consuming passion, has he essentially sacrificed his MIT dream as well?</p>
<p>What sparked my reaction was the fact that I'd always believed the kid was deferred so that you could take a look at his senior year grades (which, incidentally, are flawless without any effort) and gauge if the sudden tumble in GPA was a simple glitch or something more substantial. Now it seems as if... midyear grades do not matter?</p>
<p>Honestly, I don't even know why I care so much. I guess there's just something about him that screams MIT and I thought you'd have heard it.</p>
<p>We definitely wouldn't deny someone because of a few B's, assuming that person had other compelling reasons to admit. C's (and below) really hurt people, but a few B's are generally fine, especially if they're obtained in the most challenging classes. We're almost always a lot more impressed by a B in an AP or college class than we are with an A in a regular class.</p>
<p>As you know from reading my blog, it's unlikely that your friend was deferred due to grades and more likely a number-of-spots versus number-of-applicants issue. Hard to comment more without knowing the details of the specific case...</p>
<p>LSA, since you spent the last 3 years working up there on the space station, we didn't expect you to be able to cook very well, so we let it slide. But for most people, a C in cooking would be really bad.</p>
<p>Did you get the parathruster working before your return trip, by the way?</p>