@Happytimes2001 For privacy reasons, I don’t want to go too far discussing specific kids’ credentials. Let me just say that in our town most kids who are high achievers in academic/intellectual areas know each other and know very well what everybody is worth, and any unexpected acceptances were clearly because of sports. As I said, it’s hard to make conclusions without knowing the RD results.
Yes they are. Coaches may not have the same pull as at other schools when it comes to the admissions dept., but there are certainly athletes recruited to MIT.
@twoinanddone They have to meet the academic criteria no exceptions. If you consider that recruiting, then fine. Not like at other schools where they bend the rules a lot more. No athletes at MIT with low calibre academics. And part of being recruited IMHO is getting some pull in admissions/some kind of $/merit or something that would give them something in addition to a general student.
I don’t view athletics like I do the legacy and development admits–Athletes seem more like musicians in the sense that their contribution is one that takes a lot of time and that represents an achievement of their own. Yeah about meeting academic criteria at MIT because there’s no way to skip or work around the general Institutional requirement-can’t substitute “Math for the curious 1 & 2” for 2 courses of calc or “we love our physical world” for 2 courses of physics.