Let me reframe your question slightly differently. I don’t know what your chances are, nobody knows what your chances are.
Is MIT is really good FIT (not just dream school) … meaning, this is an exceptional fit?
If you have to resort to academics, that’s not what is interesting: somewhere around 60-70% of applicants have what it takes academically. But dropping it from 60-70% to an admission rate of under 7% – then it comes down to https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/what-we-look-for/
Generally I would say (the more of these, the better):
- your son loves challenges and embraces challenges
- has strong ideas of how to contribute to the MIT community
- is not afraid of hard work
- is not afraid of being a small fish in a big pond / enjoys that he will be around people, some of whom will be much better than he is
- understands MIT will push you to your limits
- you will probably fail for the first time
- you’re the best STEM student in school and you have time to lead in your extracurriculars and you love it.
I’ll copy and paste something I wrote a year ago:
If there’s one concept for all universities, it’s fit. Every school has a different fit. Some of that fit is a bit vague/nebulous.
For some colleges, part of the fit is academic. If we’re talking say Duke, the Ivies, UChicago, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, superlative academics are required, evidenced in grades [transcript], high school report, recommendations. standardized test scores. Some of these schools publish this information on their Common Data Set. Some of these schools will emphasize “being great at multiple subjects” or “being great in STEM subjects.” Some of them will say something like 95% of admits were in the top 10% of their graduating class or 90% of admits were in the top 5% of their graduating class.
You can also think about it in terms of core or general requirements. Does MIT have a humanities requirement? Does MIT require a non-STEM/Humanities teacher to write a recommendation? Why do you think that is?
If you don’t make the academic cut for many colleges, your chances aren’t 2% or 3.5% or 8% or 7%. Your chances are exactly zero. Unfortunately “academic cut” does not reduce down to a cutoff for GPA because of many complicating factors. Some schools have grade inflation. Some schools have different weightings for honors and AP classes. Some schools have different distributions for different grades. I’ve found school systems with up to 6.3 GPA (A+) in certain types of classes, so trying to compare this with a 4.0 unweighted scale is apples and oranges.
Some of the fit depends on that specific college, e.g., “you want a program specializing in backstage drama productions” or “you know you want to specialize in whatever engineering” or “you already know X ancient and modern languages so you want to specialize in medieval literature.” (If you want to specialize in medieval literature, don’t apply to MIT. Go to Harvard.)
Some of it is based on the culture and values of that school. Many public schools don’t bother with extracurriculars. Private colleges do – so what does that say about what they value? Some colleges are need blind in admissions and some are need aware. Many of the top colleges may want to see that you challenged yourself (given your context), you are a self-starter, you have taught yourself various subjects / topics, you’ve demonstrated leadership in your extracurriculars, etc.
What’s MIT’s culture, do you know? What are the values? (Like do you know the mission of MIT?) What’s the format of the education? Do you know both meanings/implications of IHTFP?
If you want just a generic good education, there are many colleges/universities for that.
There is a bit of a ‘luck component’ in the sense that outside of all the things you can control or have more control over (e.g., essays, scores, grades, whom one selected for recommendations, making sure to engage one’s interviewer), there are a lot of factors outside of one’s control – like how calibrated one’s recommendations are and what they have to say about an applicant’s strengths and weaknesses, high school counselor report, interview notes, who else is applying and their abilities, how previous students from an applicant’s school have fared and their grades, etc.
Even if an applicant thinks her or his recommendations are superlative and say that this applicant is one of the best students in the class, that doesn’t make it a good recommendation for MIT. (There’s a whole page on writing recommendations on MITAdmissions.)
There's not a magical path or (some set of extracurriculars plus academic achievements) that will get you accepted. There isn't a cookie cutter person at MIT. (One Harvard grad mentioned to me that applicants these days believe there's a string of button pushes like in a video that will result in being admitted. Not the case.) That's the point of Applying Sideways.
And go mine every comment/reply that MITChris has made.
And most of my American EA interviewees get deferred as opposed to “not accepted” unless they did something completely boneheaded (like not do standardized tests).
I would also say something a little different: with EA, you get to your answer from the college a little earlier.
; among them 3 are in Spanish and one in English). He is an active mathlete and plays a spring varsity sport - both of these activities takes a lot of his time in second semester of each year - that maybe the reason for second-semester-blues.