<p>This is tough on some really super kids. One can only guess as to what the admissions folks were thinking, but my guess is that they get many (hundreds?)applicants with very similar credentials and they have to probably pick on some very minor aspect of the application to reject these perfect candidates so that they can get someone with lower SAT scores/grades (which are still extremely high (maybe 750 vs 800)), but that the person accepted adds diversity to the campus. Maybe the other person sings, is a cartoonist, playwright, athlete, actress, world class harmonica player or some other talent that no one else in the applicant poll has. It seems to me it takes many different walks of life to make up a diverse community and if MIT accepted everyone who was thier math club and chess club president and had 800s across the board the school would suffer.</p>
<p>I appreciate your input but the International Mathematics Olympiad cannot be compared with being the math club president. A gold medal in Olympiads such as the IMO and IPHO are the most impressive thing an international student can achieve. Even i tried the problems of the IMO and IPHO and didn’t even come close to solving one.</p>
<p>Because he’s an international student. MIT only takes around 100 internationals, out of 4000+ that apply. And if you add up everyone who has a gold medal in IMO, IChO, IPhO, IOL, IOI, IBO, etc then you get a lot more than 100 people. And I guarantee that you can stand out even without a gold medal at these competitions. I’m speaking from experience.</p>
<p>you list tons of ecs, but what are they? If they are all math/science related, perhaps they felt he was two one-sided, not well rounded enough. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder, and obviously whoever read his application felt that this was not perfection (if that’s what they really want anyway). Since we can’t read the entire application, we can only guess what caused him to be rejected.</p>
<p>@iceui2 I doubt if every one who has ever participated in an International Olympiad apply to MIT.</p>
<p>@CTScoutmom </p>
<p>Extracurriculars (place leadership in parentheses): (Founder/Head) Inter-school online math community, (Head) School mock trial club (led the team to win national tournaments), 3-year homeroom class president, Member of school hiphop crew (rapper), etc… those were the majors
Job/Work Experience: Internship at a brokerage firm, worked as teaching assistants at math camps
Volunteer/Community service: Organized classes to teach mathematics to fellow students in school, translated various material in Korean and published them free of charge online to disadvantaged students</p>
<p>I think what everyone fails to see in the admissions process at any high academic school, is that it should not be called an application process. An application process would be something akin to applying for a drivers license. Do all the things you need to do correctly and you get your drivers license. For the college admissions process you can do all the things you need to do correctly and still not get in. So the schools, admissions folks, high school guidance counselors, parents and students should think of it as more of a lottery system than a true aplication process. Think about how many people do not get accepted to a high academic college and they are very well qualified. Why don’t they get in? I have not seen any studies but I think the growth of people who can be accepted at any college has not grown with the population.</p>
<p>I mean, this guy was clearly intelligent enough to go to MIT. Most of MIT’s applicants are intelligent enough to go to MIT. It sounds to me like there may have been a failing in the Match, or maybe the guy just got unlucky - MIT would like to take many more students than it does every year.</p>
<p>@peckave What i actually meant was… majority of the international students that have applied to MIT say that applying to MIT is a waste of time if you don’t have an Olympiad medal. And even the statistics show the same thing… Majority of the International students (mainly Asians) accepted in MIT are all Olympiad medalists or equivalent. How are admission officers going to distinguish applicants with 2300+ on SATs and excellent grades. In this situation olympiad medals or an equivalent award plays a big role.</p>
<p>@PiperXP How do admission officers find that a particular student is a match or not? Is it by looking at their applications or by the interviews?</p>
<p>riders - Where are you getting your stats? Some of my international friends do not have Olympiads.</p>
<p>As far as figuring out if the student is a match or not, everything that isn’t a number comes into play. The student’s essays. The teacher recommendations. The interviewer’s report. The school counselor’s report. </p>
<p>There’s a reason why the application isn’t just “list your SAT scores and awards won”. There’s so much more to a student than that.</p>
<p>You have to look at the process on the ad. officers’ angles. May be that year they wanted to get more students from India, Vietnam, Singapore, less from China, Korea, Japan, etc for their international student pool.
They have their own goals to follow, which we don’t know. Remember academic standard is one among other goals that they want from students</p>
<p>@PiperXP I would have one if MIT would flash the awards and achievements of international students in their website. Also i’m not saying that students don’t make it to MIT without medals. Had Olympiad medals been the determining factor, this guy i mentioned above would have easily made it to MIT.</p>
<p>Although ICEUI2 mentions 100 seats, this is still not the whole picture since people in each country have access to only so many seats. Not sure what the number might be but Korea may only have a couple of seats at the low end and may be 4 at the top end assuming Korea actually gets 4 seats each year. So it depends on how many got in from Korea and what they had to offer compared to this candidate.</p>
<p>They are a bunch of medals for knowledge. where is the original research? Winning knowledge based competition is not a true test of someone’s capability to contribute to MIT.</p>
<p>They do have an unwritten quota and people keep track of that based on the number of kids being admitted from the country each year and the alums doing interviews in the country should have access to this information. It is almost impossible to get into MIT from a foreign country without an interview and the weight given to the interview is overwhelming in the admission process. So you do have to take also into consideration on who is making the impression if 100 people went to interview in Korea (I am making that number up and dont know how many applied) and they can only pick 4. </p>
<p>The reason an unwritten quota makes sense - India and China together account for 40+ percent of the world’s population. How hard would it be to find 100 good candidates just in one of those countries? How do they represent the world if they give 50-75 seats to a couple of countries in Asia and other countries have to share the rest? </p>
<p>The process is stacked against getting into MIT at undergraduate level from a foreign country because the number of seats are so limited and they have to look for some candidates in each country. If this candidate was competing against the pool in US, who knows.</p>