<p>@HateSMUS And what if a student has 2300+ SAT scores, good grades and tons of ECs… but has done badly on some of his tests due to illness and personal reasons. Can that student make it? Or will admission officers see that as an unforgivable excuse? I am talking about an international student where the selection process is highly competitive and even one bad point may kill you.</p>
<p>What kind of tests are you talking about? If grades and SAT are good, I suppose the only things left are AP tests or SAT2s. But I’m not sure which test you are talking about.</p>
<p>I am an international EC (interviewer), and although it is true that every year I meet brilliant, talented, wonderful students who will not get admitted, and while I can tell you with some confidence that we will never be able to answer the O.P.'s question, I can also suggest that there are a wide variety of perfectly valid and logical reasons why the candidate did not get admitted. I have a few examples from my international region over the years.</p>
<p>One candidate in my region that was interviewed really could not function in spoken English. He might have been absolutely brilliant, a future McArthur fellow, and Nobel prize winner, but if he cannot follow spoken English, then MIT is not for him. Most of the classes at MIT are taught in English. </p>
<p>We had a candidate this year who revealed at the interview that actually they really did not want to go to MIT at all. Astonishingly, this is something that I have seen before. Usually it happens with a kid where MIT is his/her parent’s dream, rather than the kid’s, and the kid feels that they have to apply. </p>
<p>There was one famous case of a young lady who brought her teddy bear to the interview, and all questions from the EC were referred to the bear and after a short and intense girl/bear discussion, the answer was given. Maybe she thought that she would come across as interesting and quirky, but it does call into question whether she has the emotional maturity to prosper at MIT. </p>
<p>And of course, I have certainly interviewed candidates who have seemingly never encountered soap, which can be challenging in a place as collaborative and team-based as MIT.</p>
<p>And forget the interview. I have no direct experience as an admissions officer, but in the tens of thousands of personal essays that the office read each year, I am sure that there are some tiny percentage that reveal how much the candidate fantasizes about performing horrific acts, or reveal a loathing of everything that the US stands for, or mention some other factor that clearly make it challenging to admit the student.</p>
<p>I do not know if any of these factors were present in the applicant referred to in the O.P.s post, but I would point out that MIT does really, really, really understand what goes into being an Olympiad medalist, and as a result, they would really like to admit those kids. </p>
<p>Sometimes, they can’t and nobody who has not read the interview folder will ever know the reason why. However, to assume that MIT is cavalier about this process or to believe that MIT has made these decisions capriciously is arrogant and wrong.</p>
<p>Mikalye - interesting on what you say with a student who doesn’t want to go there. I’m an interviewer for West Point and we frequently encounter the same - a student with parents who are grads and have pushed them into this. Interestingly, when my son applied to the Naval Academy he was asked this by his interviewer and told that they have a box they could simply check if the student told them they didn’t really want to go. The student would then simply be rejected on the normal timeline and no one (particularly their parents) would ever know why. Kind of an easy “out” for all concerned!</p>
<p>Very informative and useful post, Mikalye! I really couldn’t help laughing when I read the episode about a girl and a teddybear. I suppose interview in MIT admission is quite more important than interviews in other Ivy plus universities.</p>
<p>@Forum members The guy riders mentioned above admits he was arrogant. </p>
<p>He also writes “For those who believe you didn’t make it to MIT because you don’t have an int’l olympiad, there’s a bunch of people (including one from our school) that get in without one, and also some people (like me) who don’t get in with one”</p>
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<p>I honestly do not know. MIT places a lot of value on admitting people not numbers. And the interview helps a lot in that regard. I do not have any experience of the other Ivy interviews.</p>
<p>That being said, as a regional chair, I do get to interact with the chair of the Harvard interviewers in my region and the head of the Stamford interviewers, and our experiences seem fairly similar. I cannot imagine that any of the top schools would have responded any differently to the teddy bear.</p>
<p>I think that admissions is so competitive that you cannot really afford to screw up any part of the application. I also think that at any of the schools the interview really matters most at the margins. An interview that is astonishingly good or astonishingly bad has a much greater importance to the admissions process than the overwhelming majority which are somewhere in the middle.</p>
<p>I can’t find the posts but last year, the instructions about interview said that people who had interviews stood a much much higher chance of making the cut (something about doubledigits but I can’t find the quote anywhere).</p>
<p>[Interview</a> | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/freshman/interview]Interview”>Interview | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>Mikalye, MIT has apparently decided not to interview internationals at all this year. Wouldn’t this be a big disadvantage? Why has this policy been implemented?</p>
<p>^ This surprises me, perhaps it is for a cost reason. When I applied, I was basically told that you cannot get in without an interview unless you are exceptional, that’s how important they stressed it was. Likely, this is a hyperbole, but my own interactions with the admissions committee reflect that they value interviews a lot.</p>
<p>You guys are confusing the issue.</p>
<p>Yes, it is hard to get in without an interview, but only if an interview is available in your area. If it is not available, then it won’t hurt you.</p>
<p>@botmeister, can you give me the source of the claim that MIT not interviewing internationals at all this year?</p>
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…and this is potentially because there are differences between people who interview and people who actively choose not to interview. It’s not that the admissions office is actively discriminating against people who don’t interview.</p>
<p>[“Applying</a> Sideways”](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways]"Applying”>Applying Sideways | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>'Nuff said.</p>
<p>So, is that MITChris?</p>
<p>^Yes, that’s MITChris.</p>
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<p>It hasn’t. For example, I am an international EC, and all of the applicants from my region who request an interview get one. I am continually recruiting new EC’s to ensure that this remains true. Though if I do get an applicant who, despite our best efforts we cannot interview, then I will arrange to have the interview waived (which has happened once in the past five years). The quote that texaspg linked to earlier from the MIT admissions website is instructive. It said:</p>
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<p>So having your interview waived does not actually disadvantage you at all. The statistics suggest that there may be a disadvantage in being offered an interview and CHOOSING not to have one, or there may not. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that the goal is to offer every student that applies an interview. Also keep in mind that to preserve fairness, we want to ensure that every student applying from a particular region has a similar experience. This year in some regions which are under-served by Educational Counselors, the decision has been taken to offer all applicants a Skype interview. For example, I believe Guam falls into this category this year. Now a Skype interview is significantly inferior to a face-to-face interview, but it is better than no interview at all. </p>
<p>I have heard on this board anecdotally, but I do not have any direct knowledge, that in at least one under-served region, the decision has been taken to waive all of the interviews in the region. That is possible, though I am a little surprised, but it maintains the goal of ensuring that all applicants from a region have a similar experience, and it should not disadvantage any of those applicants.</p>