<p>Hey so now that the class of 2015 final acceptance rates have come out I want to address something I have pondered for a long time.
MIT is arguably one of the best or THE best school in the world, yet it's acceptance rate is higher than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Brown. I realize all these other schools I listed are amazing schools as well, but is their lower acceptance rate because of their use of the common app? Or something different?
I always thought that the students who apply to MIT are self selecting because of it's focus on technology and the "only geniuses go to MIT factor". I know people apply to HYPS even though they haven't a chance, in the off shot they do get in (which worked out this year for my friend who was rejected at all her 2nd and 3rd tier schools and looked like she would be taking a year off but yesterday found out the one school to accept her was Princeton. Go figure!)
So my question is, do you also think MIT applicants are more self-selecting or is there another reason 17000 apply to MIT and 31000 apply to Brown?</p>
<p>Well, MIT’s a great school, but the people who apply tend to be those who are particularly interested in majoring in science or engineering, plus some who are interested in majoring in management. People who are interested in majoring in the humanities, or who are totally unsure what they want to do with their lives, tend not to apply to MIT because of the relatively narrower range of majors at MIT compared with other schools.</p>
<p>For someone who wants to major only in English or music or history, MIT isn’t really on the radar, and I think that’s as it should be. MIT is a great place to pursue those interests avocationally, but not the best place to pursue them as a primary interest.</p>
<p>couple reasons. </p>
<p>1) not common app. notice that when columbia switched this year to the common app, their admit rate dropped from 9.9 to 6.something percent. that’s about where we were last year, and where we’d expect to be this year if we switched to the common app (which we are not going to do). </p>
<p>2) cultural self-selection, as mollie talked about. </p>
<p>3) not as sexy in certain circles. there are (still) people out there who unironically turn up their noses at MIT as a trade school, unworthy of its ivy league counterparts. i don’t think this makes up anything more than a tiny, tiny portion of the prospective students, and frankly we’re not interested in them anyway. but there are kids who would not apply to MIT because it is insufficiently prestigious / not the right type of prestigious. </p>
<p>of these, the app may be the biggest reason, followed very closely by self selection. </p>
<p>if we really wanted to drive our app numbers up we’d just switch to the CA. but we don’t. we want the right kids to apply - kids who are a good match, who would do well here - not just some crazy number to make us look good in ranking books.</p>
<p>Believe it or no, there are smart people who do not want to go to a pressure cooker of a school that is biased heavily toward the sciences.</p>
<p>Even w/ a higher acceptance rate, it’s still one of the best in its areas of strength.</p>
<p>That is, MIT does not have a problem :-)</p>
<p>I think a lot of people who apply to the Ivies do it just for the prestigious name. Arguably, some MIT applicants will have the same complex, but due to the self-selecting nature of the pool, I think they’re a minority.
Plus, MIT is generally known as an intelligence-oriented institution (for its focus on tech., engineering, and the sciences), and some people think it’s made for geniuses, versus the achievement focus that seems to correspond with Ivy schools’ names. When someone hears of an acceptance into an Ivy, the reaction is ‘woah you must have really high grades and stuff’. When someone hears of an acceptance into MIT, the reaction is ‘woah you must be a genius!’. Generally, anyway, and at least in my circles. Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>That and the common app and the self selection. I think it’s amazing how self-selecting MIT’s pool is, by the way - makes it sort of distinguished. And I’m really glad they don’t use the Common App, I find it lazy.</p>
<p>MIT will never attract the masses of applicants that other top colleges attract because of the necessary fit between the school and student. MIT is known to be tough, without any easy majors. The science requirements are intimidating for many. There are no multiple choice tests and good grades are hard to earn. The school emphasizes research and personal initiative. MIT is not a good place for somebody who needs a lot of handholding or a pat on the back for doing just OK work. Neither is it a place where you can take it easy for four years, however good you are. For many students you have to be a masochist to want to go MIT. </p>
<p>Here is an anecdote related by my D now a senior at MIT that captures the difference. Upon returning for the Christmas holiday freshman year, she met with a number of her former classmates, with a number of them excellent students now at Ivy League schools such as Yale and Brown. Without exception her friends told her that they studied less in college than they did during their senior year of high school. My D was the only one who said she studied WAY MORE than she ever did in high school, spent many late nights on p-sets and was even afraid of actually failing a class. Her friends were shocked and thought she was crazy to put herself through such a grind, especially since she was also a premed student. Now, nearly 4 years later she does not regret her college choice over other top schools where she was admitted but MIT is clearly not for everybody.</p>
<p>Definitely because they have their own application, and I thank God for that. I was rejected by Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford, and I feel that if MIT used the CA, I wouldn’t have gotten in there, either. All schools should have their own application, because then only the students who want to go there apply. With the CA, kids apply “just to see if I get in.” I <3 MIT</p>
<p>Also, some people with strong STEM interests may prefer to go to college alongside other people who don’t have strong STEM interests. </p>
<p>MIT’s football and basketball teams are never on national TV, and somehow the big Plymouth State game doesn’t quite have the cachet of Harvard vs. Yale or Stanford vs. Cal. You laugh, but I bet there are thousands of kids who don’t apply to MIT because their idea of the “traditional college experience” they crave includes some big-time sports.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>The first part I am not sure about. I believe that many students interested in the STEM fields specifically choose MIT because they are part of the mainstream as opposed to being derided as part of the “nerd” crowd. When my D visited Yale she felt that STEM students were clearly treated as second class citizens, having to trek over a mile up Science Hill and study in older (frankly even shabby) facilities. Even at Harvard the ugliest and least attractive building is by far the Science Building with a distinctive Stalinist look and old unfriendly lecture halls. Same thing at Brown. Compare that to the architectural marvels such as the Stata Center, the gorgeous and bright BCS center or the new Koch Cancer Center at MIT. It is true pleasure studying and working in these facilities where science is front and center. As far as the absence of non-STEM students at MIT, it has not bothered my D much. One of the hidden gems at MIT are many of the HASS classes. my D loved taking several HASS seminars in classes of two or three students with extremely talented faculty. Initially, she thought she would need to cross-register for humanities classes at Harvard but ended up finding everything she wished at MIT. She has already taken over a dozen HASS classes as compared to the minimum of eight. </p>
<p>To me the emphasis on quasi-professional sports as part of the college experience is a sad indictment of the US post secondary education system. The professionalization of collegiate athletics has turned many colleges into training camps for professional sports leagues. The original model was that of the student athlete and MIT with its large of number of varsity teams and club sports truly embodies that spirit. When colleges recruit academically unqualified athletes to act as performers for the rest of the college body and alumni, that whole idea goes out the window.</p>
<p>cellardweller:</p>
<p>I don’t disagree with you at all, on either point. I was just reporting on what I believe are common (but not necessarily majority) attitudes, in an attempt to account for the comparatively low application numbers at MIT.</p>
<p>(Well, I guess I do disagree with you on STEM students being second-class citizens at Yale. The engineering building is one of the latest and greatest, and for my generation Kline Biology Tower was shiny and new. You want to see shabby, you should check out some of the humanities spaces!)</p>
<p>Anyway, of course one of MIT’s attractions is its strong HASS offerings, but everyone understands that in this context “strong” means relative to Caltech or RPI, not relative to Harvard or Yale. I’m sure lots of STEM students feel the way your daughter did/does, and that’s why MIT is as popular as it is. But some feel the way my future MD/PhD roommates did, that they wanted to be friends with real Art History people, not just other pre-meds who would take a survey course or two with them. Obviously, this isn’t a question of who’s right and who’s wrong; it’s a matter of personal taste. And the taste for tech schools, even admirable, broad ones like MIT, isn’t universal.</p>
<p>On sports, we are in total agreement, and in a minority so small in America it might as well not exist at all. I’m positive that the sports situation affects MIT both positively and negatively, with many prospective students overjoyed at the athletic opportunities there, but others turned off by the lack of the bread and circuses they have come to expect from colleges.</p>
<p>Why is the default state to apply to MIT…?</p>
<p>I remember when I was applying to schools - particularly UC’s - I just threw my app at half the schools because I was already applying to UCB. As people mentioned before, MIT’s not on the Common App or any other sort of shared app. People have to actually want to come to MIT itself, to some degree, in order to apply.
</p>
<p>This is highly variable depending on which HASS we’re talking about.</p>
<p>JHS</p>
<p>While the absence of large non STEM student may turn off some students, I believe it really affects only a small portion of the applicant base.</p>
<p>A simpler explanation from my experience is that STEM majors are considered hard and engineering among the hardest. Many students, even among the brightest, don’t see college as a time they want to work especially hard. According to them, college is supposed to be the time for self-discovery and growing up, joining a frat, drinking and partying a lot, an attitude fairly unique to the US. MIT has a reputation, probably well deserved of being tough, maybe a shade less stressing than Caltech but much more than most Ivies. If you don’t cut it in science there is no fallback to a communications or gender studies major! That will turn off a fair amount of prospective applicants. </p>
<p>You have to have a lot of self-confidence to want to beat yourself up and admit that there are plenty of people smarter than you are or that maybe you didn’t really know calculus or physics as well as you thought. I have found a lot of people even on these boards claim that MIT is a terrible place for premeds which is nonsense. Let’s face it, if you can get into MIT, you can get into medical school! From my experience the ones that can’t make it are those who decided senior year that they wanted to apply, skipped all premed advising and blew the MCATs which is hard to do! </p>
<p>When more students want to become lawyers than engineers, you know there is a problem.</p>
<p>I do disagree with your comment that the HASS classes are only good relative to other tech schools. That was the perception my D had before enrolling but no longer. The seminar course she took were far from survey courses and the faculty was world class, a number having taught at Harvard or Oxford. There is clearly not the breadth of offerings of a Yale or Harvard, but many of the classes stand on their own. Interestingly, some fields such as anthropology which used to be traditional humanities disciplines are going through a scientific revolution of their own and MIT is helping to bring them current, just as it helped in philosophy and economics, which is fascinating.</p>
<p>Management, economics, and architecture are top 5 programs (although I don’t consider economics a HASS really.) Political science is a top 10 program, although undergrad coursework may be limited in comparison to other top 10 places and research is slanted toward quantitative analysis.</p>
<p>Music also has a very strong program. I don’t know how they rank it, but it is taken quite seriously. I think it is the only program at MIT that offers a merit scholarship of any sort. </p>
<p>The other HASS departments have good people but they are quite small. For instance, one of our literature professors won a Pullitzer. I took a poetry class from a guy who previously had taught at Oxford.</p>
<p>I was very artsy/verbal next to the average MIT undergrad. They do have good classes at MIT, but the ambience is not quite the same. And you do sense that most people at MIT view the world through more of a techy point-of-view.</p>
<p>Sshh… The less people applies, the better for prospectives! :D</p>
<p>Schools like MIT&CalTech are unique in the way that they are totally science/engineering based. Even thought MIT offers Management and some humanities, MIT is respected as an engineering school worldwide. HYP offers most majors at MIT plus all other humanities/management majors too, so naturally this almost doubles the applicants for them.</p>
<p>Plus there is the Common App, it also bumps up the amount of applicants due to the whole application process being a lot easier and faster. Personally, if MIT switches to Common App, it would no longer be my fav school. The current way MIT has its application process is near perfect if not perfect in my opinion.</p>
<p>I was put off by all the pass/fail courses freshman year. Not sure if MIT still does that.</p>
<p>MITChris - Is there a specific reason MIT is holding out from CommonApp?
It is definitely an additional burden on the applicant since they have to keep track of a second (third, fourth and fifth if there are multiple schools doing this).</p>
<p>You had posted an admitted student profile for 2014. Have you published a similar one for this year? </p>
<p>Thanks</p>
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<p>I don’t think you actually understand what’s happening here - your first term freshman year is pass/no record to help you transition into school, so you only receive internal grades. Second term is ABC/no record, so unless you get an A, B, or C in the course, it doesn’t go on your external transcript. It’s not that specific courses are pass/fail - in fact, nothing is pass/fail, it’s pass/nothing. Everyone I’ve talked to (even the pre-meds who want grades for med school admissions) really like this system.</p>
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MIT compensates for this generosity by making it’s really hard to earn an A or B in the following semesters.</p>
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<p>Yeah, this was a really strange statement. BTW, to add to what others have said, if you really want to you can choose to go on grades the first semester. For the stronger students, this may actually make sense because the GIRs are easier than upper level classes for most people.</p>
<p>Also, the ivies and Stanford are on the same system for all intensive purposes. However, instead of giving you a pass for “C”-level work, they just go ahead and give you an “A”. And they do it all four years.</p>
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<p>I don’t think this is the case? Unless it’s new for 2015s…</p>