<p>“Without a “hook,” so to speak, on your application, a 1780 on your SAT would not get you into MIT. There are certainly situations in which what I have said will not hold true – namely if a student did not perform as well as they could have on the PSAT, for whatever reason. I am also aware that a student can improve their test performance between years, but I stand by my assertion that it is unlikely that a student who scores a 178 on the PSAT under optimal conditions would produce an SAT that would get them into MIT.”</p>
<p>waterbean, read what I wrote above. Obviously there are people at any of this country’s finest institutions – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Duke, et al – who have PSAT scores that are quite a bit lower than those of typical admitted students. </p>
<p>texaspg - I didn’t say that it was impossible. I said admission was unlikely, barring any “hook” to your application. Most students with a 1780 on the SAT or a 178 on the PSAT have slim chances at MIT (a school that already accepts less than 10 percent of all applicants), as demonstrated by the data which you have so kindly provided. Heck, admission is “highly unlikely” for the lion’s share of even an unusually talented applicant pool to MIT, as there are so few spaces in each class relative to the amount of applicants.</p>
<p>Commodore - Not sure whether you are a student or a parent. You seem to be arguing with MITChris who actually admits people at MIT and he is telling you that you are wrong.</p>
<p>There are conditions under which they are being admitted and the evidence from MIT CDS proves that it is not a small percentage. If you want to keep saying unlikely, that is fine.</p>
<p>^Well, that kind of percentage constitutes “unlikely” for me And chances are that they had unusual circumstances or outlandish achievements of some kind.</p>
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<p>With a 1780 SAT, then yes, I would agree with you, but people’s PSAT scores are known to improve dramatically with increased exposure to the test. The person I was referring to in my “anecdotal incidence” actually had very high SAT, and some people just don’t take the PSAT as seriously as they should.</p>
<p>texaspg – I have no affiliation with MIT. I agree with xrCalico23, though. Those numbers definitely do represent a small percentage of the student body. Are you aware that colleges set aside numerous spaces for legacies, URMs, and athletes? Obviously such hooks increase chances for admission regardless of scholastic performance, which could easily explain the numbers that you have listed.</p>
<p>xrCalico23 – glad to see that we are on the same page – I agree that many people don’t perform up to their abilities on the PSAT. My only point was to say that many people duplicate PSAT performance on the actual SAT; if such is the case, a 1780 would indeed make admission to MIT very difficult.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, also, that MIT has not so far considered the SAT writing score for admissions purposes. Someone who got, e.g., a 700M/600CR/500W would not be such a terribly unlikely MIT admit.</p>
<p>MIT has sports teams, and so must admit “student-athletes” in each incoming class. MIT student-athletes might be expected to meet higher standards than those that are expected of student-athletes at other schools, but they still definitely benefit from their ability to contribute to the school’s athletic departments. There were two kids in my high school class this year, for instance, who were accepted into MIT, while several more-qualified applicants were rejected. The only area in which these two stood out in comparison to the other applicants was in athletics, as they both will play on sports teams at MIT next year. </p>
<p>MIT, like every other college, strives to enroll diverse classes. At some point in the admissions process, MIT will admit students with somewhat lesser credentials than those of the rest of the admitted class if it must do so to maintain diversity, and, to its credit, if it can do so without a large sacrifice in academic quality. </p>
<p>This happens at every university, and I see no reason as to why MIT would be different.</p>
<p>Edit: A 700/600/500, or a 600/700/500, would be very unusual; people usually perform similarly on the writing and reading sections. Also, even on the 1600 scale, a 1300 is rather low for MIT. I maintain that admission would be extremely unlikely in such a case, although a hook to an application could certainly compensate for such an SAT score.</p>
<p>Anyway, I apologize for the argument that I’ve started; I felt like stating my opinion because it’s what I really think is correct, but to each his own. MIT is a superb institution, and I have the utmost respect for it. </p>
<p>MITChris – I did not mean to misinform others, and I am still sure that what I have said is very reasonable. However, you are an expert on admissions, and are therefore obviously more knowledgeable about the subject than I. My apologies again.</p>
<p>It’s required on both the ACT and SAT, but MIT isn’t currently using the scores for evaluation purposes. The writing section on both tests is still relatively new, and MIT is collecting data to determine whether the scores serve any useful purpose in their admissions process.</p>
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Anecdotes, as I’m sure you’re aware, are not data. And MIT considering athletic talent as a factor in the admissions process is different from “set[ting] aside numerous spaces for legacies, URMs, and athletes,” which MIT does not do. There are no quotas for any of those groups at MIT (and, indeed, legacy isn’t even a factor that’s considered).</p>
<p>I’m not trying to bang on you. Just want to keep some of these issues and terms clear, because they are frequently confusing to applicants on this board.</p>
<p>No studying: Scored a 182 on PSAT.
No studying: Scored a 2000 on an SAT practice test. If you superscore that practice test and PSAT, it’s actually a 2050… So you can do better on one than the other, with or without preparation. By the way, I got mail from Brown, UPenn, Vanderbilt, UChicago, and many other top 20 schools, not to mention MANY MANY MANY lower-ranked ones, so this isn’t an unusual occurence. But I had a pretty high CR score on the PSAT, so that may explain the letters from UChicago and Brown. These schools are top-ranked schools, full of people and staff with 160+ IQs, I’d think they know what they’re doing, sometimes there’s a meaning to madness. Just be happy MIT has “Recognized your achievements” haha(:</p>
And chances are that they had unusual circumstances or outlandish achievements of some kind.</p>
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