<p>Well I go to a foreign but small (US based system) school in Korea so I have access to around 4 APs, all which I currently take and self-studying atm. But I can’t speak Korean, hence I’m not qualified for the science competitions here and I’m not eligible for the US competitions either since I’m a korean citizen.</p>
<p>I heard that MIT reviews applicants by citizenship then country. Is this true? Or are all international applicants in just one big pool and you guys pick and choose? Would situations like mine be considered during the decision process?</p>
<p>International students are read by country, but I’m not sure if that’s country of citizenship or country of residence. And that doesn’t imply that only a certain number or type of international student will get in from any given country – applications are still read holistically, with an eye to the student’s individual circumstances. I think it’s often just easier for the admissions officers to read by country, because of similarities within a given country’s grading system/opportunities.</p>
<p>LOL … I went to MIT before they more actively recruited women. I think the ratio of men to women was something like 4:1 while I was there. MacGregor was all-male back then.
I had heard of some women who decided not to apply to MIT, but I wasn’t under the impression that it was because there weren’t enough women (although perhaps it was). Some didn’t like the focus on engineering and science and wanted a broader education; some thought MIT was too intense (granted, some men decided not to apply to MIT for similar reasons). Among some men, there was a feeling that there were not enough women on campus, so they would go to other campuses (or invite women from other campuses) for parties, etc. Others were too busy to worry about such things.</p>
<p>What do you classify as a major national award? If you count National Merit, Siemens, and Intel semifinalists, and USAMO qualifiers, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the applicants have at least one national award.</p>
Some URMs struggle because they come from environments where there is an active disincentive to academic achievement. Others struggle despite doing what you did … they learned a lot of things on their own, but not the things that would enable them to be good students (although it is enough for them to be admitted to MIT). They become discouraged and leave. (In all fairness, many non-URMs leave MIT for similar reasons. I don’t know how it is now, but when I was a student, some people seemed to make a big issue about URMs leaving, especially if it was for academic reasons. Some URMs felt as if they were under pressure not to become “a statistic”.)</p>
<p>How do you know that these URMs are not as qualified, especially since they are not yet MIT students? If MIT admits people with weaker qualifications than others who turn out to be strong students, doesn’t that justify their decision? What about students who have really strong apps, but wind up doing poorer than the so-called “weaker students”? There must be something more to these presumably “weaker students” that enables them to succeed – this is part of what the admissions committee is looking for.</p>
<p>Intel/Siemens Finalist, USAMO or better for math competitions, one of the training camps for the other olympiads (chem, bio, physics). That’s what I was referring to. Back when I applied, there was probably less than 100 people with USAMO applying to college in a given year, but I hear it has gotten a bit less exclusive. Maybe today, it would be more appropriate to qualify MOSP as a major national award rather than USAMO. And the other olympiads aren’t of the same difficulty nor do they have the same number of rounds or the same level of competition, so you have to get a bit farther on them to carry the same weight as with the math olympiad. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t say National Merit Finalist or Intel semis is a major national award. It’s a good thing to have. There are other national competitions that MIT will be familiar with but don’t quite carry the same amount of weight: Science Olympiad, Mandelbrot, stuff like that.) These are things which will help make up a strong application, but aren’t quite what I would say is a major award.</p>
<p>If the posts in the EA/RD threads are to be believed (and that’s a big if), we actually see kids with perfect 800 SAT/SAT II scores, 9+ AP’s, tons of scientific awards, etc. being rejected or deferred, while other applicants who are ** much weaker ** academically are accepted. Given that undergraduate admissions at MIT are not handled by academic faculty , but rather by adcoms who base their decisions on questionable subjective criteria, that is not surprising at all. One would hope that, after the fraudster MIT dean of admissions was fired a while ago (for pretending to hold a doctorate she never got), things would improve, but, from the CC threads, it looks like little has changed. </p>
<p>The good thing about Caltech is that you may rest assured the school is always looking for the most academically gifted candidates, regardless of race, gender, athletic interests, personal life story or other non-academic criteria. As for MIT or the top Ivies, that is clearly not necessarily true.</p>
<p>The above is only true if you consider SATs and the like to be absolute indicators of academic strength.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t necessarily assume that making the admissions committee all faculty would turn undergraduate admissions into a paragon of so-called meritocracy, either. Graduate school admissions committees are composed of all faculty members, and admission into graduate school is certainly not based on GRE scores and GPA. In fact, it’s fairly trivial to get into a top graduate program if you have a good recommendation from a well-known faculty member in the field – academic nepotism is a big plus in grad school admissions.</p>
<p>“The above is only true if you consider SATs and the like to be absolute indicators of academic strength.”</p>
<p>I don’t think this argument works. That the admissions office has priorities other than academic strength is even more obvious once you get to be a student at MIT. There is a WIDE range of academic talent among the undergraduates. It is easy to think of students back home who were rejected or waitlisted who were stronger academically than your classmates. Of course MIT admissions as much as states this on its website, so nobody should be surprised.</p>
<p>All that’s left is 1) discussing what it is, exactly, that admissions is looking for; and
2) discussing whether or not this is really the best admissions policy for MIT.</p>
<p>^ Disagree. All but one of the accepted students I see on that thread were academically qualified by MIT standards. In their (Admissions’) experience, they haven’t found squabbling between a 720 and 750 to be of value/the difference being an indicator of success, just as they haven’t found use for writing scores yet. </p>
<p>Of course, plenty of deferred students have great scores, too - surprise surprise, lots of academically strong people apply to MIT.</p>
<p>As for the one person who didn’t meet their typical “Score in the 700s, you’re academically qualified” ideal (this person wasn’t far off the mark, by the way - 680 and 690), this person was in MITES. MIT has their own data for how well this person performed in the program - far more trustworthy than an SAT.</p>
<p>Oh! I think you misunderstood me. Bruno123 said academically strong applicants are rejected/deferred while weaker applicants are accepted. MollyB said that’s only true if you are basing your definition of academically strong on SAT’s and the like. I said no, once you get to be an actual student at MIT you meet people who are struggling in classes that people you actually know who were rejected would have aced. MIT rejects students who are academically stronger than some of the students they accept. This is just true. Admissions says as much on their website. MIT doesn’t look for the academically strongest students, they look for other things, too.</p>
<p>Simply put, MIT eagerly snaps up many semi-qualifed URM candidates (at least compared with many of the people deferred) in the EA round, as it needs to “maintain diversity” in the institution. Unfair, perhaps, but undeniable.</p>
<p>This is true. Some students, for example, are able to take organic chemistry and differential equations in high school, and had they come to MIT, they would’ve had a much easier time in 5.12 and/or 18.03 than some people currently at MIT. In my experience, most of the cases you’re talking abotu have to do with background over aptitude and fades as one climbs the years (because it’s unlikely that a senior at MIT will have seen that material in high school).</p>
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<p>Semi-qualified? I’ve already stated above what I see in the acceptance pool - 700s (with one easily explainable exception). I even see white and Asian males.</p>
<p>PiperXP: Compared to the vast majority of Asian/White candidates with 2300+ SATs, perfect (or nearly so) subject test scores, great GPA, etc, the URMs who are accepted do not have even remotely close to the same stats. That is not to say they are unqualified; on the contrary, many have SATs/GPA that are “in range” for MIT and schools of similar caliber. The fact remains, however, that their background gave them a significant boost in the admissions process.</p>
<p>“In my experience, most of the cases you’re talking about have to do with background over aptitude and fades as one climbs the years (because it’s unlikely that a senior at MIT will have seen that material in high school).”</p>
<p>This is an optimistic theory. Sometimes it might even turn out to be true. An advanced freshman, though, has rarely learned what they know through their high school. More often they’ve plowed through books, tried stuff on their own, used the internet, and spent their summers with like-minded people. At MIT this thirst for extracurricular knowledge doesn’t slow down.</p>
<p>My examples with 5.12 and 18.03 aren’t conjured up in my mind - they are what I’ve seen :). Denying that many students here have had a huge advantage in their education that aids them in GIRs and often even beyond that is both silly and untrue.
Yes, MIT students have a thirst for knowledge beyond what is taught in high school and sought that out. I don’t see how that backs up your point or erases mine.</p>
<p>I never denied that some students have more and better education going into MIT. </p>
<p>I was saying often students are advanced because of their astonishingly high aptitude and desire for learning. It is optimistic to think that it will all be level by the time they are seniors. It’s like when a kid is reading at 4 years old and a teacher says, “Oh, all their reading levels even out by third grade.” It rarely works that way. So sure, serious application to one’s course work and very very hard work can erase some of that disadvantage. Some 90%+ of students graduate. But just graduating is very different than the level of achievement reached by the top of the class.</p>