<p>Stats: gpa was around a 97% UW
ACT: 32
SAT 2: 790 and 740
Rank: valedictorian out of 390 kids
Awards: Rensellear Medal, AP Scholar w/ distinction, community service recognition, NYS scholarship of excellence
EC: (in-school)- math team captian, science team, nature club (vice-prez), spanish honor society, tutoring.
Outisde: Research w/ doctor on mental disabilities for three years, own research on disabilities, founded a small workshop for children with disabilities, tutored kids, community service.
Essays: exceptional. Wrote about the impact of his father disability and taking care of him. Talked about seeing children w/ disabilities and how that's impacted him. (He basically was an excellent "match" for MIT) He thought of others first and sought to make the world a better place.
Recs: excellent
Personal:
Ethnicity: Chinese(is this what killed him?)
He was first generation and came from a low income family
Location: new york</p>
<p>Why was he rejected? was it b/c he only had a 32 ACT? or no national awards? or b/c he was chinese? or a male?
Why?? He was an amazing match for the school??
MIT says that after a certain score, they don't look at test scores.
HE CAME FROM A SCHOOL WHERE NO ONE HAD EVER DONE AN OLYMPIAD OR HAD WON IN THE INTEL COMPETITION.
Is it really a crapshoot for everyone unless you're an URM or a super-recruited(top notch) athlete?</p>
<p>lol… mit doesnt care bout athletes that much…
but well. a lot of people with better stats and ECs got rejected… so theres really no complaints there. i feel sorry for him but thats how it is.</p>
<p>I think you shouldn’t be shocked at your friend’s rejected letter. If he was accepted, I would be accepted as well. Apparently, MIT this year rejected bunch of IMO Gold or Silver Medalists, which may explain why your friends “should” be rejected. Admissioners of MIT are not that good as you find it. In fact, you can believe that most of them don’t understand how to judge unusual stuffs outside of standard ones, which they learned from schools or met years by years while being trained for doing these jobs.</p>
<p>I think most of the medallists who were rejected were internationals.</p>
<p>I just can’t get over one of the Australian rejections. I heard that an IChO silver medallist (who justttt missed out on gold) who’d also gotten the highest possible TER (with perfect scores in most of his subjects) got rejected. I find that ridiculous.</p>
<p>MIT rejects 1 out of every 10 valedictorians because they have so many qualified applicants/all at the top of their class and top credentials, to choose from. Several years ago at our high school, we had exceptional twin valedictorian/salutatorians-both were rejected.</p>
<p>Of course. But I think many people’s frustrations lie in the seeming reality that many are accepted who seem less qualified than do some who were rejected.</p>
<p>I kind of agree with silverturtle. If you check another post of mine, I spoke about a Hispanic-American girl who was accepted from his schooo (check that post for details. I posted in the thread “Lets talk about race…”. It seems that when MIT adcoms see Asian checked on the application, their perspective instantly changes. They are in the mindset that the applicant has to be the best of the best. I know they say they look at context, but still I don’t think do, as they claim. Conversely, when they see hispanic checked off, they lower the standards, even though that URM may have come from a high middle class and privileged family, as the hispanic-american girl I was talking about.</p>
<p>The valedictorian of our high school (top competitive school) was also rejected. MIT just doesn’t have enough space for all its highly qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Well, MIT openly practices affirmative action. Nonetheless, it is not as if there are very few Asian-American students at MIT; rather, they are hugely over-represented there.</p>
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<p>That is not the point: such a reality only renders selectivity a necessity; it does not justify MIT’s specific admissions practices.</p>
<p>Maybe his essays weren’t well written. Someone can take a great topic and ruin it while someone else can take a totally overused cliche topic and make it amazing.</p>
<p>I would speculate that he was denied because of his respectable, but not spectacular, performances on his standardized tests – in addition to the large degree of unpredictability that is already present.</p>
<p>Do standardized tests really measure college sucess? Yeah, I know they give adcoms the chance to compare students across the nation, but will getting an 800 on math really indicate that you’re a top math student?
There are kids in my school that have gotten high scores on the math section of the sat/act, but are struggling in calculus(a college level course).
Can you really validate that high test scores reflect better performence in college?</p>
<p>@rainbowrose: Trust me, his essays were excellent. Others whom have read it say this also. There was personality and an active voice in his essays. @larryjiii: how is this not interesting? How many kids have used their desperate circumstance and have incorporated into a passion to help others??</p>
<p>@silverturtle: Because most of them will be admitted if they are reviewed by professional mathematicians at MIT, not by those admissioners who are clueless about math and not have time to assist any of the math professors there. I called this a “superior ignorance!”</p>