Why was he rejected?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Looking at a specific person who was rejected and asking why he/she was rejected is the wrong way to go about the problem.</p>

<p>With an applicant pool as large and as outstanding as MIT’s, each person who is admitted is actively selected, but each person who is not admitted is simply not selected, not actively rejected. </p>

<p>The proper question to ask, although it’s still difficult or impossible to answer, is why a given applicant was accepted. The reason outstanding people are rejected is because there are not enough spots in the freshman class.</p>

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<p>It is certainly inefficient and perhaps unproductive, but I do not see what is wrong with asking why a particular applicant was rejected. MIT is just as accountable for the acceptances as they are for the seemingly more passive decisions to deny admittance. With a limited class size, admissions officers, though they claim to review individualistically, simply must compare applicants; and the means by which they do this cannot be well understood by just analyzing acceptances.</p>

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<p>Due to the large degree of high-achieving students, it is impossible to admit the full range of them, particularly since one qualification only serves as one among many others that must be present in conjunction with an otherwise strong application.</p>

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<p>I wasn’t aware that MIT has come to stand for the Mathematics Institute of Technology.</p>

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<p>@oasis - for some reason that made me lol. :]</p>

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<p>and guys who keep complaining bout valedictorians getting rejected… some schools REALLY suck. so being valedictorian means nothing. ive seen vals having <2000 sat scores and 3.6 gpa or something. its just a joke at some places…</p>

<p>and yeah mit rejected a lot of people. move on if u get rejected… AA or wtv u got rejected asking for explanations wont change anything.
i got rejected too im sad too but **** that i cant do anything bout it.</p>

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Seriously, thank you for pointing this out. Many people keep talking about the number of valedictorians rejected, but they don’t seem to understand that valedictorian means nothing. At competitive schools, the top 100 students or so could be valedictorians at many, many weaker schools.</p>

<p>And some valedictorians just apply even when they’re clearly under-qualified, just because they’re the best in their school, and they don’t know the quality of students at other schools.</p>

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<p>MIT decisions always make me wonder how our school usually get 1-2 people accepted to MIT per year, even with ACT scores that aren’t necessarily great for MIT. Of course, the two people who scored 36 this year got rejected, which is weird, though for 1 o=I suspect it was because of GPA. It’s weird, because my school is an above average public, but not one of the best in the country or anything like that.</p>

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<p>yeah my sister goes to school with some girl who was valedictorian of her class with like a 3.6 and a 1200 out of 1600 SAT</p>

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<p>Did MIT REALLY reject any students from the US who were Math Olympiad (IMO) Gold or Silver medalists?? Do you know this to be a fact? And multiple rejections?</p>

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<p>no offense… but does the US even have any IMO gold medalists? sorry if im just ignorant.
i was part of IMO development in singapore a few years ago and i dont recall the US being too high on the charts…</p>

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<p>^ The US won two Gold Medals last year and four in 2008.</p>

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<p>^ US rankings (by points received, not by medal count):</p>

<p>2009 - 6th, 2/4/0, behind China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea (! - to me, at least)
2008 - 3rd, 4/2/0, behind China and Russia
2007 - 5th, 2/3/1, behind Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam
2006 - 5th, 2/4/0, behind China, Russia, Korea, Germany
2005 - 2nd, 4/2/0, behind China</p>

<p>[International</a> Mathematical Olympiad](<a href=“http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx]International”>International Mathematical Olympiad)</p>

<p>So yeah, US isn’t doing too bad.</p>

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<p>I had an opportunity to work in the admissions offices of two selective colleges. The vast majority (>90%) of the applicants were excellent/outstanding students. Amazing GPAs, stellar test scores, a ton of EC. In general I focused on recommendation letters. In many cases the rec letters provided the critical information I needed. The letters of rec can tell you a lot about an applicant. College admissions is all about social engineering. You are not looking for the brightest kids with a ton of awards. You are trying to build a class based on criteria set by the institution. Typically, you want to select applicants that appear to have the potential to be future leaders of science, business, government… In our training we were given folders from past years. It was amazing how often we (trainees) rejected past applicants based on their relatively poor HS records only to find that they were accepted and following graduation went on to do great things. These calibration exercises allowed us to look beyond grades and test scores to select a well rounded class (=synergy). In summary, it is not worth your effort to second guess the admissions process.</p>

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<p>And an aside, why does MIT need to guarantee IMO medalists admission? Sure, we probably are perceived as one of the best institutions to train math prodigies, but what about these important questions?</p>

<p>-Is the student going to contribute to student life on campus, or will he be holed away studying math all day?</p>

<p>-If he/she is an international student, can he/she adjust to life in the US?</p>

<p>-Similarly, can the student understand enough English to attend classes here and pass the humanities requirement of eight classes? (typically ~100 pages of essays, mind you)</p>

<p>We do have 20+ other majors on campus (and over 360 student organizations) and MIT quite simply just doesn’t exist to train IMO, IPhO, IChO medalists so that they will go on to become Nobel Prize winners and bring honor and glory to the school. Perhaps to many they would like MIT to turn into such a place, but I know I speak for many of the students that we cannot imagine what this place will become if all we had were academic geniuses and test-taking machines that churn out 2400s. To a degree I guess you can say that all MIT admits are “smart” (in whichever sense you want to define that word), but they are not all cut out from the same mold.</p>

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<p>If we take people that aren’t “academic geniuses,” will they be holed up in their apartment because they are buried with work and have trouble getting through it?</p>

<p>How many of these IMO people have you really met, anyway? They are regular people for the most part; they are just more engaged in what they are studying–which I would say made them more interesting, not less. They are not all carbon copies of each other, “machines” as you call them, inhuman, or however else you want to characterize them. </p>

<p>Your post sounds like how Harvard students describe their school.</p>

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<p>Of the seniors on the US IMO team for 2009, I think all of them came to MIT. All the seniors except one on the 2008 IMO team also came to MIT, with the exception being Harvard. And unless someone decided to enter college early, then there are no members of any US IMO team at the time of application that will be going to college next year.</p>

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<p>I have always been a believer that it’s logical to admit a variety of students who will truly take advantage (as a collective) of everything the school in question offers, and especially the things it offers which are somewhat unique from other schools. So I think Chris makes a good point in context of * non-technical* schools, simply because by nature, future Nobel laureates and Fields Medalists come from different parts of the world and will find world-class institutes to thrive at. But I have a hard time believing there are enough of these medalists applying to reject flagrantly anyway, certainly not from the U.S.</p>

<p>I am, however, going to comment on appdad’s words – while high school performance isn’t the end-all, I am all for consistency and relative transparency. A student shows promise if the student’s hours spent both inside and out of classes reflect some commitment which can be fostered well in the university of concern, and so the university takes the individual. I don’t ask the question “why was this student rejected,” but I think when a student is accepted, it should be relatively evident why, except in the rather odd scenario. I do not believe someone can magically predict another’s future contributions without some hard and fast time commitment this other made that supports future potential.</p>

<p>In the case of MIT, I guess it’s explicitly a technical institute, and by nature, potential in maths/science/engineering is incredibly well supported by stellar academic achievement + explicit involvement in other senses in these fields. Given it is such a technically excellent school, I feel that for the full breadth and depth of it to be taken advantage of, very few “stellar academics” should be rejected. And there are quite a few such who aren’t international medalists, but are nonetheless of a very top caliber.</p>

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<p>To be honest, there are many applicants who got rejected that had better stats and probably better ECs/essays/etc. than the OP’s example. I guess it all comes down to what the admissions want in their accepted pool. You can always get rejected even if you have “everything” (many do).</p>

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<p>Plenty. I’ve met half of the IMO team from Taiwan in 2006, one from 2007, and I went to Mathcamp 2004, where I met Zach Abel (who won a silver at the 2006 IMO, and is at Harvard now) and numerous other MOSPers (I don’t know if any made IMO though off the top of my head). This is not counting the many people who are my classmates now at MIT who participated (and medaled!) in IPhO, IChO, and IBO.</p>

<p>And yes! These are definitely very interesting people with a wide variety of interests, and I respect them greatly for their passion to their field. I concede that I was generalizing too broadly, but I must point out one trend that I have observed in international medalists.</p>

<p>Every year many people lament the fact that X contestant from Y country who won gold at Z olympiad was not admitted to MIT. I’m really intending no personal prejudice as I write this but the fact is that international students, especially those who are not as fluent in English, generally have a harder time with lectures and especially participating in campus extracurriculars. I’m not saying that they don’t deserve a chance to come to MIT, but when you’re looking to build campus dynamics these are invariably the students that have a disadvantage when they’re faced with the holistic admission process that MIT employs (and the international quota also exacerbates this problem). I can speak for a certainty that many international medalists from Taiwan (definitely not all - there’s a Taiwanese girl from my class who got a bronze at the IBO who is certainly an exception) do not have the time or interest to pursue other fields while in high school because they are so dedicated and engaged at becoming the best in their craft. This is what I meant by “holed away studying math all day.” At the same time, not all domestic medalists are exempt from this either. In the same way one cannot say that all olympiad medalists are boring outside of their field, one also cannot say that ALL of them possess diverse interests.</p>

<p>I agree that this is not so much of a problem with domestic medalists (especially at the IMO level), because I really don’t think US olympiad golds or silvers have a big problem getting into MIT (they should all qualify under the “academic superstar” category), but what about USAMO and MOSP qualifiers? You’ll have to draw the line somewhere of what it means to be “stellar,” right? If we say we’re going to take a IMO person who is not too interesting outside of studying mathematics because of their academic brilliance, what about a USAMO person who is the same way? If this logic keeps going on, the school would always be obliged to take the hundreds and hundreds of seniors that qualify for the USAMO and above every year. </p>

<p>All I’m trying to say that I don’t believe that students with stellar academic achievement should automatically qualify for admission across a broad spectrum, especially if they cannot contribute too much to the school outside of their academic interests.</p>

<p>And when I mention machines, I mean students that were literally pushed to produce 800s on every section of the SAT who did nothing but study in high school. Are they intelligent and diligent? Admittedly so! But will they bring diversity and breadth to campus? I am not so sure. Here I’m trying to point out the error of going purely by SAT high-achievers, which is different from IMO qualifiers and cannot be compared on the same level.</p>