<p>I am going to Duke as indicated by my location status lol 
but yeah, Duke is a great school. But I still have’t recovered from my rejection from MIT even after these months…ever since a handful of my close friends got in, I just felt “inferior” from the way they make MIT seem…It’ll take time, but I think I’ll move on.</p>
<p>Actually, the kid from Idaho probably has an advantage.</p>
<p>John, start communicating with Duke students. Soon, you will all agree that Duke is the best. As for MIT, shake the dust off your feet.</p>
<p>@Hunt know a girl from a rural area who got admitted to MIT and CalTech this year. She had no science/tech ECs at all. However, she was #1 in her school, went out of her way to take math/science classes at nearby community college. She did this mainly out of passion for the subjects and not as a preparation to get into those schools. I think admission people at these elite institutes do a good job recognizing ECs that come out as result of passion rather than well orchestrated set activities tailor made for college app.</p>
<p>Why rejected? Really?</p>
<p>Asking what combination of factors inside the Black Box of admissions decision-making flipped the potentiometer to “reject?”</p>
<p>20 years from now you will be rejected for a job that YOU believe is a perfect fit for you, a job that both excites and challenges you, a job with good growth potential and excellent salary prospects, and they will reject you because . . . they found someone who “fit” better.</p>
<p>They selected that Other person NOT because you have shortcomings - you could certainly do the work - and NOT because of your skills and capabilities - you were fully qualified. They just found someone else who fit better.</p>
<p>And that’s what happened with your MIT application:they found a few thousand other applications among they received who fit better at their institution. And as they have been doing this as professionals for a long time they were probably right: they selected application packages that seemed to be a better fit for that specific institution than yours. </p>
<p>Are you qualified? Yes. Could you do the work? Yes. Would you have thrived there as much as others they selected? Who knows?</p>
<p>Here’s how I think about it for you. The top 20 or so schools in the country will enroll about 25k frosh. One of those fine schools selected YOU, out of the thousands of applications they received, because they believe that you would thrive at their school.
As for MIT, you may not be as good a predictor as you think you are about your “fit” for that specific school . . . they maybe even made a mistake and erroneously rejected the application of one who was a perfect fit. But when Duke said “yes” to you, they saw an intellectual, social and aspirational fit for you that they did not see in many others’ applications. Celebrate their embrace of your application . . . some people never learn about how important the issue of “fit” is and go through life believing that if they somehow fulfilled a 2 dimensional decision-matrix of demonstrated skills and capabilities that the job . . . or the school . . . will be theirs. Fit - as defined by those decision-makers- matters.</p>
<p>Sometimes The One we love doesn’t think we are as good a fit as we think we are.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>P.S. There is absolutely nothing you did wrong . . . and nothing you could have done to change their mind, except . . . be a different person than the one who put together successful applications packages. </p>
<p>P.P.S. For everyone else reading this: decisions at these top 20 (the HYPed schools) are not predictable. That is why people apply to multiple schools,and why it’s critical to be prepared and happy to attend ANY of the schools in one’s application list. Yes, we all have favorites, but . . . Love Thy Safeties.</p>
<p>P.P.P.S. We are not immune. I’m still trying to get my head around my kid’s rejection from a Top 20 school, with SATs a a good 100+ points higher than yours :-)</p>
<p>P.P.P.P.S. M O V E O N !!!</p>
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</p>
<p>When in mathematics, an object [in this case, an explanation] doesn’t officially exist, we just make a new definition and continue as if nothing happened.</p>
<p>hahahahaha… Good one, Mathboy98. :-)</p>
<p>John117,</p>
<p>You’re not dumb, but you are making a dumb move. Let it go at this point. Just move on. Be excited about Duke. Look into all the opportunities that you have there. At MIT you might have been just another smart student, but not a standout. Get involved with your new school and strive to be that standout.</p>
<p>Remember that 95% of all the applicants to MIT meet their GPA/SAT/etc. standards. But they only accept about 7%, so a lot of very good students are not accepted. As people have said previously, it is not you who applied, but the student you presented on paper. Look back at your app if you want to and see if it truely represented what you are. </p>
<p>If you really want to go to MIT, do your best at Duke and apply as a transfer student in the fall.</p>
<p>there’s deff nothing wrong with youu</p>
<p>trust me, you’ll be very happy at duke</p>
<p>Depends on what the MIT admission wants the class to look like.</p>
<p>You will be fortunate that you will not be around your HS close friends - They still will be your friends but you will have another network of friends, at Duke. </p>
<p>this set of parents, thank MIT for not accepting DS, twice, undergrad and for grad.
DS found a undergrad research position at this other university. Which led to a robotics project that he completed successfully (he’s not into robotics). The research professor became his advisor, who won a very prestigious engineering award. DS got into another school for grad (MIT did not accept or rather never replied), on full scholarship and stipend. His grad advisor was well known to Microsoft -which led to multiple internships around the world. His undergrad advisor recruited DS to come to her new university (and closer to home) to be her special projects gofer - later to be a partner in a robotics startup (he’s not into robotics). He’s happy - we are very happy.</p>
<p>You’d never know how a rejection can become something better.</p>
<p>To be fair to MIT and not particularly picking on MIT. DS had 3 other schools that overlapped for undergrad and grad application.</p>
<p>“I got rejected from MIT. Does that mean I’m dumb?”
No, the fact that you are asking that question makes you dumb. For someone with as many academic achievements as you, and ranked 4th in your class, you are obviously NOT dumb, and so that question is therefore dumb. Lots of oxymorons in there, I know.
Stop fishing for compliments/condolences. You won’t get any.
And why mope about it any more? Seriously.</p>
<p>Try to enjoy Duke. If you still feel like it, apply for transfer this next year (and the year after, if need be). It’s really not the end of the world; you actually have a lot to look forward to.</p>
<p>John 117 is a ■■■■■ who posted a similar reject thread in Stanford but with different stats. Don’t feed this ■■■■■.</p>
<p>The Duke ■■■■■ is also probably lying about getting off the Caltech waitlist. But then again, I am rather skeptical by nature.</p>
<p>Again, 2390 is my superscored score. 2240 is my single setting. I honestly believe once you’re above the 2200 range you’re pretty much the same.</p>
<p>I don’t have to explain myself every time I say something.</p>
<p>On a completely different note, I’d be very surprised if objobs and logical were NOT the same people.</p>
<p>Way to divert the attention from yourself.</p>
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<p>This isn’t a matter of opinion. Data convincingly disprove your belief.</p>
<p>^^ In what sense? I think that while people may not be the “same” after that point, the question is for what purposes score differences are actually useful at that point. The ability to zero in and see key little points in a short amount of time is useful to an extent, just in seeing that someone can read and think in a fairly agile fashion, but I have found that for higher level thinking, an overall analytical mindset and more direct evidences of that seem to vastly overshadow an SAT score in reflecting potential. At a certain point, what someone <em>actually wants to train himself/herself</em> to do tends to matter a lot. And certainly in the 2300s, it starts to become ridiculous, because at that point, how you actually take the test becomes insanely important.</p>
<p>In other words, I think while score differences of, say 100 points, certainly mean something, whether they mean something one cares much about is another story.</p>
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<p>In the sense that higher scorers continue to receive an admissions boost past 2200, they tend to have significantly stronger applications otherwise, or (most likely, given the extent to which one’s chances continue to rise) they enjoy a combinative effect.</p>