There Is No Formula

There Is No Formula This whole is there a formula to get into MIT thing thats been dominating College Confidential and the blog comments makes me sad. I understand that people want answers and explanations, but alas. Trying to define admissions with a formula is like trying to define life with a formula. Its like trying to explain poetry using calculus. It would take the human component out of it, which is perhaps the most important part. Reading through this thread doesnt make me think of SAT scores or grades. It makes me think of the guy who fell in love with trains as a kid and worked so hard to include the world in that passion that Amtrak noticed and gave him a job before he could even drive. It makes me think of the girl who chose to commute an hour each way to attend a certain school, and the amazing friendship she developed with the bus driver that reinforced her dream of becoming a teacher. It makes me think of one girls amazing photograph of a swing and how that image says more about the world than any test ever could. Of course you need good scores and good grades to get into MIT. But most people who apply to MIT have good grades and scores. Having bad grades or scores will certainly hurt you, but Im sorry to say that having great grades and scores doesnt really help you it just means that youre competitive with most of the rest of our applicants. MIT is very self-selecting in that regard. Its who you are that really matters. Its how you embrace life. Its how you treat other people. Its passion. And yes, that stuff really does drip off the page in the best of our applications. Its not anything I can explain you just know when you read an application and a perfect match is there. Please dont argue about stats, about race, about gender. Katharine got some static along these lines a few threads back. Read her response in particular the part about whats important in life. If you dont see that Katharine belongs here, then you obviously dont know what MIT is about. (And for the record, Katharines application could hold its own against that of any boy.) Heres an equally important message: I saw the perfect match in a bunch of apps that we deferred. Please remember that we deferred a LOT of people who wholly deserve to be at MIT folks who are passionate, who love life and the discovery thereof, who genuinely care about the people around them. The absolute worst part of this job is the fact that there are so few spots for so many qualified people, which means we cant take everyone, even if they belong here. The best we can do is try to build a perfect class. Not the perfect class, but a perfect class. As Andrew mentioned in a different thread, we could build 2, maybe even 3 perfect classes out of our applicant pool, without question. If youve been deferred, there is nothing I can say here to make this fact easier to digest. But trying to pin it on anything else race, gender, whatever is just deluding yourself. So please stop harassing Matt; youre not going to get the answer youre looking for. I wish we could just give you a perfect black-and-white response, but the real world is never that simple. If you take nothing else from this post, just know that getting deferred is not a personal reflection on you. At all. Accepted, deferred, or otherwise you are all amazing people. As I said previously, youll make the world better whether you come to MIT or not. I know its not a consolation, but its still the truth. -B