MIT Admissions Blog

MIT did this a few years ago, and their analysis of the benefits of standardized testing is worth a read: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-r…

I applied to MIT in 2005, having built a functional Farnsworth fusor in my garage (which was fairly uncommon at the time), and was not admitted. Part of me wonders if the guy in the article was referring to my case, since the David Hahn story was very well known even in 2003 when I was getting started with my work. Either way, MIT is being overly smug about it with articles like this. The admissions director at the time even brought it up in an interview with the associated press that fall [1]. Things turned out fine for me, and I’m glad that whole undergraduate admissions rat race is in the past. 1. https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/marilee_jones_in_the_news_1/

MIT publicly said their stats showed that SAT was the best predictor of graduation (MIT tracks six-year graduation rate): https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-r… They accepted me (same year as the guy who wrote that article!) from a high school than only gave letter grades, computed no class rank or GPA, and offered no "AP" classes or SAT prep. Then again, back then, I don't remember colleges caring about extracurriculars either, though I might have forgotten.

Here's an image of one of my favorite pre-WW2 hacks (1936): https://mitadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/car_2.jpg They later set the car on fire.

They have stats publicly available, so everyone can judge it themselves: http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.… If you look at percentage rates, the self-selection of the candidates might make it look like it is not so rigoristic. But take a look at the absolute numbers, for example for the "SAT Reasoning Test Scores (Math)": 1172 / (1172 + 269 + 108 + 2) =~ 0.76 So 76% of the students enrolled have scores in the best 750-800 range.

I graduated in 1990 but worked there for 8 years afterward. I never saw any pendulum motion. Today it does not look at all like they want to brand themselves like the Marines, judging by the "LIFE AT MIT FAQ" on http://www.mitadmissions.org/

This has been done before. Yes, it's a blog post, not a whole online forum. The blogs by the admission officers have become an integral part of MIT's outreach to prospective students. One of the most useful blog posts by a (now former) MIT admission officer is http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/before/recommended_high_school_pre… One example of important breaking news breaking on the MIT admissions blog was http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/message_from_be… which must have been a very painful entry to write.

> I don't know many people who would claim that with a straight face. But it is your right to have that opinion. I think you're taking the opinion out-of-context. The question was: "What are good places to get cheap college credit with a quality education?" The question was not: "Where should I send my kid to college?" The context of the discussion was about finding ways to not pay $60k for freshman year, but to come in with credit. The answer I'd give to that question is UMass. The tuition is $15k. The educational quality is very high. If MIT allowed it, the best-case option would be to _defer_ MIT admissions, do two years there, and then switch back to MIT. Sadly, MIT wants those dollars, and if you defer, you can't collect credits while deferred: https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/deferred-enrollment/ And no, MIT is not a meritocracy. Look at the new learning initiatives it launched, and look at the qualifications of anyone involved in senior positions. Or the heads of many labs, for that matter. It's 100% about connections at the top. Admissions is _somewhat_ more meritocratic than Harvard, where >40% of the white students are admitted are ALDC admissions (athletics, donor, legacy, and children of faculty), but the days when MIT was a meritocracy faded in the days of yesteryear. I miss that MIT, but it's dead.

> in a party where the folks who think the SATs are racist SATs are racist (to tptacek's point I'm on the progressive side, but I do think Biden agrees with me here [Biden education]). I don't know how you look at the data [SAT stats] and come to any other conclusion. We can discuss how much is solely the SAT vs. institutional racism, but the facts are pretty clear. --- Since no one else is defending race-aware admissions policies, I'll do it here. Fundamentally this is a clash of values. The left and academia (definitely not all Democrats) want racially representative cohorts. This is because they lead to better outcomes, and education is "the great leveler" and we want to level people from all walks of life as much as we can, given scarce resources. It's better for society. The right characterizes these racially representative cohorts as unfair, because they believe they should be instead constructed from test scores. They'll say merit, but their only measure is test scores which aren't good indicators of merit because of systemic racism. If we went with this system, we would retrench and amplify existing biases and inequalities. The current regime is doing pretty good at representation (2019) [Wiki US race] [Undergraduate race]: AAPI in college/US: 6.89%/6.1% Blacks in college/US: 12.65%/12.4% Whites in college/US: 55.12%/60.1% Hispanics in college/US: 21.08%/18.3% While not perfect, college undergraduate racial makeup mostly tracks US racial makeup. The main…

There is a darker Truth. Intelligence as tested by IQ by several govts and organizations is mostly genetic[1]. It means that the "nurture" part is not so much important as people think. Heck you can even see with brothers / cousins the differences. When we say "gifted" it means we are selecting and optimizing for IQ. Thus the "inequality". You will always see more Asians. To make more equal we need to remove/disqualify asians. If a profession/skill is very related to a characteristic/feature as IQ then I want the best there. Not everyone is equal and not everyone has the same skills. If you check [1] you will see they studied TWINS adopted in families. There is no better "social intervention" than adopting someone, provide the same food/structure that all on family have. Then you can see here the confirmation in a soft way [2] and [3]. "and we consistently find that considering performance on the SAT/ACT, particularly the math section, substantially improves the predictive validity of our decisions with respect to subsequent student success at the Institute." I am not gifted but I do benefit from gifted people work. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289621000635 [2] - https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-suspending-our-sat-act-re… [3] - https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-r…

People need incentives, and being competitive in school-like activities provides them. Universities have been moving away from evaluating candidates from raw academic or scholastic perspectives. For instance, removing standardized testing from the process. [1,2,3] This has raised concerns and considerable pushback from parents. It raises the uncertainty of admission, even if they raise a child to do everything right and mold them into the standard high achieving student. Of course, not unwarranted concerns: how do we fairly evaluate a student's external achievements without picking favorites. There is no objective measure to solve that problem. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/SAT-scores-uc-university-of-cali… [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-university-wont-require-sat-act-f… [3] https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/a-special-announcement-about-sat…

Please don't do this. There have been many take-downs of his full document (that include the so-called citations). The one legit paper he linked to (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.173.2077&… didn't reach the conclusion he was claiming. That paper demonstrates that in egalitarian developed societies men are less oppressed by other men, not that there are innate differences. In all cases women's behavior is the result of being oppressed to a greater or lesser degree. In other words in less developed societies many men are just as oppressed by the powerful as women and use the same coping strategies. He also failed to address the fact that interest doesn't necessarily correlate with ability. Research shows men and women don't differ in empathy unless men know they are being judged, which suggests it is a culturally-imposed trait and definitely not universal. He makes a lot of assumptions without bothering to explain them, eg: assuming effective meritocracy and blindly ignoring his own caveats, never resolving the conflict with his own arguments. He never once presents ANY evidence that cognitive differences between men/women influence performance in software engineering. Here are just a few…

As a 16-year-old who will be applying to these elite schools next year, I can vouch for the things you're saying. The competition is insane, and it puts the prospective applicants through a lot. On the topic of race - It's no unusual occurrence to hear some HYPSM reject at my school (pretty average/ordinary California high school) say "I was rejected because I was Asian/White/Indian/whatever." It really bothers me because these kids never had a shot at those top schools anyway. They were above-average at an ordinary high school. They really had nothing to differentiate them from any other applicant. It was the same "Smart kid with good grades and an SAT score above 2000 who was loosely involved in a club or two." The mentality is, if you get a 2000+ SAT score, then certainly you are some sort of genius who belongs at Harvard. You participated in two clubs?! Wow! You got A's in a few of your AP classes?! Look out Stanford! They think there is some formula to admission, where it's just a stats competition. If you have the right stats, then you're in. But their goal numbers are weak, and they detract from what really matters, and that is being amazing and following your passion (see here - http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/esse-quam-videri). And when they get rejected, their first reaction is to blame the black kid. It bothers me because there were other people of their race accepted, and they were accepted because they proved their worth to that college, just like the…

Yeah, but that doesn't mean the Admissions Department isn't lying through their teeth, knowingly or unknowingly. E.g. they were strongly emphasizing the tradition of hacking (http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/hacks_traditions/) at the same time the Campus Police changed their posture on it and started arresting students in situations they hadn't previously. And while it's ugly to point out, they had to fire the Dean of Admissions in 2007 for falsifying her resume; she started in the Admissions Office in 1979 (if early in the year, she very possibly looked at my application...) and became the Dean in 1997. They might also be trying to change MIT by attracting different students; as noted by sethg there was a strong push to change MIT from its traditional role of producing Sons of Martha who work for Sons of Mary, and it started a few years before he showed up (here is a fantastic rant by Hal Albeson on one of the early signs of that: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/hal/papers/coop.html). The Admissions Office even drastically changed its real admissions policy for a couple of years until the hard subjects (e.g. physics) faculty forced a correction of that. The admitted classes were overall having too much trouble with the core curriculum, but even if they were less capable on average they were still dedicated to the traditional MIT mission. Self-selection by applicants is so strong (MIT survived for a dozen year without a professional as the Director),…

In case anyone else is curious about the current status: > The Milk was declared missing on August 20th, 2022. > The dorm’s extended mailing list of over 300 current students, alumni, and other assorted Random-adjacent humans was contacted, twice. > In the end, no Milk. https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/guest-post-the-random-hall-milk-…

MIT dropped the SAT requirement only to bring it back a few years ago: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-r… Dropping standardized test requirements is disconcerting. Of all of the institutions that should be making decisions neutrally based on the evidence, it’s universities. The fact that even institutions like MIT changed their admissions policies according to ideas that aren’t backed by evidence.

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but MIT added test scores back recently and wrote a blog post explaining why: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-r… I think the "paradox" is that you'd expect disadvantaged students to perform worse on standardized testing.

...or the massive swath of 95% of students with degrees they already decline? [0] [0] https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats/

Would it have been too much effort for the author to just show the numbers in the main article instead of burying them on two separate pages? 2024-27 2028 American Indian/Alaskan Native 2% 1% Asian American 41% 47% Black/African American 13% 5% Hispanic/Latino 15% 11% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 1% 0% White/Caucasian 38% 37% https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile/ https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/composite-profile/

I had to look this up. I'm doing my master's in computer science at ETH Zurich, where it is ranked #5 globally according to THE [1], and I pay 804 CHF (874 USD) per semester, i.e. 1608 CHF (1,748 USD) per year. I just had to check MIT's tuition. > The median annual price paid by an undergraduate who received an MIT Scholarship was $12,715 in the 2022–2023 academic year. [2] You're basically right, MIT (ranked #3) is almost eight times more expensive than ETH (ranked #5). To be clear though, ETH Zurich is in Switzerland, which is not in the EU. --- [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2024/su… [2] https://mitadmissions.org/afford/cost-aid-basics/access-affordability/

I remember reading an MIT admissions article mentioning him: “A few years ago, we did not admit a student who had created a fully-functional nuclear reactor in his garage.” https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways/

> However that was not the popular narrative. I'd be interested to see if that was the reason given and how often "For nearly four years Yale’s undergraduate admissions process has been test-optional. The experience, originally necessitated by the pandemic..." https://admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible "I am writing to announce that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, our office will be suspending our usual SAT/ACT testing requirement for the coming application cycle." https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-suspending-our-sat-act-re… "When Dartmouth suspended its standardized testing requirement for undergraduate applicants in June 2020, it was a pragmatic pause taken by most colleges and universities in response to an unprecedented global pandemic." https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/apply/update-testing-policy

Here’s the MIT info if you’re curious. https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-r…

"Unlike many other schools, MIT does not send “likely letters” or do “signings,” nor do our coaches have discretionary “slots” which they may fill." https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/does-mit-recruit-athletes/

I’m not sure why this was submitted, but (@dang) perhaps the linked full write up on the matter would be a better link to share: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-dont-do-lega…

> MIT doesn’t consider legacy or alumni relations in our admissions process. If you’d like to read more about this policy, check out the blog Just to Be Clear: We Don’t Do Legacy. blog. Links to https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-dont-do-lega… which reads: > anatomy of a WTF in the WSJ WTF > Mollie blogged about it back in 2006. blogged. > Our institutional research website says, quite specifically, that “alumni relations” are “not considered.” Nope, it's a dead link. ----- MIT, the original source of authority, trying to dispel a harmful myth, can't even be bothered to publish a legitimate, maintained document to use as a reliable, authoritative source for admissions policies. All they offer is gossip from random employees. Why would they expect random journos to do what they themselves can't do?

Ok, we changed to that from https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/legacy/. Thanks!

I would like to see the impact of this policy. What percent of admissions have a legacy who attended MIT? MIT is likely the only organization that can do (or sponsor) this analysis while protecting privacy. It looks like their application form doesn’t ask for legacy info [1] so they’d have to track this in some systematic way during onboarding or something. [1] https://mitadmissions.org/apply/firstyear/biographical-information/

from the article referenced by the link: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-dont-do-lega… : "For those of you not familiar with the practice, “legacy admissions” means preferring the children of alumni in the admissions process. Why would schools do this? For the money, mostly, because if you make your alumni happy by admitting their kids, they might be more likely to give you money." I agree that colleges should state simply and clearly how they evaluate student applicants. But if they all did, students would probably need to start preparing in their sophomore year, if not sooner, to get the nice extra-curricular achievements to make their application stand out. I wasn't even thinking about what college I wanted to go to when I was a sophomore.

The idiomatic calculator interface is actually very hard to implement without bugs https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/designing-a-calculator-with-fsm-… FSM don't help with the bugs. You need analysis on top to actually make a dent in the bug count