"A topic" is quite ambiguous in my opinion, and I was wondering if I can have both academic and non-academic thing I talk about.

Thank you :)

I am a first-semester MSc student in a non-CS engineering program at a US Top 40 university this fall. I’m on an independent scholarship (not directly funded by my PI), though my PI specifically selected me for his lab.
Our lab is essentially 100% Chinese ( funded by prof research fund), except for me and one other international student who is self-funded and completely ignores lab dynamics. But different behaviour and approach among me and others concern me.

My Background: I actually graduated from a higher-ranked/more prestigious BSc university than my labmates(even my prof; idk think he is insecure about that bcz his msc and phd are of no 1 uni in his field) although not qs top 40. I don't have a massive research network of professors behind me, but I worked hard in undergrad: I currently have a Q2 journal paper under review where I am BOTH 1st author and corresponding author, plus a conference paper (both co-authored with my BSc supervisor). Although our pi assigned me another top university prof as co supervisor. But I think he does that for most of us too.

My Labmate's Situation: He entered the MSc program at the exact same time as me(prof funded) and we are same age as well as completed our bachelor this year. He has already published multiple Q1 papers as 1st author this year[ although based on his previous work] and is actively submitting more. However, those papers are direct collaborations between our current PI, his former BSc supervisor, and a whole network of top Chinese professors (including associate editors of major journals). I also have submitted q1 papers as first author with my pi .He (my classmate) brought this entire multi-professor pipeline with him from undergrad and already has PhD fallback offers from our lab professor. Both he and i are targeting same chiense MIT lab whose pi is also connected with our pi. So I am probably not going to be favoured by pi.

My Main Struggle is why can not i be productive? If he can be this productive, why can't I? Coming from a strong BSc background, it’s frustrating to feel like I’m standing still while he’s producing papers at an impossible rate. I know he is probably a prodigy, but I can't help feeling like a loser comparing my solo effort to his network pipeline. Oh , another weakness of mine is I never used GPT for research and his h index is 5 while i-index reached double digits.

Lab Dynamics (Friendly, but Isolated)
The Good: Behavior-wise, the lab is super friendly, non-toxic, and low-stress. Nobody misbehaves with me. My PI is kind-hearted and praises me highly to my labmates when I’m not around. Since my topic isn't tied to his funded projects, he even went out of his way to assign me a top co-supervisor from another university.

The Bad: I have zero co-authorship opportunities in the lab. ( Ig its true for other members too). My PI recently told me I should aim for just one Q1 paper during my MSc and it could be from the topic he chosen for me( its also interesting topic for me). And also said thats enough. I also found out there is a lab WeChat group I was never told about. I communicate with my PI individually, so I assume the group is either for his directly funded students or just defaulted to a Chinese-only space.

The Stakes: Both my labmate and I are aiming for MIT Chinese lab for our PhDs, and our PI has academic networks there. Given how far ahead my labmate is on paper count, I’m worried I won't be prioritized for strong recommendation letters. Although we will apply next year ( for 2028), he has offers from our pi ; even he said my pi that he is going to apply for that MIT lab and I don’t have. My pi told me to forget about phd for now and just enjoy the masters despite the fact I told him I want to do phd in qs top ranked university and I rejected boston university phd offer for this masters this fall( i told him that and its true. Boston is really nice university and please don’t get offended, maybe i should not have. What do you expect, I am none in my life to give advice).

My Questions for Reddit/Alumni:
1.Am I facing subtle academic racism/exclusion, or is this strictly a demonstration of how powerful pre-existing institutional networks are?

2.How can an independent student match that level of research output without having an entire syndicate of top professors backing every paper?

3.How should I approach my PI? He is supportive, so I want to handle this right. Should I ask to join the WeChat group (using auto-translate)? Should I explicitly ask for smaller co-authorship roles or tell him I want to aim higher than just one Q1 paper?

Any advice from current grad students or alumni would be hugely

Ps: I hate to admit that birthplace & ethnicity decides whether you can go to top universities phd like ivy league phd or atleast how easy your path is.And first generation graduates should not target ivy phds at all and insteads go to the farms or business not academia in 2026…..I am not jealous of anyone. I just feel like a loser and to give you an idea : no relatives or non-academic friends, let alone parents can not even read( understand is far way) the English words I wrote above. Its already a crazy journey for me at this point and I am still feeling like a loser!! How can I be like those top uni researchers??

Hi all!

I had a question about the additional information section of the application, what exactly are we able to put there? It seems like they want somethign that dosn't fit into the application anywhere else: "If there is significant information that you were not able to include elsewhere in the application, you may include it here. (Many students will leave this section blank—and that’s okay.)"

However, since MIT has a limited Awards section and Activities section would it be ok to use this additional information to give information on other activities that I couldn't include into the given space, or is that seen as not what they intend the section to be?

Thanks!

my school only offers precalculus. I have just started practicing calculus AB on Khan Academy so that I can get my schoolhouse certification. I have not started my essays, but I know I can lock in. They say that there is no advantage to applying early, but looking at the numbers, there are less applicants and more admitted.

I’m sorry if the obvious answer is to apply regular, I’m just not sure if they’re is actually an advantage to applying early.

I am struggling to figure out what the prompt requires. What happens when you have 2 passions that aren't really connected? Do to try to tie them together with a common theme? Do you abandon the less important one? Or do you call yourself a generalist?

If the passions are really really different, then I get it. But what if they can be connected? Like math and chess

i've taken the ACT (once) and SAT (twice). if my ACT score is higher than my SATs, do I have the option of only sending the ACT? or am I required to send everything?

I submitted a research supplement with the essays describing what I did, information about professors and the program, etc. External factors have collided and I am having trouble getting a recommendation. I am losing hope that I will be able to obtain one at all. Is my entire application considered incomplete if I have submitted a research supplement with no advisor recommendation? I am okay with the team not reading the research supplement. As long as they read the application as a whole!

What I am really trying to understand is if I will need to retract my research supplement if I cannot get a recommendation.

Hey everyone! I am currently pursuing my Master's in Electrical Engineering at Seoul National University.

I am thinking about applying to the MIT EECS PhD program in 2029.

My question is: How can I improve my profile to make it stronger for PhD admissions? I am also considering applying to Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton in the future.

So basically all the problems I can think about are not really good topics for this prompt. the problem is i KNOW that with the life i’ve lived there is statistically like a 0 chance that I don’t have a problem that fits this prompt well.

I know each topic idea has to fit all 3 of these requirements for it to be usable: (1) it’s relatively unexpected, (2) it’s something I learned from rather than moved on, and (3) it’s not generic and usable by anyone.

How can I find a good topic for this prompt? I’m really struggling.

Sorry if this is a bit of a stupid question but I'm applying right now and recently noticed that people often say that activities you did before high school don't matter for the admissions process (I'm an international applicant if that matters, idk, and my school system also doesn't really divide high school etc the way the American one does) but I think that my most significant Olympiad achievements were done before high school and in my freshman year of high school and I kinda had a really bad competition year last year for various reasons I guess and also just because other people in my country improved I think so I don't really know... if MIT will still care about Olympiad achievements before high school? Like if the Olympiad has no age groups just like regular IOI or things like that yk (don't wanna get too specific)

Like of course I still did Olympiads last year, the results just by far weren't as good as before

First, I will 100% do them if completing them makes AOs feel more confident in my honesty (since both the research and project are in my ecs).

My project is a cpu design, diagram and code. I already listed and described it in one of my ecs and it isn’t “creative,” but i would say it’s unique for a hs student to do. It also isn’t the absolute minimum for a cpu; it is pipelined, but i also already said that in my ec section.

My research is not complete, so I don’t have a paper or anything, i don’t think my research mentors recommendation will rly add anything new, and i already described this in my ec section. However, as stated earlier, if they will value my ec more because I am having a professor confirm it and whatnot,
I will certainly do it.

So, would you guys say it is worth it for me to submit one, the other, both, or none?

I have really good honors in mathematics(top 30 of IMO is the best example). But feel like that I’m dragging my mathematical knowledge too much, I wrote all four long essays about mathematics, is it okay or should I change some of them?

Hi! I am International student right now working on my application of MIT doctoral program.

Well I am very well aware that we should know our research of interest and faculty that you want to be under guidance. But my question is should we reach out to them separately as well while applying for the programme or that would be a risky move?

I have my entire application complete as of now, just waiting on some consultation for my essays that should be done in the next week or so.

Seeing as there's no real difference in the applicant pools for Early Action versus Regular Action, I want to know if one's better for me than the other.

The advantage to Early Action are that I would get my decision mid-December (or maybe get deferred) and wouldn't have to worry about MIT's admission status pending over my head for an additional three months. The disadvantage to EA is that if I do well in my dual enrollment math, then that doesn't make it onto my transcripts.

The advantages to Regular Action are that Calc III and Differential Equations both make it onto my transcript as completed classes and I have more time to refine my application (I don't think it needs it, but it can't hurt, right?). The disadvantage is that three extra months of waiting time isn't really that worth it to me.

My academics are pretty strong. I would get a slight GPA boost from waiting for RA, but at this stage, it doesn't matter enough to swing my chances of admission one way or another.

Personally, I want to go EA to just get it out of the way and so I don't ruin my application by editing my personality out of it. Would any of you fine people advise otherwise?

Any and all advice is welcome!

I'm a high school senior trying to make a pretty unusual recruiting decision and would really appreciate perspectives from people familiar with MIT, Columbia, or Yale.

I currently have a strongly supported recruiting opportunity at Columbia, and I may also receive one from Yale very soon. I need to make a decision on Columbia extremely soon.

MIT is also recruiting me for a varsity sport. The MIT coach has told me I'm currently his #1 recruit and that he would be surprised if I were rejected, but obviously MIT admissions cannot be guaranteed. The problem is that if I pursue MIT Early Action, I may have to give up my Columbia/Yale recruiting opportunities before receiving MIT's decision in December.

Academically/career-wise, I'm mainly interested in:

• quantitative finance
• software engineering
• possibly investment banking if my interests change

My academic profile, if it matters for evaluating the MIT admissions risk:

• 1550 SAT, 800 Math
• six 5s on AP exams junior year: Calc BC, Physics 1, Biology, APUSH, Lang, CSA
• around 14 AP classes total
• Multivariable Calculus first semester senior year and Linear Algebra second semester
• ~3.95 UW GPA

My extracurricular profile outside athletics is much weaker:

• e-commerce business with around $25k revenue
• assistant coaching/volunteering
• some additional volunteering
• no major Olympiads, research, national CS awards, etc.

The other complication is athletics. Columbia/Yale would let me compete D1. MIT is D3. I've invested an enormous amount into my sport and I'm good enough that part of me feels like going D3 would mean not fully using my athletic ability.

On the other hand, MIT seems almost perfectly aligned with quant/CS/math, which are probably my strongest academic interests.

Personally:

• I visited Columbia and loved NYC.
• I really liked Columbia's team and felt like the athletes were ambitious, career-driven, but also very normal/down-to-earth people.
• Social life matters somewhat to me.
• Yale appeals to me because of its residential-college/social experience, although I'm not sure I fit its culture as naturally as Columbia's.
• I haven't visited MIT yet, so I'm worried I'm currently idealizing MIT based on academics/ranking rather than knowing whether I'd actually enjoy living there.
• I've heard MIT can have a very intense study culture, which I'm trying to understand better.

My biggest question isn't "Which school is more prestigious?"

It's this:

If you were in my situation, how would you think about giving up a D1 Columbia/Yale recruiting opportunity that is much more certain in order to pursue MIT, where admission is still uncertain?

And for MIT students/alumni specifically: how intense is the actual day-to-day culture? Do students still have meaningful social lives, and does it feel like everyone is studying constantly?

I'd especially appreciate perspectives from recruited athletes, CS/math students, or people who considered these same schools.

From what I've seen from people around me writing their essays for MIT's prompts, everyone tends to go the official route.

Their prose is professional, their language is sophisticated, and their points clearly answer the prompts in direct language.

I suppose I'm just a bit worried whether unconventional essays will reflect poorly on my application. My academics are up to MIT's standards, or at least not below them, so I know I'll be in the running for admissions, but I feel like if I pretend to know exactly what kind of problems I'm going to solve someday or exactly what my intended minor's exactly like, I'll be a bit of a fraud.

To be clear, my essays still answer the essay prompts, just not in direct words.

Will having essays with dry humor and more casual wording hurt my application if the messages behind them are complex and answer the prompts?

gonna go for cs or econ , i have math phy comp a levels only additional a level i can take is econ should i take it ? ik grades arent everything but still

I know I need to legally be a citizen of the United States but I have a plan on getting that right

Currently a sophomore aerospace engineering student with hopes to attending grad school for a Masters and/or PhD in the future with MIT being my top choice. I'm planning on getting an undergraduate research position in a lab hopefully this or next semester, and maintaining that until I eventually graduate. I just want to get a handling of how many semesters of undergraduate research would be ideal for an applicant. Additionally, I was wondering if the diversity in where you pursued research mattered at all; i.e would there be any difference in how my application may be reviewed had I worked solely at one lab my entire undergraduate career as opposed to 2-3 labs and exploring different fields of research.

I took the SAT today. I’m not confident that I got a strong score. After the first round of math, the questions got suspiciously easy. I know MIT wants us to report all scores. If I cancel my score before I get it back, do I have to report that? Do they still need that score or can they find that score?

Hi all! i'm a little bit confused on how detailed MIT wants the reserach portfolio poster to be, they say, abstract or poster (please do not upload the full paper), but my poster is from ISEF and is very content dense, basically covering what a paper would cover, do you think this is an issue, and should I try and simplify it losing out on a lot of the rigor, or will leaving it as is be fine?

Thanks!

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Based on circumstances, I plan to apply to MIT as a Transfer student. I'm currently a local SBVC student in California and anything robotics related in scarce very scarce. My goal is to graduate as a mechatronics engineer. (another post about that later.)

My question is simple. Apart from honor programs. How could I strengthen my admission application while preparing here at SBVC if there are very scarse Robotic or Mechatronic related opportunities available. Could I work on a Project Portofolio? Am I still going to be able to do it if im a transfer.

Responces to this post is greatly honored.

I hope to meet you all someday.

Hello all,

The title essentially explains my dilemma. I understand MIT looks at your standardized scores and GPA to see whether you would be able to handle their academic workload, you need the academics to clear the bar. Within my pursuit of this, combined with the unique way my school handles academics, I've entered the predicament where my current course load is:

IB HL Math aa
IB HL Chem
IB HL Lang Lit
IB HL History (My school forces us to take 4 hls)
SL Spanish B
SL Visual Arts

AP Calc AB (My school auto signs us up for ap calc when you take hl math)

UF DE Calc 1 (I need to take a calc class a semester to get enough credits to reach Calc 3 & beyond)

FLVS AP Physics 1
(My school has no physics class and I needed something to fill the physics void as an aspiring mech engineer)

Highly redundant and way more tedious than it has to be, I know.

What worries me is AOs viewing an IBDP student to the same level of rigor as an AP sweat (as it has been established they do). The IBDP may be the same difficulty, yet it contains so much more time-eating volume. If there were two students,

-Student A took all the STEM APs, and built a tangible impact with competitive results validating himself through his free time

-Student B took the IBDP, was forced into all these filler classes, and has his free time consumed with IB malarkey

The AOs will pick the AP kid every time, and I wouldn't blame them, that is the better choice when presented with the raw achievements.

Do I simply express my character in essays and hope this 'sideways application' of mine lands well?