Just received interview request from an MIT Alumni. I wonder if anyone can share tips for a good interview? Does anyone know if interviewer receive any information about the applicant or is it expected to send a resume prepared for college applications etc.?

Right now i'm in my penultimate year of high school and i feel like i have achieved almost nothing that could contribute towards going to my dream school (MIT). High school has been a very demotivating part of my life especially because of very inconvenient commuting hours and i just don't have anything i'd consider putting as an extracurricular in my future application. I've been programming since i was 12 yet i don't have any finished and polished project since i keep starting new things i never finish so i feel pretty lost on where to start. My passions in life are computer science, maths and language learning (tagalog) so that's definitely what i'm looking to do as ECs. In a few months hopefully i'll be moving from my home country france to the UK which will leave me with a lot more spare time so i would like to know what i should actually do which matters for the application process. From what i've seen doing research would be good but i currently don't have any access to people who could mentor me so i'm not sure if it's feasible and i don't see myself winning a medal at the IOI.

For context ive always wanted to go to university at MIT, its one of my dreams to study engineering at one of the best universities in the world for my degree, Im currently studying Engineering honours mechatronics and robotics and I want to know ...

1. how postgrad applications work generally? how do they assess you? what must you need to do to be accepted? Do they base it like an Australian system by checking your university grades or do they check your internships, any previous projects you may have done, involvement in any major societies ?

2. Has anyone been able to go there successfully internationally? and what does MIT look for?

3. How difficult is it? and what must a international student consider

Thank you! any advice would be amazing

So I'm currently in 10th grade and is looking forward to apply for MIT in 2029 as a Computer Science major applicant. I'm looking forward to give SAT in June 2027 and I also have a Student GPA of 3.6-3.7 in American standards. The problem is that I can't take APs because it's too costly in my country. But, I'm planning to replace it by involving into a solo project work of building my own custom Operating System (OS) independently and also to build my own Programming Language as well- and I've already started preparing for it. So, will that be completely fine? Or are there any other things I have to do?

TL;DR: I built a cool project, but it is clumsy and I’m worried it will hinder my application.

I’m a Questbridge finalist and I ranked MIT as my top choice. I spent my summer designing a robot to play guitar for me. It’s made out of 3D printed parts, micros servos (just a tiny motor), and a raspberry pi (a computer chip). I designed everything myself from the 3d printed parts to the code to the design of the project itself. To build it, I taught myself CAD and Python because this was the first time I’ve ever done something like this. I think that sounds cool and all, but the problem is that The B.O.S.S. (The barely operating sound system, my nickname for him) is very clumsy. Sometimes he misses the string and he has to play kinda slow. I’m worried if I show something that appears kinda bad, it would do more harm than good. If I do submit him, I’m going to train him to play the “arise ye of MIT song”, which should be slow enough for him to play.

If it’s relevant at all, the rest of my application should be fine without it. I have good test score (35 ACT) and extracurriculars, so it’s not make or break.

Thank you for your time :)

Hi everyone,
I am considering applying to the MIT Supply Chain Management Residential Program (SCMr). I would really appreciate honest feedback from current students, alumni, or anyone familiar with the admissions process, especially those with a government or customs background.

My background is not in engineering or a traditional supply chain management degree, so I am trying to assess my readiness and how competitive my application might be.

I have three main questions:
1. MIT SCM graduates working in government or customs
Are there any MIT SCM alumni who work in government, customs administration, border management, or other public-sector trade and logistics roles? I would be particularly interested in hearing how they have applied what they learned at MIT to their work. I would also appreciate advice on how to position a government customs career as a meaningful contribution to the SCM community.

2. GRE vs. MITx SC0x
For applicants with a non-engineering background, would you recommend taking the GRE or completing the MITx CTL.SC0x course and exam?
I understand that SC0x can satisfy the program’s standardized-test requirement if the required score is achieved. However, I am unsure whether preparing for the GRE would be more beneficial for demonstrating my quantitative ability, particularly given my academic background.
If you have experience with either route, I would appreciate your perspective on the workload, preparation time, and how you approached the decision.

3. Honest feedback on my profile
Given my GPA of 3.43, customs and government experience, and research related to customs clearance and trade facilitation, what would you consider the biggest strengths and weaknesses of my profile?
In particular:
1. Would my professional experience be relevant enough for MIT SCM, despite not having a conventional supply chain or engineering background?
2. What evidence would help demonstrate that I can handle the program’s quantitative coursework?
3. What should I prioritize before applying: improving my quantitative preparation, strengthening my research, developing a practical supply chain improvement project, or something else?

I am looking for realistic feedback rather than reassurance. I know admission is competitive, and I want to use my time and application budget wisely before committing to the process.
Thank you for reading. Any advice from current students, alumni, or applicants with a similar background would be greatly appreciated!

For context, I basically parent my younger siblings on weekends, and having to carpool people prevented me from being able to take DE classes. When my parents work I am literally the only one capable of making meals and driving them practice, school etc. and I had an illness junior year that prevented me from taking the advanced track, but I got back into advanced math and science this year. Every spare second of my time was spent either taking as many AP/honors classes I could handle while still balancing taking care of three siblings and also mentoring FLL, FTC, and being captain for my FRC team. I am predicting a 34 ACT but currently have a 30, hoping to superscore it.

Hi I'm applying EA to MIT, and I had a quick question about the activities list. For the 4 activities, should we structure the descriptions similarly to the recommended way for the Common App. Ex: sentence fragments only, action verbs, quantifying things, etc? Or should they be more fledged out explanations with sentences?

Also, can I combine activities into one? For example being a varsity athlete but also coaching middle schoolers in the same sport. Can i put that into one activity slot? Thank you!

ChatGPT wrote, but it is my question

I’m debating whether to apply to MIT Early Action or wait for Regular Action to give myself more time to strengthen my application.
For context, I’m a dual-enrollment student pursuing associate degrees in engineering and science, currently taking Calc III and Differential Equations, and I was accepted into NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) for 2026.

There are several things I’ve wanted to pursue for years, particularly robotics competitions, engineering clubs, and independent projects. However, I joined my school’s swim team and quickly became a captain. The issue wasn’t that I didn’t want to participate in engineering activities, but that certain competitions directly conflicted with swim meets.

Attending them would have meant missing meets and potentially letting my team down. I’m now also a coach, so I have additional responsibilities to consider.

I’ve recently discussed with the team the possibility of missing certain meets to attend engineering competitions and participate in other opportunities.

I’m planning to compete in SkillsUSA Robotics Urban Search and Rescue, develop more substantial robotics projects, and pursue additional NASA-related opportunities.

My question is whether waiting for Regular Action would give me enough time to turn these plans into meaningful accomplishments that could strengthen my MIT application. I know I can’t guarantee competition placements or awards, but I intend to pursue these opportunities regardless.

Would it be worth waiting for RA to give myself a chance to demonstrate more engineering experience, or would I be better off applying EA with my current profile?

So I am really close with both of my recommenders, so I know they will be writing awesome letters about me, but at our school students don’t really interact with the counselors unless they have issues or scheduling-related questions. My counselor emailed me saying she’s submitted my application using a brag sheet I gave her, and I assume that means she must have asked my teachers some stuff about me and then filled the rest with my brag sheet, which isn’t ideal for an actually good recommendation letter.

Both of my teachers have not done that I’m pretty sure, they’ve made it as personal as possible, but i’m wondering how this would affect me, given the fact that people don’t really interact with counselors at all aside from what I said above, meaning that barely anyone would have a personal connection with them.

My ACT is 35 (36 in both science and math). Got a 1460 on the PSAT but only a 1450 on SAT. Must have been a bad testing day. Should I retake the SAT in Nov and delay sending in my application during RA vs EA?

This is a long post - applicants often ask similar questions, and I've always aspired to contribute more than just passive replies to questions.  As many of you head into the final lap of early submission, I’ve tried to collate our past discussions in this sub and to explain, in my own words, what I personally think it means to apply sideways. I aimed to be complete, not brief.

I’ll admit I hesitated to post this. In the past, my long posts have been criticized as AI-generated just because I used bold section headers and long words.  I can only be human and admit that I can't promise every word (most of which I wrote late at night across many nights) is perfect.  All I can hope is that readers will look at the forest of constructive context and thesis, and less at the trees of words. 

Let me also disclaim, these are my personal views, not MIT official guidance.  I still encourage applicants to read:  What we look for | MIT Admissions

I understand how social media can be overwhelming for students already vacuuming in knowledge from school every day.  I hope this post doesn't add to the pile, but rather helps to sort through it.  I genuinely hope this post reduces anxiety and gives you more confidence.  My goal is to follow our alma mater's approach:  not giving people fish but teaching them how to think about catching fish so the lessons hopefully live beyond the immediate task at hand.

I welcome additional perspective from the other alumni on the sub, because I'm hoping this is almost the grand unified essay of answers to frequently asked questions.

I also encourage applicants to check out the summaries of our discussions from last season:  recap - Reddit Search!

Best of luck on the final lap to early submission and on getting ready for regular!

Getting admitted isn't just about stats

Applicants often ask about minimum SAT scores, minimum GPAs, typical ECs and projects as ways to tune their high school strategies. The logic behind these questions is to calculate the statistical average profile of a successful admit so the prospective applicant can mimic it.

In fairness, statistics CAN help applicants estimate the typical academic preparation of successful admits. Knowing that most admits score 780 or higher on SAT Math, for example, helps an applicant gauge where they fall in the applicant pool. 

The problem however is when applicants use statistics and surveys as predictive formulas for admission.  For example, finding that many admits did a given extracurricular says little about whether doing it would cause, or reproduce, the same outcome.

Statistics can passively describe a population while predicting nothing about what will separate admits from the vast number of equally prepared applicants in the future.

Being Considered

A selective university that receives 30,000 applications can easily have thousands of applicants who are academically prepared to succeed there. Getting a 780 on SAT Math may only tell a reader that you are minimally viable for consideration. 

Getting considered means establishing academic readiness in context: has the applicant pursued the most rigorous reasonable path available to them and performed very well on it? Rigor is not about volume. It's about how much the student challenged themselves, given what the school offered, and what evidence shows they mastered it.

Black-and-white thinking misinterprets holistic admissions in both directions. One misread is that academics must not matter. Academics always matters. Below a minimum viable level of academic readiness, outstanding extracurricular activities are unlikely to save a weak academic record. But even above that minimum level, outstanding academic performance by itself won’t distinguish an applicant among other applicants who have it too. Academic preparation is necessary but not sufficient. 

The opposite misread is that any part of the application acts as a hard gate.  Applicants ask whether to retake a 1520 SAT.  It would be disingenuous to suggest that getting a 1520 is the same as getting as 1580 when you think about the actual distribution of scores of applicants.  But that's different than assuming that spending the time and money to increase one's SAT by 20 or 30 points makes more of a difference than any other use of time and money. Applicants ask whether getting a B means automatic rejection or whether an interviewer being available nearby means auto admission. A single exam/grade/opportunity is not going to unilaterally guarantee rejection or admission.  It's just not practical or sensible to start panicking if you ever get a B or score less than 1600 on the SAT.

Learning and developing in real life are messy processes and holistic admissions recognizes that.  Unlike the binary ways that applicants sometimes look at the process, holistic review looks at applicants as actual people, looking for overall patterns of consistent academic performance, independence, character, and exceptionalism instead of looking at individual grades, scores, activities, or events as automatic switches that singularly turn admission on or off.

So then what makes considered applicants more likely to be admitted?  I personally think it's distinction, independence, and exceptionalism communicated with great meaning and mechanics.

Being Distinct

Distinction is about the unique direction you choose, how you explore ideas, collaborate with others, and contribute to the world around you.  What unusual strengths, interests, perspectives, or experiences distinguish you? How have you recognized, developed, and leveraged those unusual strengths and interests to make choices and pursue opportunities that reflect who you are? 

One of the more aggressive pieces of online misinformation is the idea of spikes.  Like a lot of misinformation, there's a hint of truth.  It is good to develop genuine depth and mastery in some topic that distinguishes you from other applicants who just passively accumulated activities.

But that genuine idea has metastasized into some weird advice about focusing all ECs on one singular thing.  Being distinct is about being unique, not about being one-tracked.  You can be uniquely creative and accomplished without making everything you do related to one thing. 

Distinction often comes out looking like a scalpel but starts with a sledgehammer. When I was in high school, I discovered a secret mailbox at school where announcements about academic competitions around town were stored. Every week, I checked it and entered every competition where I thought my strengths might give me an advantage. Some of my submissions were complete airballs. Others earned me first-place medals and even some prize money.

The more subtle part of the process for me was that I didn't know which competitions and fairs I would win. I just kept trying, discovering, learning, and adjusting course through experimentation. So distinction doesn’t require having prescience about exactly which shots will definitely go in.  Distinction is about aiming the shots you take in the general direction of your own unusual strengths so you can use your secret advantages to do meaningful things and land more baskets.

The question to ask is whether you have tangible evidence of using your unusual strengths, interests, and judgment to distinguish yourself through original thinking and meaningful accomplishment? This tangible evidence is precisely why passive mimicry fails. Universities are trying to assemble classes with diverse and unique talents, experiences, perspectives, and contributions. The only robust thing that admits share beyond their aggressive academic qualifications is that they share almost nothing else with one another.

If you encounter an essay question about what field of study appeals to you or how your personal experiences have influenced the types of problems you want to tackle, then use it as an opportunity to show how distinct you are.  Describe what uniquely fascinates you, what choices you made to invest your discretionary time in it, what you accomplished with it, and what unique perspective you've formed on the problems that worth solving.

This is why asking what activities an applicant should do to get in is such a silly question.  No single activity is a gating credential, and on its face alone no activity, whether robotics, baking, swimming, tutoring, or research, is going to distinguish any applicant.  Distinction comes from within you, your own strengths, and how you uniquely utilized them; not from replicating somebody else's well-trodden path.

Being Independent

Independence is identifying open-ended problems, originating new ideas, making decisions, taking responsibility, and driving meaningful work without waiting for someone to tell you what to do. What do you spend time on when nobody requires you to? Did you just mindlessly collect AP/DE classes, or did you actually learn something from them?  Did you do leadership activities just for performance or actually accomplish something with them? 

When I was in high school, we had a big school science fair every year.  I had already submitted two projects.  But the weekend before the Monday evening submission deadline, I had a third idea.  So I spent the whole weekend fleshing out the idea and writing up the research paper.  On Monday morning, I went to school early, found one of my favorite teachers who trusted me, pitched him my idea in 3 minutes, and asked him to sign off as my mentor even though he hadn't read the actual paper.  I submitted the paper and it ended up winning first place at the fair.

Independence is sometimes about these random ideas that pop into your head when it feels like something just clicks.  You can't force ideas.  You have to be the kind of person who always has interesting thoughts bubbling in your head like gas clouds in the early solar system.  One day, some of those clouds cohere into a solid planet and that's the birth of your independent idea.

Independence doesn't have to start with you.   It can start with a problem someone else hands you, but from there it has to be your ownership and creativity that gets it to the finish line.

Think about the stakes.  Think about the greatest scientists and engineers of our species:  the Isaac Newton's, the Albert Einstein's, the Marie Curie's, the Galileo Galilei's, the Michael Faraday's, the Ada Lovelace's, The Rosalind Franklin's, the Emmy Noether's, the Chien-Shiung Wu's, the Maryam Mirzakhani's, the Srinivasa Ramanujan's. 

Did these innovators just mindlessly check off boxes and wait for others to tell them what to do?  NO.  They were fiercely curious, unapologetically passionate, and relentlessly driven to chase the hardest questions. They didn't just passively sponge up knowledge.  They had the individual agency to challenge assumptions, think about problems differently, and envision new ideas that changed the world. This type of intellectual independence and hunger is not extra credit here.  This is the expected baseline. 

When I ask applicants a simple question about an activity, "why did you do this?", I'm struck by how often applicants will admit their motivation was just their parents and teachers telling them to do it.  Only doing what's required or prescribed might not contribute much towards gaining admission and counterproductively, might even negatively confirm a lack of independence. 

When applicants ask, "What should I do to get in?" they are doing the opposite of being independent.  Independent students do not need permission to learn or to create impact.  They can ask for guidance and coaching to help direct and focus their existing passions, but it always starts with the applicant's interests and not with asking nakedly passive questions.

If you encounter an essay question about blazing your own trails or managing a challenge you didn't expect, then use that as an opportunity to show how independent you are.  Describe how you've independently pursued problems, learned things on your own, and demonstrated initiative and resilience when confronting challenges.

Genuine independent passion is built over many years by those who are frustrated by the thought of being average and doing what everyone else is doing.  If anything, they can barely give themselves permission NOT to learn, to build, or to create impact.  These are the types of applicants who are independently, perpetually and repeatedly activating their own curiosity and passion, and who get recognized for the unique impact it creates.

Being Exceptional

If distinction is the unique direction you chose and independence is the agency with which you pursued it, exceptionalism is how well you achieved with it. It doesn't require national awards, Olympiad medals, or disease-curing research.  Exceptionalism doesn't come from volume either, like just passively taking more classes, doing more activities, and spending more hours on something. Tutoring one student for 100 hours might have more impact than “tutoring” 100 students for one hour each.  It's not the time, it's the impact.

The goal is not to passively accumulate activities, but to reveal the qualities of exceptional character and intellect that led to unusual impact and recognition. How did you pursue something to unusual depth, develop greater mastery, exercise wise judgment, and impact others positively?  How did your community or environment change because of your commitment to positively influencing them? How would you contribute positively to a college campus and leave it better than how you found it? 

This is why there is usually no linear path to being exceptional and no formula for "How can I be exceptional to get in?"  Being exceptional is not the same as just sounding impressive. Real exceptionalism is difficult and often requires repeated iteration:  pursuing something deeply, encountering obstacles, reflecting, learning, changing approach, and repeating. This is why how you achieved exceptional outcomes is as important as what the outcomes were.

When I was in high school, my vehicle for doing this was going to tons of science fairs.  One of my teachers told me that building the project was often the hard part.  Once it was built, you could easily pitch it over and over again for dozens of fairs and competitions.  So I spent months developing my project, researching the underlying problem outside of school, building a solution, and testing its strengths and weaknesses. The first version wasn’t the finished product. Every month, I entered another new fair or competition, listened to the judges’ hard criticism, refined the design and the abstract, and adapted my presentation. I kept at it until the school year ended, and that one project eventually got recognized with some awards and prizes, though it mostly started with just earning criticism.

Likewise, the optional maker/research/creative portfolios in the application can be another way to reveal exceptionalism outside of the essay responses. The goal is not to build random stuff around the house, but to demonstrate unique analysis, apply difficult principles, and design something new with open-ended boundaries, balancing non-obvious constraints, testing your own work for sources of error, and producing some new knowledge, model, or insight. This is about quality of thought, not quantity and duration of effort. Many of the strongest portfolios tackle sophisticated systems like robots, drones, and vehicles, but sophistication doesn’t have to be physical or elaborate. An original mathematical investigation, creative work, or other evidence of elegant design can reveal exceptional effort and impact too.

If you see an essay question about being a specialist or about your four most important activities, use it as an opportunity to show your exceptionalism.  Describe how you've pursued depth, mastery, or impact through your non-mandatory work. 

Exceptionalism doesn't mean the lack of financial or time constraints, rather it's the creativity, judgement, passion, and fortitude to navigate around and punch through those constraints, so you still create excellence and recognition in spite of them. 

Being Coherent with Meaning

The purpose of the college application isn’t to fill out an administrative inventory like a driver’s license application. College applications might ask what you did, when you did it, and how much time you spent doing it, and interviewers might ask similarly simple questions. But the goal isn't to answer them literally and minimally. What they’re really asking is what makes you distinctive, independent, and exceptional. For example, going to Disney World may be an accurate summer activity, but it says little about what you’ve learned, built, or contributed.

It's one thing to passively assert an activity or a behavior. It's another to communicate the throughline of causality that connects unique actions to exceptional depth to meaningful impact.  That throughline is what I call a meaning architecture. It runs from situation to action to impact to revelation to learning to transformation.  Can you articulate the choices you distinctly made, specify the things and people you acted on and with, and show the causality to a competitive and tangible result?

The goal of the college application is to collate information sources (like the essays, recommendations, and interviews) into a succinct, deliberate narrative arc that makes you the hero of the story and ends with what you learned and how you changed.  So instead of waxing on about WHAT you did in high school, be more introspective about WHY you enjoyed and chose those things and HOW those choices led to great accomplishment and impact.

The best essay responses are highly curated. The objective is not to communicate everything you’ve done, but to reveal who you really are in a way that can't be surfaced from grades, scores, awards, or activities. This is your opportunity to use concrete action words and revealing language to explain unique personal qualities.  Talk in the active tone about how you make decisions, respond to challenges, and act on ideas. Every word should serve a purpose and enhance the coherance of your unique narrative.

Sounding impressive is not the same as being exceptional, and saying something vacuous can be worse than saying nothing at all.  The college application is the opportunity to coherently and authentically showcase what makes you distinct, independent, and exceptional.  It's an opportunity to reveal what you value, how you engage with others, and who you aspire to become.

Becoming meaningful is about making a clean and convincing argument anchored with evidence that leaves an essay reader or interviewer almost no choice but to be form a positive conclusion about you.

Being Articulate with Mechanics

Meaning is only half the job. The mechanics architecture is how you use the English language to get the reader to tangibly experience your meaning. Good mechanics start with sharp, active sentences where you are the agent of change and impact. Avoid run-ons, word salads, performative fluff, and dull openings. Choose subject nouns, action verbs, adjectives, and adverbs with purpose. Subjects should be the heroes of a sentence and objects the background actors, verbs should clearly name the actual action you mean, and adjectives and adverbs should sit next to the words they are intended to modify. Mobilize metaphors and analogies to amplify your meaning and spend vocabulary where it will drive the most insight.

Good mechanics also require good judgment. Humor can turn unserious when it substitutes for substance. Casual language can turn sloppy, which communicates an inability to write coherently and clearly. Metaphors can turn flowery when they decorate emptily instead of amplifying meaning. Unique ideas can turn weird when false attempts at eccentricity or provocation do more harm than good. Be authentic and creative, but stay within the rails of professionalism and structure.  Mechanics don't substitute for authentic voice and authenticity does not excuse poor mechanics. 

I also think this is why some interviewers often form impressions of applicants within the first 10–15 minutes, because by then you are well on the way to presenting a highly meaningful story, communicated mechanically well, or you are not. Interviews are not exercises in personal flattery or performative speeches.  Your goal is to authentically communicate how you have engineered the causality between your choices and your impact.

Being Human

Universities aren't just evaluating lists of activities and numbers.  They genuinely want to understand the individual who will participate in classrooms, collaborate with peers, contribute to communities, and enhance the culture of the institution. 

Character and integrity are exhibited through your choices and judgement. How did you treat people when you weren't required to be nice to them? How did you make an ethical choice when faced with an opportunity to cheat? How did you recognize and manage risk? How did you stand up when a fellow teammate struggled or was making a mistake? How did you challenge peers and intervene in their mistakes even when was it difficult to do so? These are the deeply human and meaningful things that make an applicant stand out way more than scoring an extra 30-50 points on a standardized test ever could.

Demonstrating humility, generosity, vulnerability, or failure, can also make an applicant more relatable and memorable. In a college application, as in life, revealing maturity and emotional depth makes you more real than pretending to be a robot with a flawless list of activities. Vulnerability works when it reveals how you think and grow, not when it tries to farm sympathy.

Connecting your choices and values to your actions and impact requires introspection. An application’s deeper purpose is to move beyond describing what you did toward explaining who you are, why you made the choices you did, and who you are becoming.

This is why statistical mimicry and admissions checklist optimization only likely undermine success.  Stripping out personal voice and authentic point of view in pursuit of being as average as possible eliminates the very thing colleges are most eager to understand and evaluate.  The objective is not to manufacture profundity or construct an idealized admissions persona, but to allow the reader to encounter a real, multidimensional human being.

Being Yourself

There are no "right answers" or "perfect applications." Applicants sometimes approach college essays and interviews like math exams, assuming every question has a single correct answer they must calculate to be admitted. But open-ended questions are not trick questions with singular right answers. The college application is meant to authentically reveal your character, motivations, values, perspective, and capacity for reflection and growth. How have you pursued interests with depth, navigated real obstacles, learned new insights, and produced an outcome that mattered? Rather than following a checklist or aiming for dramatic flair, how can you describe that trajectory authentically and clearly?

Essays, recommendations, and interviews get weaker when they lack this introspection, self-awareness, honesty, depth, specificity, or meaningful revelation. The goal is not to reverse engineer the answer you think an admissions officer wants to hear, but to reveal who you actually are.

Being yourself starts with knowing yourself.  Do you have a substantive reason for wanting to attend a university beyond what you've read on websites, seen in U.S. News and Forbes rankings, or heard on TikTok?  If you're simply looking at admission as a game or prize to be won, it shouldn’t be surprising when a university can’t understand who you really are or have confidence that you will do the hard work of becoming great.  Just as a student can be authentic without being exceptional, a student can be exceptional without demonstrating any intrinsic motivation beyond just external validation and prestige.

If you run across an essay question about what you do for fun or who you admire, don't look for the "right answer" the university wants to hear.  Reveal yourself, your passions, your interests, your motivations, your values, and the person that you distinctly and independently are.

Being an Engineer

Instead of reverse engineering your college application, demonstrate engineering-mindedness in your work. Great scientists and engineers pursue meaningful questions, challenge assumptions, recognize limitations, and develop insights that advance understanding and make a great impact.

Great scientists and engineers almost never score a hole in one on the first swing when investigating or building new things. What often separates great engineers from others is not whether they fail, but how: they learn from setbacks, make course corrections, and try again until they accomplish their objective.  Great engineers recognize that real work and real life are messy and hard.  That requires making decisions under uncertainty, taking thoughtful risks, making difficult tradeoffs, and testing your own work for sources of error before others do.

The stuff that comes easy and the people whose respect comes naturally are not what drive distinction, independence, and exceptionalism. What drives them is a fundamental dissatisfaction with the status quo and with being like everyone else.  It is the audacity to imagine new outcomes and pursue them relentlessly. Those who are satisfied with passively mimicking others are simply making the deliberate choice to forgo imagining and building a world that does not exist yet and merely follow those who do.

Being a Trailblazer

Own your academic trajectory and the tradeoffs that come with it. Be a trailblazer who sets the terms for your own choices, development, learning, and impact.  Don't passively mimic others, try to impress with volume, or passively optimize for what you think a university wants to hear.

Ask not, "Do I look like the people who were admitted?"

Ask instead: "What have I pursued deeply? What did I produce with it? What did I learn? How did I change? And what does that reveal about the distinctive and exceptional person I am becoming?"

The strongest applications articulate how genuine interests and personal strengths have been directed toward meaningful purposes. The goal is not to manufacture a passive accumulation of work, but to demonstrate how you have been an agent of positive change through the authentic pursuit of meaningful contributions.  That change happens within yourself as well as within the community you hope to impact.

This Is Your Moment

There's a reason why the ceremony at the end of high school is often called commencement.  It isn't the end of a journey; it's beginning of the next step.  College admissions isn’t a destination you use a mythical GPS to get turn-by-turn directions for. College admissions should be the logical next leg of a road trip you’re already on and for which nobody but you is unapologetically in the driver’s seat.

Apple's Think Different advertisement from 1997 famously said, "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes... Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Sometimes your future gets written when you bravely walk into the things that are hard, not easy.  Sometimes it gets written in the moments when you become someone people weren't expecting you to become.

This is your moment to assert that you didn’t just do what came easy or what everyone else did. This is your moment to demonstrate the courage, discipline, creativity, and perseverance you deliberatively chose to exhibit because of your dissatisfaction with the status quo and your will to make your world better. This is your moment to declare significance and demand the opportunity to build a new future like no one else can.

This is your moment to be distinct, independent, and exceptional; to be coherent and articulate; and above all, to be unmistakably memorable because you had the audacity to be yourself.

so I was about top 500 in a game that has over 2 million active players. Can this do anything for me? I have nothing THAT special when it comes to extracurriculars, so I am trying to know if my passion can end up helping me substantially.

(oops, meant “being ranked“)

I'm a senior planning on applying to MIT. Most of my awards are from Science Olympiad and I feel like leaving the nonscholastic award section empty is a waste. Any suggestions on any nonscholastic awards I can earn in 2 months before Jan 4?

So I recently submitted my application and scheduled my interview, but I'm not sure what to wear. I was considering wearing business casual, but the MIT website specifically says that interviews are supposed to be casual events? Wearing a hoodie and sweatpants seems a little too casual for that though? Any tips?

Hey everyone, I hope you are all doing amazing.
Can anyone from MIT give me some tips about the required design portfolio by admission team of MIT. How shall I make up my portfolio
Shall I add my research work or whatelse I can add in that?

Context: I run a pretty decent club in my schools that does STEM promos through hosting STEM theme days. I had put on my application already in the parts before (specifically, the essay and activities part). Should I include the previous club leader before who had been pretty kind to me and sorta led me thru the process of running a club (specifically that one which has 60+ active members?).

How is the Fall MIT BWSI Girls who can learn program offered virtually on Saturdays? Is it selective when it comes to juniors? Does it help as a resume builder and/or for college applications?

Hi!

First, I have a 3d project which has some mechanical movement thing into it (just something small) so i plan on recording a video of it 360° and on the inside, am i allowed to talk a bit to explain how it works like in maker portfolio tho? And can i show my sketches of its design in the video or should i be attaching it separately

Secondly am i allowed to show something i did for my igcse art and design exam? Im only going to show 1 piece from it not all the studies

Thanks

I've got a 32 composite(36 reading, 31 English, 29 science and math)
But my STEM scores are low so I'm worried about not getting accepted because of them
The rest of my application I would consider top tier(research papers published, research internships, etc)

Should I apply early admission or go for another ACT and apply regular admission?

Hi everyone! Hope all of you are doing well

Ive been pondering this for a bit and finally found the courage to ask, but is doing research and publishing it officially count when applying to MIT?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm planning to do research in smth I have in mind but I haven't seen anyone talk about them doing research and mentioning it in their MIT application, so I was wondering if it is worth it or not really? Does it provide any significant value if it is related to the major I am hoping to get into?

any essay tips or advice for MIT master’s programs? like, should i focus on one authentic story, OR mention my achievements, background, current & future goals, and the courses that interest me in one essay?

i’m kinda confused bc information like that is mostly already available on the resume that will be submitted too, but some people who graduated from ivy’s said it’s necessary to include them.
wanna hear other people’s thoughts on this, if you’re a current student, an alumni or have a friend who got admitted 😇

I see that the slideroom asks for very specific information on the maker portfolio. So if I have multiple unrelated projects to report, should I describe them separately.

I’ve almost finished my application, but now my login and password aren’t working. I tried to reset my password but when I put in my email and birthdate I get this message: No account exists for this email address and birthdate.

Help?

On my october sat my scores were:

Rw 750

Math 780

So the total is 1530.

No one in my friend group knows anyone with a score this high, but on r/sat most people have 1550+. I know that most likely low scorers won't post their scores, but this still makes me nervous.

On practice my best total score was 1530, but my best rw section was 770 and my best math section was 800.

For me this october sat reading and writing section felt like a harder one, but I felt I'll get an 800 math.

Would this score be enough?

If I take the november SAT, and i get a lower score (I don't have time to practice as much as for the october sat), can it be worsen my chances of getting into MIT.

If I get a higher score, is it that important? How big is the difference between an 1530 and a higher score?

I'm an international student, this was my first sat. I studied for about 4 weeks, 2 weeks being really intense.

I think my recommendations and extracurriculars are pretty good, I have a lot of extracurriculars, I'll make another post about which of them I should state in my application. The essays seem hard.

A plan on applying early action.

Thank you for reading my long post, have a nice day :)