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Originally Posted by wilsonmw04
Greetings,
I have so MANY questions. If you have time, here is my list:
1. Can you comment on how upper level school weight grades? I constantly get flack from my AP students when they say, "Mr Wilson, this 'B' is going to hurt my GPA. I will never get into the school I want with a 'B'." Will "B's" really keep kids out of school?
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Depends. We don't care about grades / GPA as much about demonstrated academic preparation to succeed at MIT. As a teacher, your obligation is to grade your students accurately, which we appreciate.
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2. Every fall my school hands out class ranks to the students. This is most depressing day of the year. Really good students get depressed when they see their rankings and consider themselves failures. How does MIT weigh class rank?
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We pay very little attention to class rank as such.
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3. I teach at a very competitive school. How does MIT compare students between schools with varying academic rigor?
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We spend a lot of time trying to understand the school, looking at all the applicants and teacher letters if and as necessary.
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4. What is a good recommendation letter? What do you look for in one?
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Specificity. I wrote a bit about this earlier, but not every admissions officer understands what FIRST is, so helping to describe their involvement helps. And generally, specificity w/r/t an applicant is better than generic positives; don't tell us a student is a "great leader," give us some examples of how they make everyone else around them better, etc.
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Originally Posted by sanddrag
What are the other 90% of the admitted doing that's better than FIRST, assuming there's a substantially larger number of FIRST students who apply than who are getting in?
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Well, I wouldn't necessarily assume that the numbers are skewed. I honestly don't know. But we wouldn't admit a class full of FIRSTers even if we could, just like we wouldn't admit a class full of mathematicians or chefs or skeeball players.
As we write here:
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match
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When we admit a class of students to MIT, it's as if we're choosing a 1,100-person team to climb a very interesting, fairly rugged mountain - together. We obviously want people who have the training, stamina and passion for the climb. At the same time, we want each to add something useful or intriguing to the team, from a wonderful temperament or sense of humor, to compelling personal experiences, to a wide range of individual gifts, talents, interests and achievements. We are emphatically not looking for a batch of identical perfect climbers; we are looking for a richly varied team of capable people who will support, surprise and inspire each other.
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