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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-- #3 (tied) National University (US News & World Report)

The story of MIT begins with a heartfelt belief that the American educational system of the 19th century was fundamentally broken. Instead of treating a scientific education and a practical education as fundamentally incompatible, its founders envisioned a new education to unify mens et manus, mind and hand, theory and practice, into a coherent program of study within a single institution. MIT has a rich history during the years of Civil War as it continued to grow– receiving permission to build a museum, a society of the arts, and a school of industrial science in the midst of the war.

Today, MIT is world renowned for its unique architecture of buildings which characterizes the MIT culture of experimentation, risk-taking and imaginative problem-solving.  In an institution that values mastery of technical skills, novel conceptual approaches, ingenious practical solutions, open-ended questions and multiple paths towards discovery in all disciplines, the arts thrive.

While MIT is a research university committed to world-class inquiry in math, science, and engineering, MIT has equally distinguished programs in architecture, humanities, management, and the social sciences. A diverse, supportive campus environment–with an incredible range of student groups, and athletic and fitness opportunities–ensures that it’s not all about the work. And in MIT’s intensely creative atmosphere, the arts flourish in all their forms. MIT admits some of the most talented students in the world on a need-blind basis.

Admissions Requirements

Application Fee$75
Application PlatformHas own online application platform. Apply through MyMIT--MIT’s online application found on their website, cannot use Common App or Coalition App.
Standardized TestsSAT or ACT with Essay (recommended). May be Superscored.
SAT Subject TestsRequired 2: For native english speakers:
Take 1) Math (Level 1 or level 2) and choice of 2) Biology, Chemistry or Physics.
AP and IB examsYou may self-report.
EssaysDoes not follow the essay prompts of Common App or Coalition App. Has a series of its own small essays to answer.
ActivitiesExplain Top 4 extracurricular activities
RecommendationsTwo teacher Recommendations- One from Math/Science and one from Humanities/English.
Plus School Counselor report
From Your High SchoolSchool Report, Transcript, Mid-Year Report, Final Report
InterviewStrongly recommended, may take 30 minutes to two hours long.
Optional- Portfolio SubmissionResearch, Music & Theater Arts, Visual Arts & Architecture , Makers
International StudentsTOEFL, IELTS or PTE Academic scores, and two SAT Subject Tests
Early ActionNovember 1, decision by mid-December
Regular ActionJanuary 1, decision by mid to late March

Academic Parameters

When applying to an institution, it is important to look at the academic information of previous applicants. This includes the SAT/ACT test scores, SAT Subject test scores (if available), and GPA ranges. By looking at these data points, you may assess where you fall and how likely your admission into the college is. Please note, there are students who do fall below the range and are admitted, but then their application has one or factors that boosts their application, such as a special talent, a recruitable athlete, legacy, racial or socio-economic minority. Use the chart below to see where you fall and if you may raise your test scores and GPA to keep your application in the running.

Testing/GPA Statistics

SAT Range (25th to 75th percentiles)Math-: 780 to 800
Evidenced-based Reading and Writing: 720 to 770
ACT Range (25th to 75th percentiles)Composite Score: 34 to 35
ACT Math: 34 to 36
ACT English: 35 to 36
GPA Range (unweighted)94.4% of students had GPA of 3.50+:
85% of students had GPA 3.75 or higher
9.4% of students had GPA 3.50 to 3.74

IvyBound Consulting featured Harvard University on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter from March 11-16, 2019

Day 1 • MIT

According to US News & World Report, MIT is tied for #3 in National Universities with Columbia (featured last week), the University of Chicago and Yale. Schools are ranked according to their performance across a set of widely accepted indicators of excellence. Please check their website to read up on these indicators. We are using US News for its popularity, but by no means should they be the only source in determining your “best fit” college. Your best fit colleges should be determined by your academic goals, your personality fit, and financial considerations.

MIT:
A Private University in the Public Interest. A total undergraduate enrollment of 4,547 (2018-19).

History:
Made in 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, which delayed classes until 1865. Initial school included a museum, a society of the arts, and a school of industrial science.

Setting:
Urban, midsize city, located in Cambridge, Massuchattes, minutes away from Boston.

Tuition & Fees:
$51,832 (2018-19), meets 100% of demonstrated interest. One of only five American universities that is full need blind for all applicants. MIT believes that money won’t get you in to MIT, and money shouldn’t keep you out. Goal is to admit and enroll the best students from around the world regardless of their financial circumstances, and make sure they can afford our education while they’re here.

Endowment:
$14.8+ billion (2017)

Housing:
Freshmen are required to live on campus, and about 70 percent of all undergraduates live on campus. Architect Steven Holl designed one dorm, commonly called “The Sponge.”  Has 18 residence halls.

Admit Rate:
Most competitive, admit rate in single digits

Diversity:
For Class of 2022: 51% male/49% female. Ethnicity Diversity: Domestic ethnicity: 37% Asian, 10% African American, 18% Hispanic, 3% Native American, 1% Native Hawaiian, 49% White/Caucasian, 1% No Response, 8% International students.

Religious Affiliation:
None

Other Awards by US News:
#3 in National Universities, #52 in Best Undergraduate Teaching, #3 in Best Value Schools

Day 1 Post:
The architecture of MIT’s buildings imbibe MIT’s culture of experimentation, risk-taking and imagination and innovation. Over the years, some of the world’s best-known architects have contributed buildings across the campus, ranging in styles including neoclassical, modernist, brutalist, and deconstructivist. In this post, enjoy the mesmerizing buildings of MIT. MIT has devised a numbering system for the buildings on its campus. Whenever you get a chance, a visit to MIT is a must!

Day 2 • MIT School Mission, Mascot, Sports

Motto:
MIT’s motto is “mind and hand,” signifying the fusion of academic knowledge with practical purpose.

Mission of MIT:
To advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.

Mascot:
Beaver. The beaver was chosen as the mascot of Technology because of its remarkable engineering and mechanical skill and its habits of industry. So, true of MIT’s culture.

Colors:
Cardinal, Black, and Steel Grey

Sports:
NCAA Division III. The Institute supports a broad intercollegiate athletic program offering 33 varsity sports, the largest NCAA Division III program in the nation. While the Engineers’ rowing programs compete at the Division I level, MIT’s primary league affiliation lies with the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) as a Division III member of the NCAA. Although crew is the only classified Division I program, water polo, sailing, rifle, track and field, squash, cross country, fencing, and men’s volleyball all compete against Division I opponents.
MIT features one of the nation’s most expansive club programs, with approximately 900 participants and 33 teams, a quarter of which are martial arts clubs. All club teams are led and organized by MIT students and are governed by the student-led Club Sports Council. The Institute places all of its club programs into two categories: instructional and competitive. Instructional clubs offer formal training under the supervision of professional instructors, while competitive clubs compete in regional and national-level tournaments, with many ranking in the nation’s top 10. The most successful clubs at MIT include sport taekwondo, triathlon, wrestling, ultimate frisbee, rugby, and cycling.

Arts:
The arts are a fundamental component of MIT’s core curriculum and research community, reflecting and enhancing the Institute’s creativity, innovation, and excellence while advancing the self-discovery, problem solving, and collaborative skills needed by leaders meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
Over 50 percent of all MIT undergraduates enroll in arts courses each year—with nearly half of students participating in music and theater classes or performance groups—and many major or minor in arts-related subjects. MIT’s arts faculty includes eminent artists such as Pulitzer Prize recipients composer John Harbison and writer Junot Díaz, as well as composer and musician Evan Ziporyn, composer Tod Machover, director Jay Scheib, architect Antón García-Abril, designer Neri Oxman, and visual artist Renée Green.
The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), established in 2012, facilitates and creates opportunities for exchange and collaboration for artists with engineers and scientists.

Day 3 • Academics at MIT, Top Undergraduate Majors, Student Life

Academics:
MIT offers degree programs in a range of subjects, though its mission statement emphasizes science and technology disciplines and research, and is divided into five schools: The School of Engineering (most enrollment), School of Architecture and Planning, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, School of Sciences and Sloan School of Management. University research expenditures have exceeded $700 million a year, with funding from government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense. The Independent Activities Program, a four-week term in January, offers special courses, lectures, competitions and projects. It utilizes a 4-1-4-based academic calendar. That’s a quarter session of classes, one month studies in January and then a quarter session of classes.

Academic Calendar:
Quarter system, plus Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January

Top Undergraduate Majors:
Computer Science; Mechanical Engineering; Mathematics; Electrical Engineering; and Physics, also strong programs in Architecture, Economics, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences,and Social Sciences.

Highly-ranked Graduate programs:
MIT’s highly ranked graduate schools include the School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management.

Selected Honors students received (Class of 2021):

  • Nobel laureates 89
  • The National Medal of Science winners 58
  • The National Medal of Technology and Innovation winners 29
  • MacArthur Fellows48
  • A. M. Turing Award winners15

Student Life:
The MIT community is incredibly diverse, and organically collaborative, with students coming from many different backgrounds, across the country and around the world. Students are frequently encouraged to unite MIT’s engineering excellence with public service. For example, the required senior capstone design course for mechanical engineering majors centers on making the world a better place through engineering. Recent years have focused on projects using alternative forms of energy, and machines that could be used for sustainable agriculture. Beyond academic coursework, MIT’s D-Lab, Poverty Action Lab, and Public Service Center all support students and professors in the research and implementation of culturally sensitive and environmentally responsible technologies and programs that alleviate poverty and improve the quality of life in low-income areas locally, nationally, and worldwide. MIT’s preeminence in entrepreneurship is rooted in its founding. As one of the first land-grant colleges, the Institute was designed to deliver a practical education rather than to focus on the classical education that was provided by many private universities of that era. This emphasis on practice is infused into the entrepreneurship curriculum and programming, which emphasizes learning by doing. Several MIT departments, labs, and centers foster entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT including the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, and the MIT Innovation Initiative to name a few. MIT also has over 40 student clubs and initiatives involved in entrepreneurship or innovation, among them the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, MIT Clean Energy Prize, and conferences such as Hacking Arts and Hacking Medicine.The MIT community brings its energy and creativity outside the classroom as well with 500+ student-run groups, 33 varsity sports, and more than 60 music, theater, visual arts, writing, and dance groups.

Leadership: Leadership is paramount at MIT.
The Student Activities Office is committed to providing opportunities for students and student organizations to practice their leadership skills in a variety of ways in order to gain the skills and feedback necessary to sharpen and define their abilities.

Day 4 • Notable Alumni

Some distinguished alumni include Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Jonah Perreti founder of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post also attended MIT Media Labs for his graduate studies. Jonah became wildly famous his email exchange with Nike about his request to print “sweatshop” on custom-order shoes went viral. Jonah is known for his creativity and innovation.

Day 5 • Applying to MIT? Be Collegebound with IvyBound

Looking at first-time, Freshman Applicants:
Admission Rate:
7.1%, including early applicants, (admitted Fall 0f 2017)

Total Applicants:
20,247

Admitted:
1,452

Enrolled:
1,097

Yield Rate:
76%, This is the number of students actually attended or matriculated once admitted.
***Admissions Trick: Colleges want their number of applicants to be high, admit rates to be low and yield rate to be high.

Early Option:
Early Action (November 1 is deadline)

Regular Deadline:
January 1

Admission Requirements:
See Table on pages 2-3

Admissions into this prestigious University, MIT, is extremely competitive as the acceptance rate is decreasing each year. With the increase of sheer number of applicants, how do you stand out and get admitted? If MIT is one of the colleges on your list, use this invaluable worksheet to plan and prepare to apply to MIT.

 

IvyBound Consulting offers personalized college admissions services to help you create winning college applications that surely gets you admitted. Choose from one-on-one counseling services, college admissions online course- Applications That Get You Admitted!, private facebook group membership, and essay review and editing services.

Next week, I will cover, US News Week’s #3 (tied) Nationally Ranked University, the University of Chicago. Stay Tuned.

Be Collegebound with IvyBound!

* Sources used are the MIT website, common data set, college factual, rediff.com, US World News, and websites through google.

Hey guys, welcome to the episodes Be Collegebound with IvyBound! I’m your host, Ruchi S. Kothari. I’m super excited that you’ve joined me.

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