"My student is a legacy at MIT so that will help them get in," is something we hear often from parents of the students we work with… and we always hate to tell them this, but no, actually it won't. The issue with this belief is that MIT admissions office doesn't look at legacy status.
You might be asking yourself, wait what?! Many schools give legacy candidates a boost when it comes to admissions, but MIT doesn't. Sometimes parents ask us something along the lines of, "Well, they say they don't look at it, but we should still make it clear on their application right? *wink.*" It's been a big enough issue that MIT even published a blog saying:
"we simply don't care if your parents (or aunt, or grandfather, or third cousin) went to MIT. In fact, one of the things most likely to elicit a gigantic facepalm is when a student namedrops some incredibly attenuated connection because they think it is going to help them get into MIT."
If this doesn't convince you that legacy status won't help your applicant, we don't know what will.
We understand that we might have just given you some distressing news. Learning that something you thought would help your student doesn't can be stressful. Especially if MIT is their dream school. So today we wanted to break down how to get into MIT, legacy or not, and what your student has to do to be a great candidate at MIT.
Get Great Grades
MIT uses a holistic review model of admissions. This means that they look at the overall package from a student. That package needs to start with great grades. If you google "MIT average accepted GPA" you will see a lot of unverified 3rd party blogs that claim it is 4.17. Take this with a grain of salt, because the university hasn't published these numbers themselves. However, this sounds about right and is a good place to gauge yourself. To get into MIT, you should aim for a 4.0 GPA unweighted or as close to that as possible.
Score big
MIT is no longer test-optional. This was pretty big news when they announced it since many schools are still test optional due to the pandemic (well the pandemic and it raised their application numbers…). But no matter what you feel about it emotionally, the truth is applicants need to submit either ACT or SAT scores to MIT and they should be good scores. For a school that requires testing, they do not release any of their accepted scores data (which if we are being honest is obnoxious). But think perfect or near perfect. We have looked at a lot of data from schools with similar acceptance rates to MIT. The middle 50% of accepted students at schools with similar acceptance rates usually are in the 1500s for the SAT and between 34-36 for the ACT. Your student should be pushing themselves for these types of high scores.
Craft a great resume and more
With around a 3.9% acceptance rate, not everyone with great grades and scores gets in. There are just not enough places. Your student has to shine in other ways as well. Their application should feel like a complete package. This takes some strategy. However, most importantly (outside of grades and scores of course) your student's resume and essays need to shine. We go through how to think about your extracurricular activities for MIT here.
If you are nervous about this, working with a college counselor can help. If students start with a counselor like us early, we can help them build an eye-catching resume and even if we start later we can help package what they already have. And either way, we help them write amazing essays and package everything so they have the best chance of getting in.
Getting into MIT is hard and unfortunately, your student's legacy status can't help them. But with some strategy, a lot of work, and maybe some help, your student can optimize their application for the best chance of getting in.
Need help? We can do that! Reach out here!