MIT is one of the preeminent engineering, science, math, and technology universities in the world. Officially called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are about 4,500 undergraduate students, and the acceptance rate for the Class of 2027 was 4.8%. For the Class of 2028, it dropped to 4.5%. The Early Action acceptance rate was only a little bit higher at 5.3%, and the acceptance rate for international students was terrifyingly low at only 2%.
MIT does not use the Common App. Instead it brings their application process in-house. So, you need to push everything you know about the Common Application to the side and focus on what MIT requires. Namely, focus.
MIT does require applicants to submit either the SAT or the ACT, and they are very clear in what they look for in an application and how they review applications. This is what they look for:
Grades and scores
“Alignment with MIT’s mission”
Collaboration and cooperation
Willingness to take risks
Creativity and curiosity
You’re more than your educational profile
It also helps to know how they’ll read your application. At MIT, this is the process:
Every application is only guaranteed one read, which will be by a senior admissions officer. They look at every piece of your application, including the context for where you are from and what opportunities you’ve had access to. If they are impressed, your application proceeds to another ‘layer’ of review that results in a handful of summaries written up by admissions officers. These summaries, on top of the actual application, go to the selection committee, where another group of admissions staff members consider what’s now been compiled. Overall, if your application gets through every hurdle at least a dozen will see it…or, if it doesn’t, just one.
So, how do you get past that first review? This post is all about pushing your application through the review process to the final decision — and receiving a yes. Let’s get into it.
Getting into MIT requires hard work, strategy, and exceptional writing. We help with that last bit. Contact us to learn more.
The MIT application has a series of short answer questions, and they look for answers between 100 and 200 words. That isn’t a lot of space, but it’s enough to tell a story. That means you can’t just write these on a whim. You need to really take the time to brainstorm, draft, edit, and then edit some more.
This is your opportunity to give the application readers a deeper look into your life than a list of courses or activities can show. To achieve this, each short answer should have a unique theme and central story without overlap. Even if you really love your robotics club, you can’t write about robotics club in each essay. It doesn’t get more impressive with repetition — it just gets repetitive.
With that said, let’s get into the essays!
What field of study appeals to you the most right now? (Note: Applicants select from a drop-down list.) Tell us more about why this field of study at MIT appeals to you.
We know that lots of students change their minds once they get to college, but for the purposes of this application you are super certain of what you’ll study at MIT. Pick a major, and focus on that for this essay. First, frame your interest in this area through a story that spotlights an experience you’ve had with the field that is especially meaningful to you. This could be a moment in the classroom, in a lab, in the field, doing research, or through a club. It doesn’t have to be something big. In fact, it should actually be something really small such that you can encapsulate the moment in detail without using up more than half of the space allowed.
Once you’ve set up your interest in the subject for the reader, and hooked them with that moment you are focusing on, you need to show the application readers why you want to study this subject at MIT in particular. This should include a mention of a professor you’d like to study under, a research opportunity you’d like to take advantage of, and a student group you’d like to join. Yes, all three.
Close this supplement by circling back to the opening story or, alternatively, placing yourself within the action at MIT.
We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it.
This is an amazing supplement, and we love helping students write a response to it. Surprisingly, most of the topics students suggest at first, though, don’t actually fit the bill. They’re stuck in the mindset of being ‘impressive’, rather than speaking to passion and joy. We get it. MIT is hard to get into, and impressing them as an applicant is important. But that’s actually the wrong goal for this supplement.
A huge part of the college application process is ‘head stuff’. It’s grades and scores and other quantifiable things. But getting into college requires bringing ‘heart stuff’ into the equation. We need the application reader to get out of their head, the place where they have a billion reasons to say no, and into their heart, where they’ll be looking for a reason to yes.
So, speak to what truly brings you joy. Show them your heart to get into theirs. Do this by writing a short story about a specific thing you love. This could be taking care of houseplants or walking your family dog or Mandala coloring pages or literally anything else as long as it isn’t a formal activity, isn’t directly related to your potential course of study, and is authentic to you.
While some reach their goals following well-trodden paths, others blaze their own trails achieving the unexpected. In what ways have you done something different than what was expected in your educational journey?
This is a really interesting prompt because it could be read as demanding a ‘big’ story. If you have a big, bold tale to tell here, great! But we also know that most students don’t have something that immediately jumps to mind as the big way they have gone off the beaten path.
If you are one of those people who isn’t sure what to put here, it’s worth having a conversation with a parent or friend about the choices you’ve made during your high school journey. They may be able to remind you of something you don’t think of right away. It could be advocating for yourself with your school to be allowed into a certain class they didn’t immediately give you access to, for example. Stories that show you standing up for yourself and your potential as a student are ideal for this supplement — but only focus on one. As with every supplement in the MIT application, focus is your friend. Tell fewer stories in more detail to keep the application readers fully engaged.
MIT brings people with diverse backgrounds together to collaborate, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to lending a helping hand. Describe one way you have collaborated with others to learn from them, with them, or contribute to your community together.
This is an awesome prompt. You can write about collaboration on a team or in a club, a partnership with a friend, or a long-term volunteering experience that engaged with others in ways beyond the ‘giver’ v. ‘receiver’ relationship. Tell them a small story about a bigger commitment, and try using a structure or format you haven’t used yet in your application. For example, we love incorporating dialog into your response to this prompt to deeply engage the reader!
How did you manage a situation or challenge that you didn’t expect? What did you learn from it?
This isn’t a bad prompt, but it can start to feel a little repetitive with the two questions above. We advise pulling back from academics first this one, and looking close to home. It may be an experience in your close family, or at a job. Most importantly, though, you need to have been an active player in the situation or challenge, not simply a bystander. Tell that story, and help the reader feel the complexity of the situation you were faced with and the creativity you had to bring to it to thrive through it.
The Open-Ended Box
This isn’t the actual name of the section, but we’re calling it this because it’s descriptive. After the short essays, there is an additional information box that allows you to input whatever you feel they really need to know. You have to put something here, but you also need to be really careful about what goes here.
First, let’s note what shouldn’t go here. If you have taken part in research that you want to share, that will go in the research supplement. Same goes for a creative portfolio. So, none of that stuff should go in. Remember — no redundancy.
You also have the activities section to feature four activities in, so nothing that will be in the activities section should go here either.
What should go here? It could be a family responsibility that is a significant commitment for you, a job that limits your ability to take part in school activities, or an experience you had at MIT during a visit that left a strong impact on you.
Getting into MIT requires a plan, but they don’t want to feel like you’ve been prepping for this application for years. Students who try to be the perfect MIT candidate is rarely successful. What works, though, is being you. You should also read these fun (we promise) blog posts by MIT admissions officers about the MIT admissions process.
We help exceptional students get into outstanding colleges, like MIT. Email us to learn more.