ody>What To Do In High School When we admit a class of students to MIT, it's as if we're choosing a
1,000-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.
Preparing yourself for MIT, then, means doing two things:
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making sure you're ready to do the work, and
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taking the time to really explore things that interest you, both inside and outside of school.
Academics
A strong academic foundation in high school both improves your odds of
getting into MIT and will help you make the most of the Institute when
you're here. We recommend that your high school years include the
following:
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One year of high school physics
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One year of high school chemistry
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One year of high school biology
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Math, through calculus
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Two years of a foreign language
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Four years of English
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Two years of history and/or social sciences
Overall, you should try to take the most stimulating courses available
to you. If your high school doesn't offer courses that challenge you,
you may want to explore other options, such as local college extension
or summer programs.
MIT OpenCourseWare Highlights for High School
is also a resource which highlights MIT courses selected specifically
to help you prepare for AP exams, learn more about the skills and
concepts you learned in school, and get a glimpse of what you'll soon
study in college.
Extracurricular Activities
Some students feel so much pressure to get into the "right" college that
they want to make sure they do everything "right" - even do the "right"
extracurricular activities. Fortunately, the only right answer is to do
what's right for you - not what you think is right for us.
Choose your activities because they really delight, intrigue and
challenge you, not because you think they'll look impressive on your
application. Go out of your way to find projects, activities and
experiences that stimulate your creativity and leadership, that connect
you with peers and adults who bring out your best, that please you so
much you don't mind the work involved. Some students find room for many
activities; others prefer to concentrate on just a few. Either way, the
test for any extracurricular should be whether it makes you happy -
whether it feels right for you.
By the same token, some applicants struggle to turn themselves into
clones of the "ideal" MIT student - you know, the one who gets triple
800s on the SAT. Fortunately, cloning is still for sheep. What we really
want to see on your application is you being you - pursuing the things
you love, growing, changing, taking risks, learning from your mistakes,
all in your own distinctive way. College is not a costume party; you're
not supposed to come dressed as someone else. Instead, college is an
intense, irreplaceable four-year opportunity to become more yourself
than you've ever been. What you need to show us is that you're ready to
try. Advanced Classes & Credit
MIT does not require applicants to take advanced courses beyond what is commonly available in high school.
However, many of our students, either through their schools or on their own, have
taken advanced coursework through programs like the AP, IB, PSEO, EPGY,
and many more alphabet soups of advanced academic programs. And many of
these students are interested to know how MIT will consider these
courses during the admissions process and, if admitted, whether they are
likely to be awarded credit upon enrollment.
We love to see that students have challenged themselves in high school,
and have taken advantage of their opportunities (as admissions officers
have written about here and here).
If you are using your resources in high school, you're going to learn a
lot, and we're going to think that when you come to MIT you will learn
even more. So it's always a good thing to push yourself academically in
high school, for your sake and ours.
That said, MIT does not commonly award credit for advanced coursework,
generally because we prefer to make sure that all of our students start
with equal footing. Though most advanced coursework programs are
"standardized" in theory, in reality they often differ substantially
between regions, schools, teachers, and even individual classes.
We have provided a list of our credit policies for common advanced placement courses.
However, it is important to note that there is always a way around these policies: through the Advanced Standing Exams,
or ASEs. If you are confident that you have been adequately prepared
for introductory coursework at MIT, then you can always take an ASE to
test out of it. It's essentially like sitting the final before the class
begins. If you do well you get to keep your grade on the ASE as your
grade in the class; if you do poorly you can simply take the class and
the bad grade disappears.
No one will ever hold your education back at MIT, and you will never exhaust our curriculum of hard, interesting classes.
Our Students
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4,232 undergraduate students
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45% women and 55% men
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23% underrepresented minority students - there is no majority ethnicity at MIT
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Students from all 50 states and 115 countries
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67% attended public secondary schools, and 14% are among the first generation in their family to attend college
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