Admissions Chances of Getting into MIT as an International Student from India

[gwnorth]

@StatGuy2000 nope still not 50/50. There are additional criteria to take into consideration - letters of recommendation, personal essays, and interviews. The likelihood of 2 applicants, even with identical stats and comparable ec's, scoring identically on those additional factors is unlikely. Even so admissions officers provide just a preliminary screen. Their recommendations still have to go through to the admissions committee where each candidate under consideration is reviewed and debated by the committee as a whole. It is highly unlikely that at the committee level they could not come to a decision to accept one applicant over the other based on quantifiable or subjective criteria such that they needed to resort to a coin toss. If it really came down to that I suspect they would just accept or reject both of them.

 

[gmax137]

@gwnorth do you have knowledge of how the admissions process actually works or is this conjecture?

If it really came down to that I suspect they would just accept or reject both of them.

This is exactly what I guessed, but I don't really know how the process works. It makes sense, too, because (I imagine) the admissions people have a target number for class enrollment, but they don't know exactly what proportion of admissions will enroll. So there is an acceptable "slop" in how many acceptance letters they send out.

 

[gwnorth]

@gmax137 I can't claim to be an inside expert but from what I've heard from those who are in the know this is how the process works at Harvard at least. Other elite schools will have their own process which may be different.

With regard to how many offers are made, yes they make more offers than available spots because even at elite institutions not everyone who receives an offer will decide to matriculate there for a variety of reasons (including cost).

 

[Dr. Courtney]

@StatGuy2000 nope still not 50/50. There are additional criteria to take into consideration - letters of recommendation, personal essays, and interviews. The likelihood of 2 applicants, even with identical stats and comparable ec's, scoring identically on those additional factors is unlikely. Even so admissions officers provide just a preliminary screen. Their recommendations still have to go through to the admissions committee where each candidate under consideration is reviewed and debated by the committee as a whole. It is highly unlikely that at the committee level they could not come to a decision to accept one applicant over the other based on quantifiable or subjective criteria such that they needed to resort to a coin toss. If it really came down to that I suspect they would just accept or reject both of them.

From the applicant's point of view when making application decisions, I can't see how the difference between "apparently random" due to unknown criteria and "truly random" really matters.

Due to the opportunity costs in applying for lots of different schools, I tend to advise students I mentor to focus their application efforts on the 4-5 schools for which they have a good chance of admission, 50-70%. And I do my best to use all the available information to accurately estimate their admission chances for each school on their short list.

I don't think "truly random" is a factor when I estimate admission chances of a given student to a given school. The lack of clarity is due to "apparently random" due to unknown criteria in the human decision making processes on the other end (and occasionally the unknown factors in a students' recommendation letters.)

 

[Vanadium 50]

I can't see how the difference between "apparently random" due to unknown criteria and "truly random" really matters.

If it's apparently random, the number of less qualified applicants doesn't matter. If it's truly random - like a lottery - it does.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

If it's apparently random, the number of less qualified applicants doesn't matter. If it's truly random - like a lottery - it does.

That's a good point if the applicant knows the number of less qualified applicants. But if an applicant knows the number of less qualified applicants (not usually knowable) together with the total number of applicants (easy to find typical numbers) and the number of admitted applicants (also easy to find typical numbers), then there would be far less speculation regarding whether the applicant will be admitted.

So your observation is not really helpful in deciding which schools a student might apply for with a reasonable chance of admission. Not only do applicants not know the number of less qualified applicants, they also don't know how things like diversity, legacy, and athletics are factored in. It's a crap shoot. Some advisers may be able better at predicting a given student's odds of admission at a given school, but without inside information, the eventual outcome can't be predicted with certainty any more than the odds of rain a week from now or the measurement outcome of a quantum system. With all the inside info, many an applicant's fate at many schools may be somewhat deterministic. But the more committees are involved, there is not even a consistent definition of "more qualified" and "less qualified."

Without a rigorous, objective definition of "less qualified" one can't really predict outcomes in a deterministic manner even with all the inside information. Probabilistic predictions is the best that can be done. Now the pool of students in the "lottery" is probably limited to those on the "bubble" in the decision making process. But having seen how different committees decide "bubble" cases differently, the lottery randomness is apparent on the bubble, though not every student necessarily has the same number of tickets.

 

[Krushnaraj Pandya]

Just putting out my 2 cents here. @Vanadium 50 I think you're misinterpreting OP's intentions in some of these posts with no fault of your own.

You mentioned that being coached for a single exam is easier than developing yourself to be a good fit for a school like MIT. This may appear so-but having been through the process of preparing for IIT's myself and knowing friends who have gone to pursue their undergrads at MIT and Harvard who have prepared for IIT's as well I can say that it is a much greater ordeal than someone outside of India realizes.
It's 8-10 hours of studying a day for three years straight (includes weekends) for the average student to be able to enter IIT Bombay in a preferred field and even with this amount of preparation-I know someone (who is now at Harvard studying engineering) who did not get into his preferred branch at IIT-B. It is ridiculous and counter-intuitive that this happens since their world rankings are far apart but it does happen and this is the bleak reality of competition in a vastly overpopulated third world country.

A vast majority of people in India don't think about the US or MIT even if they're more talented than some of their western counterparts because if they focus on that and lose out on precious days of preparation for the IIT- while their chances of being admitted to those top schools in the US are a gamble in the first place; then they're essentially left with nowhere to go. The other institutes in India are a sad joke, and the other institutes in the US aren't affordable for most of us even with scholarships unless it's MIT/Harvard/need-blind.

This is the reason that people who've been through this immense pressure often manage to shine after leaving their home country. But apart from all those discussions (which aren't very helpful or practical), OP should note that the current google CEO is someone who despite his hard work wasn't able to get into what would be considered a reputed branch in an IIT, the current Microsoft CEO wasn't even able to get into an IIT in the first place. The options aren't limited to IIT or MIT, like @StatGuy2000 and others have tried to say-just do your best, consider Canadian universities (these may still be too expensive) but one university in Canada (Memorial University of Newfoundland) actually has an amazing engineering program with the lowest tuition in Canada with lots of scholarships if you do well in your 12th grade (which should be easy if you've prepared for JEE). It's not MIT, but the opportunities they provide are on-par with IIT's (don't go based on world rankings-they aren't always a good indicator of a lot of important things).

Even if you don't get into anything decent at all (which I know we Indians are trained to obsess over, for survival reasons) the truth is you still have great opportunities if you just keep learning whatever you're passionate about and at the end of the day that's what will count. Never mind what happens.

I admit that I've way less knowledge about these things than @Vanadium 50 or @Dr. Courtney but I'll say this-The struggle back home is real but just keep your focus on doing your best. There's already plenty written about the questions you have and it's best to just look at them instead of sparking too much debate over these things.