Hi there! A big disclaimer first off is that I’m not an admissions counselor, so everything on my blog is based off of my personal application process and the anecdotal experiences of my friends. However, overall a little over 10% of MIT’s 4.5K undergraduate students are international, which is around 480 students. That means around 120~150 international students are admitted every year. I believe that a good number of international students are from Western Europe, East Asia, and South East Asia (India mostly).

Unfortunately, that means around 3-5 Brazilian students are probably admitted every year. The sad truth is that MIT is an American university, so it admits mostly Americans. It is very well-known for giving students a high-quality education, which is why it is already highly highly competitive for American students. Nearly all of my international friends have placed in some sort of national or international level STEM competition. However, MIT is definitely trying to increase its class size. We’re currently the same size as Dartmouth College, the smallest Ivy League college (4.1K students), whereas Harvard has 7K and Cornell 14K. I think we are hoping to add around 500-1,000 students to the total population. This change probably won’t happen for a few more years though, because the limiting factor now is space.

Another thing is that international students who want to go to American universities tend to go to international schools. For instance, the students at Korean International School (KIS), where I am teaching in January, all speak perfect English, are educated by American or British instructors, and their curriculum is tailored to American standards. My cousin went to an international school in China, and now he is attending college in North Carolina; his high school provided numerous resources to help him with his Common Application, just like American high schools. This also makes the application process for international students very competitive.

With all of this anecdotal information in mind, I don’t think you should let it discourage you too much -- only to keep your expectations in check. I think the most important thing you can (and need to) have on your MIT application is a demonstrated passion for the MIT “way of life”, mens et manus -- critical thinking and hands-on experimentation, going above and beyond the basic expectations and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. How well you embody the spirit of MIT is the biggest question you should try to answer in your application.

I wish you luck in the rest of your time in high school and in your college application process! If you have any other questions, please send me another ask! As a parting thought, I’d like to share with you the words of the great Michael Scott, “’You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take -Wayne Gretzky.’”

Hi! I just made a post about it!! I’m so sorry it took so long for me to answer this question :(

Hi Anon! I don’t think I’ve answered this explicitly before, so I can talk about it now. In my knowledge, colleges tend to consider your “accomplishments” based on circumstances such as your school demographic, available classes, and previous examples of people they have admitted. So for instance, a student from a private boarding school that has a teacher to student ratio of 1:5 will be put to higher standards than a student who grew up on a farm and was homeschooled by their parents. In either case, colleges like to see that you have gone above and beyond what was expected of you, you pursued your passions, and you have a demonstrated interest in bettering your future. So while you can draw inspiration from what I did in high school, in no way should you take it as a “how to get into MIT” guide. I hope it helps you!

My main three activities in high school were captain of the speech and debate team, founder and president of figure drawing club, and volunteer at a senior living center + hospital. I spent 12+ hours on debate every single week, including going to tournaments on the weekends, leading in class debates, and doing research on cases. Figure Drawing Club was (and hopefully still is, although I don’t know) a group of around 20 students who practiced drawing the human form with a live model, so I spent 1-2 hours per week on that. I also volunteered 1 hour weekly at a senior living center from sophomore-senior year of high school. During the summers I volunteered for 40 hours a week at a hospital, and I mostly worked with the elderly and physically disabled. Outside of those, I was also in a youth orchestra, I was a tutor for National Honor Society, and I was on the cross country team for one year. One summer I went to Junior Achievement Business Week, which was a camp where we learned how to run businesses (kind of). I also attended Georgetown Debate Seminar and Spartan Debate Institutes. I don’t remember if I put these on my applications, though.

I also self-studied quite a bit in high school. I found that some of my classes were not taught as fast-paced as I liked, so I learned a year of Latin on my own during high school, so I wound up taking Latin 1, Latin ¾ Honors, AP Latin, and Independent Study Latin. I also “learned” a year of chemistry on my own, so my science track looked like Physical Science Honors, AP Chemistry, AP Biology, and AP Physics C. In middle school, I skipped a year of geometry, so in 8th grade, I took math at my high school, and ultimately my math track looked like Algebra 2/Trigonometry Honors (8th grade), Pre-Calculus Honors, AP Calculus BC, Multivariable Calculus/Differential Equations, Abstract Math/Linear Algebra. Only 7 people were in the last one in my high school total.

The final thing I think “helped” me was that I am from a single-parent household, which made it very difficult for me to participate in all the activities I wanted to do (both financially and time-wise). Since my school is in an affluent neighborhood, it was fairly uncommon for students like me to succeed in my circumstances (I guess that’s the reasoning behind it). I don’t like to think of this as an “advantage” although on a surface level it does “help” somewhat, and I hope you can see why not.

It has been nearly 3 years since I applied to colleges, so I apologize for being so woozy on the details. Those were the main ones I can think of.

Aww thank you for reaching out :) Yes, I am super okay, but I have been completely SWAMPED! This week is our “career week” so I’ve been going to some company info sessions and fixin’ up my resume. Friday is the Fall Career Fair and I have a whole day without class just to dress up in fancy “business attire” whatever that means and try to get a job. My classes are no joke either, so mostly I’m just trying to fill my time up studying and working on my interviewing skills. This weekend, though, I will definitely be answering more asks and posting again. Thank you again!!!

Haha, this is a good question, and thanks, I’m glad you like my blog! My number 1 recommendation is @selamie, one of my best friends since middle+high school. She is a Mechanical Engineering Major at MIT, and her blog is seriously rad. A few blogs with nice aesthetics that I like are @productiveflower and @shellstudies. I’ve been following @architectureofdoom since forever just because their photos are really nice. And I love reading posts by @pettyrevenge. [By the way, sorry if we’ve never talked before and I tagged you in this post :( ]

Hmm...I really like how this question makes me think about myself, haha. In general I believe that as long as you set goals for yourself and fulfill them by any means, that is achieving success. I think that there are an infinite number of ways for every person to be successful, in large and small forms. I also feel that even if you didn’t necessarily fully achieve your goal, if you tried your best and truly put all your efforts into it, then that in itself is a form of success.

Personally, I have set a number of goals for myself, for the short, mid, and long terms. For instance, a huge short term goal is to develop my CS skills this semester and put them to good use during IAP (MIT’s independent activities period in January) and summer 2017. As for mid and long term goals, they are more personal and overall I would like to do good work that aligns well with my skills and interests and enrich my understanding of and experiences with the world around me.

Thank you! It’s made my sorrism, and I’ve made a couple of additions (more buttons, etc.) I’m getting more interested in HTML/CSS, and I’m currently in the process of rebooting the website for my independent living group, Fenway House.

Hmm...I don’t have a favorite, but I like writing code in Java, just because it has so many uses and you can design your own classes, interfaces, etc. with a lot of ease. It also checks your code for completeness as you write it, as opposed to Python, for instance, which waits until you run the entire code to reveal errors. You can pretty much make Java do anything you want, (although certain tasks will be slower and less straightforward), and it can be quite fun :)

Hi there! I think it’s awesome that you’re sticking to computer science even though you find it difficult. The most important thing is to put in time and practice, so you’re on your way to being successful. Something you might want to consider is what kind of help you are getting in office hours. Is the TA/Professor helping you understand the solution, asking you leading questions and allowing you to arrive at the answer yourself, or are they simply showing you the correct steps? If it’s the latter, it might be good to attempt the problems again after getting help.

I find that reviewing homework problems and redoing practice problems (even the ones I did correctly the first time) is really helpful in sticking concepts and methods in my head. For theoretical classes, such as algorithms, you really just have to memorize the way that your professor solves the problems in class and learn to apply them to similar problems.

When it really comes down to it though, your grades don’t matter as much as your experience in research, internships, and personal projects. Many of my friends don’t always have high GPAs, but their interest and demonstrated skill (in coding challenges, for instance) is enough to garner them multiple internship offers.

To be completely honest, I got my internship completely by accident. My boyfriend spent hours convincing me to go to the spring career fair, and I finally agreed to talk to companies for 30 minutes maximum. The second company I talked to is the one that offered me an internship! (And I was the first student they talked to!) Learning from that experience, I would advise you make a list of potential companies and what kind of experience you would like (software, data, UI/UX, etc.) and then start fine-tuning your resume. Many top employers like Google and Facebook send out summer offers in the fall, so you have to plan ahead. Another way is if your parents work at/know people who work at a company you are interested in, you can ask them to refer you. A number of my friends have gotten internships (at Google, Facebook, and Salesforce) this way.

I hope this helps you. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop another question in my inbox. I am happy to answer any more :) Enjoy the last days of summer!!

Thank you! Maybe I’ll see you on campus sometime, haha. I’m super pumped for the semester to start, and I hope you’re looking forward to it too!!

—minoring in CS. I’m also minoring in math which gives me the option to take a course in Machine Learning. I’m going into my 2nd year this Fall and I am taking my intro CS course. I just had some questions: Is it hard taking the intro to CS course without prior coding experience? Also what is machine learning like when learning it in uni and also in your job? Thank you so much and your blog+content is really cool!

Hi there! I took 6.01 Intro to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science without any prior coding experience whatsoever. I got a B in the class (take from that what you will, but I am proud of this grade). In the first few weeks I had a relatively difficult time because it was expected that you knew how to code in Python, so I had to attend many office hours in order to get past the initial learning curve. Once I understood the basic language of Python, however, I was chugging along as fast as the students who already knew the language. The thing is that once you know what you don’t know, it’s easy to search your questions on Google/Stack Exchange (such as how to remove duplicates from a list or how to concatenate two strings). If that’s gibberish to you, don’t worry – you’ll catch on pretty quickly. I’m assuming that your intro to CS course will be taught in Python, which is very simple. If not, other basic building block languages like Java are also fairly intuitive once you get the hang of it.

I haven’t actually taken a machine learning course yet, so I’m eternally grateful that my supervisor took a gamble on me and gave me an internship this summer. At my job, I’ve learned a ton about how neural nets work and how to train them. They’re basically a function approximator that switches the weights of various inputs until they look like the expected output when combined. My project is meant to help make the job of another team easier (currently they have to do some image labeling by hand, which takes forever) by automating the process. I think that having to learn a lot of concepts in order to do a job is actually more helpful to my development as a programmer compared to learning the theory behind the concepts in a class. If possible, definitely try to supplement your academic studies with an internship.

I hope this helps you in some way, and thanks for your compliments on my blog. If you have more follow-up questions, definitely shoot me another ask. Have a great week!