This video contains everything you need to know if
you're an international high school or college student wanting to attend MIT,
Caltech, Stanford, CMU or any other top tier technical school in the United States.
In this video I'm going to reveal a loophole that might enable you
to get into these schools without having to be a complete genius,
nor having perfect grades. So make sure not to miss this by watching the whole video.
There is so much information out there about college admissions but
most of these tips and tricks don't really apply to you if you're an international student.
These numbers apply to Americans only.
Also i'll make a separate video talking about PhD admissions,
as they are a completely different story
This video will be divided into three parts:
1. I'm going to discuss the statistics specifically for international students
2. Then i'm going to talk about how you can maximize your chances of getting admitted to MIT
3. And lastly i'm going to have a discussion with three classmates who successfully got
admitted as international students from Europe, Asia, and Latin America
If you're new to this channel i'm an international PhD student at MIT
And I have friends in admissions department
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out about startups, internships, top-tier university admissions, and other topics.
Let's start with some numbers. As the world's population keeps growing,
more and more high school students apply to university.
At the same time MIT continues being ranked number one university in the world
therefore unfortunately we're seeing a drop in acceptance rates.
For American applicants in 2008 the acceptance rate has been hovering in around 12%
Now, just 14 years later this dropped down to just over 4%.
For internationals, this is even worse. The acceptance rate has been just 1%.
Yes, only 123 out of the over 9000 international applicants got admitted last year
From my observations and interactions these 123 students can be split into two groups:
The 1st and very small group are exceptional geniuses
Students who either won gold medals at International Physics and Math Olympiad,
or some kids who graduated from high school by the age of 12
This is a very small group and I've never been in it
The 2nd group out of these 123 students are "regular" smart people so they typically
had good grades in high school, did something that made them stand out,
had good scores with the standardized test, and lastly they got a little bit lucky to get in
This brings us to the second part of this video
I'll give you some tricks to maximize your chances of getting into MIT
The nice thing about MIT's admission process is that they look at you as a whole person
not just the numbers you represent on the page
Obviously good grades and test scores are very important,
but they alone will not get you into MIT – you've gotta stand out somehow!
Furthermore MIT doesn't have any unfair legacy admissions which is
something you can often see in schools such as Harvard or University of Pennsylvania,
where having affluent or alumni parents will easily 10-fold their chances of getting admitted
Trump: "I went to an Ivy League school.
I'm very highly educated, I know words, I have the best words"
First off you've got to find out what you're truly passionate about.
This can be research, internships, science, or maybe some kind of sports competitions
But it is important that you get really good at something, and then stand out with it.
MIT as an academic institution is doing cutting-edge research
Anything from cancer research to AI. And students have the opportunity to
join laboratories very early on in their studies
Therefore, if you have previous research experience,
this is going to go really into your advantage
Science and math olympiads are also a very good way to showcase your talent
Many international undergrads at MIT have won some kind of competition in that area
The most recognized competitions are the
international physics olympiad (IPhO), math (IMO), informatics (IOI) and chemistry (IChO)
If you win a gold medal from any of these,
you're almost guaranteed to get into this school or any other top school
But even a bronze medal is a very very good advantage
Feel free to comment down below if you have any questions about these competitions,
or if you know about any other competitions that might really help
Another key thing to talk about is timing – you should plan well in advance what you want
to do then optimize everything you do in your life including internships, research, etc.,
to build up a resume that will get you where you want to go
The best time to start to do this is right now
Next up: school experience in the US
During a semester or a year abroad in the US
will significantly boost your chances of getting admitted
Whether it's a high school exchange, or an exchange during your bachelor's degree
There are a lot of interesting programs that can support you, such as the Rotary International
I'll put a link in the description
Here's a little loophole. And no,
this is not yet the big loophole that announced at the beginning of the video.
Sports competitions! I know what you're thinking. Maybe MIT may not be as much into sports such as
Stanford or Harvard, but a coach at MIT can still give you that final "push" to get you admitted
When I was in high school, I was really good at triathlon
I even won a national championship in triathlon in Croatia
Therefore, I reached out to an MIT coach to see if i could get supported as a student-athlete
Here's a real email from MIT's head coach
As you can see triathlon is not an official sport at MIT. But track and field is.
What he told me is, essentially, that if I was able to run 5km in less than 16 min,
he would be able to put a small "request" to the admissions department for me
This may sound quite challenging, but with a few years of training,
it's not actually that hard to reach
Unfortunately, as I started training for many hours per day,
I injured my leg and ultimately couldn't make it
On a more positive note here's a discussion with my international
classmates who successfully got admitted to MIT
Hi I'm Arbri, I'm a second year student studying biological engineering
and I'm from Shkodër, Albania
Right now I'm researching cancer genetics, which is pretty cool
Hi my name is Grecia, I'm from Guadalajara, Mexico
I did my undergrad at MIT in Physics and EECS, I'm currently doing my master's
Hello, I'm Ley, I'm from Kota, India. I'm an undergraduate senior
studying computer science and economics
Hello my name is penguin I'm from Antarctica and I study
electrical engineering at MIT, and I'm so smart
Does anyone have a pencil? A pencil? I feel so more comfortable with a pencil
Oh, an Apple pencil!
So, thank you guys so much for being here. I'm very glad that you made it on this weekend,
and I'm really curious to hear your stories about how you got into MIT
and a general overview of all the international people that you know here – How they got into MIT
Before MIT, I did math in high school. Being from Albania it's, I think, easier to be part of
national teams. And I also did one exchange here, in St. Louis in Missouri.
So here in the US, for my senior year of high school. And I think that gave me a
lot of perspective so then coming to MIT was a bit easier, I think, then it would normally be
Oh nice, so you were at the IMO (the math olympiad)
That's right! Which year? 2019 – It was in Bath, in the UK
How did you like it? How long did you have to prepare for getting there?
It took a while. When I think about it, I think it was worth it. But it was so much
work. But then when I got there, I should have done a lot more work
Just the people were very cool and the experience was very awesome, so getting to know everyone.
And then the coolest thing is, that some of the people I met there I thought I was never going to
see again, like Alessandre, but then I have them in my classroom here at MIT. It's pretty cool
Grecia, let's move on to you. Can you tell us about your story and where you're from?
Yeah, hi! I'm from Mexico
and I did physics and math when I was in high school. And, my story was sort of similar
I think a lot of international kids who get into MIT it's because they did
international olympiads. So I went to IPhO, as well. I did 2016 in Zürich, and 2017 in Indonesia.
Yeah, it was definitely a big part of it.
I did not do an exchange here in the US, so definitely moving to MIT was my first time
Yeah I had traveled to a lot of other countries for competitions, but not to the US. But,
I don't think it was hard to adapt, especially when you're surrounded by all these olympiad kids
So Lay, do you want to tell us your story and where you're from?
Yeah, I'm Lay. I'm from India. When I was in high school, I also
did Olympiads. I was focusing on physics. I went to the IPhO and the Asian Physics of Olympiad.
The IPhO was 2017 and 2016.
Many people I know were there. Grecia was there – that's where I'm first met Grecia.
You know each other from before? Yeah, it's crazy! Nice!
And none of us knew that they were going to MIT, I think. Yeah, that's crazy!
I had no idea I would apply to MIT before going to the olympiads, but then I saw many people who
were applying to US universities, so I thought it was a good idea and maybe I should give it a try
Amazing! So, all three of you went to physics / math olympiads,
but you met quite a lot of undergrads who got into MIT as internationals.
How many of them are non-olympiads? How many of
them got in, in another way? Do you have any interesting stories?
Something that I think it's not a pattern but at least what I have seen for people that didn't
do olympics as internationals, they usually tend to have explored different countries.
So I believe three people from the Balkans area in particular, that lived in Europe, and then
went to school in Europe for high school or middle school and are accustomed to that
diversity of thought and of work experience
I think that's also something that colleges tend to look for
Well I'd rather not to point to specific names, but I know what sort of projects they
do to get into MIT without like necessary having like a strong olympiad curriculum
I know there's like a lot of summer schools in US universities. These are
pretty prestigious – people have to apply and have a very outstanding scores in high school
So they go to this exchange program / summer schools,
and I even know people who are entrepreneurs
So, I even know people who have their startups coming
out of high school! wow! And then they get into MIT because of that
I actually know a few successful people who have to delay their offers for a year
or two, to keep working on their companies and then coming to MIT
That's it's really impressive. So they're like 17 years old and already have some companies? Yeah,
yeah! Or at least they have ideas or they have pitched their projects
They have gone through some later stages, so MIT really takes that into account
Also something that I forgot to mention is, that I think that it's harder to get an opportunity as a
high school student, but there's a lot of people who are able to get good research opportunities.
That was not really my case, but I know people who have even published or at least worked in some big
projects doing research. And that's probably even more tangible than going to Olympiads
That's something we were able to do
Thank you guys so much for participating in this conversation. Thank you for having us
All right, are you guys hungry?
Are you recording that?
Let's use the comment section down below as a discussion forum,
so everybody can read and benefit from my reply
As promised, here is THE major loophole that could get you admitted into MIT,
Stanford, Harvard, or any other top school
MASTER'S DEGREES! Getting into undergraduate or PhD programs at these schools can be ridiculously
hard, but getting admitted into a master's program can be much easier for an international
The thing is that the number of spots for international applicants is very
limited if you're applying for a bachelor's degree
But for master's degree this limit is either very high, or non-existent at all
You can get into many master's degree programs without having any
crazy first-author publications, or fancy internship experiences
Having said that, keep in mind that as a PhD student usually get paid,
while as a master's student you have to pay
Master's degrees aren't cheap! But if you can do a master's degree one of the
best universities in the world, it's usually worth every penny
Even if you don't get lucky and don't get any financial support from the university
nor family, it's often even worth taking a loan for it
The amount of connections and better job opportunities you might get later
will easily let you repay these loans
The admission process can be rather soul-sucking,
given all the bias and randomness that is involved in the process and completely out of your control
Nevertheless I hope that this video gave you some valuable insights, and you learned something new
If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing to my channel over here
I wish you best of luck with your academic journey! Goodbye!
Hi, I'm Ley I'm from Kota, India and I'm an undergraduate senior
studying computer science and economics so Grecia I wonder how did the penguin get into
MIT yeah well the admissions committee realized that there was very low representation from
Antarctica and this guy getting us being the best swimmer wait we don't have audio
I was so ready!