Students Are Asking For The Wrong Advice From The Wrong People On Their College Applications

Enough Futures Forge students have asked me for advice on their college application that I have decided to start writing down my answers. I expect students have asked me because I got into MIT without a 1600 or straight A’s, so I understand the desire to find some way to repeat what I did.

However, I think many alums are asking me the wrong questions, which means I worry that they’re asking the wrong questions of the wrong people, as well. I shall first share my very limited advice on your college application. I hope, after reading that, you will spare a minute for my warnings about future questions.

Erik’s Advice & Story

Briefly, here is what I did in high school:

1. I got a 3.8 GPA.

2. I scored top-1% on my SAT, but not a 1600.

3. I took a pile of AP classes and if I recall correctly, I did get 5’s in all of them.

4. I was a two-sport athlete.

5. I was into robots and started our robotics club.

6. I doodled in my notebook during boring classes – these doodles were diagrams of robots. I sent these doodles in with my application.

7. I wrote a college admissions essay about finding many classes boring but really enjoying robotics, and here are some cool problems in the world that I care about which robots get involved in.

I did not lead clubs (other than tabletop wargaming), I wasn’t in student government, I didn’t play instruments. Most importantly, I did the stuff I enjoyed doing–that is, stuff I enjoyed doing that was good for my learning. I learned about robots because I thought robots were cool. I didn’t waste my time with student government because I thought it was a dumb popularity contest (and I still think that’s true).

If I think I did one thing well regarding college admissions directly, it was that I was pretty consistent about learning about the things I liked, and those were relevant to MIT. “This guy really likes to build robots! MIT is a good place to build robots.” 

If you take a smart, capable person, and you really know they are passionate and excited about coming to your university to learn about stuff your university excels in, then you’ve probably got a good candidate. 

At least, I think so. I’ve never been a college admissions officer! But if I want to suggest one thing, it’s keep learning about stuff you find really interesting, and then show admissions officers that you are really interested in learning these things. That’s what they all say in their blogs and their talks. They have every reason to tell you the truth and no reason to be dishonest. 

Be Wary Of Advice

You should generally not run around asking Ivy League alumni how to get into great schools. Certainly do not ask them about how they got into great schools, and then try to extrapolate or generalize anything from that other than the one thing that all college admissions officers say, which is, “perform well and be who you really are, and show us that.”

In fact, generally, you should not ask anyone for advice unless they have privileged access to knowledge that the public does not. 

There are people who have this access: generally, they are college advisors/counselors! The key knowledge they have is from conversations they have with college admissions officers. They don’t publicize this information because they want to preserve their relationship. So: go ask your college advisor for their advice.

Don’t ask Ivy League alums or anyone else. Here’s why:

1. Someone who got into MIT doesn’t know what it takes to get into MIT. I happened to have gotten in. I just showed up, and one college admissions officer decided they thought I would fit into a specific class of 1000 kids at a specific time (2005).

2. The game is changing constantly. What the MIT admissions office cares about is different now than it was when I went to MIT. What does it want now? I don’t know! It’s probably different from what they wanted in 2005.

3. College admissions is a roulette wheel. The top universities constantly repeat that they have far, far more qualified applicants than they have space for. Why don’t they use their massive endowments to expand their institutions so they can teach more of those deserving, qualified students? Ask them, but it means that even if you are qualified, you are literally rolling the dice. If you pick two people who applied to MIT, and one got in, the one who got in didn’t necessarily have a better application.

4. There are no “secrets” out there… at least outside of the admissions office and a few close friends. Certainly those of us who attended MIT don’t know how the admissions office thinks and works. We have no secrets for you.

5. Admissions offices are telling you what to do already. MIT’s post on this is better advice than I’ve ever given anyone. Go x x x read it and follow it.

a) Here’s what MIT says
b) MIT suggests reading something like 6 blog posts of theirs
c) Here’s what Harvard says

It happens to be the case that both of these are talking about looking for students who work well in teams, who are gritty, who are activators and executors, are motivated and have a vision for their future. There’s a reason we help develop these at Futures Forge; the skills our students develop are not a secret! The opposite is true! The whole world is already asking for them.

You already know what to do. You might need help finding your motivation, or becoming a better teammate and communicator, or executing. Go find your gaps, and actually grow in the ways you need to in order to excel at MIT. Generally, you can’t game the system half as well as you think you might be able to, and that’s a waste of time versus actually developing yourself.

The Critical Thinking Lesson

Who have you asked for advice on what to do to get into MIT/etc? Friends? Reddit? Me? 

Before you ask for information, or at least before you do anything with it, think about the source and whether they have a good reason to be the best source. MIT admissions is a good source. What made you believe someone else “out there” had information that:

• they could share, 

• which is important and helpful, 

• MIT admissions is not sharing it, 

• and it is not public? 

For my advice to be useful, all of those things would need to be true. I have no such advice. Most of the time, nor do others.