Hello! I'm Mikey Yang, one of the admissions officers, and (as indicated by the "'05" after my name) a proud member of the MIT Class of 2005.
My story of how I came to be at MIT is an interesting one - MIT was actually my last choice when I was looking at colleges. In fact, my parents forced me (or, as they would say, "gently nudged" me until I caved) to apply. I had a lot of preconceived notions about MIT - only geniuses went there, and all they did was study all the time, alone in their rooms, never having any fun or a social life of any kind. Plus, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, and I thought MIT wasn't "well-rounded" enough for me. (None of these turned out to be true.)
After applying to many colleges, it came down to a choice between two schools: my home state school (Michigan) and MIT. After a lot of thought and deliberation, I (apprehensively) decided to take the leap and leave the comfortable Midwest for the Great Unknown: the East Coast. Little did I know, I would find a new home away from home - MIT, Cambridge/Boston, Massachusetts. My time here as an undergrad was amazing. I met awesome people, learned a ton, and had a blast.
Now, as an admissions officer, I hope to help dispel a lot of the stereotypes about MIT, tell some of my stories, and shed a little bit of light onto what it's really like to work and go to school here.
As an MIT undergrad, I majored in biology and minored in music, and spent the bulk of my time as an officer and member of the
MIT Logarhythms (or "the Logs" for short, for those who prefer to avoid the nerdy math pun). In keeping with the theme of the blogs (which actually didn't exist when I first came to campus), I lived in Burton-Conner for four years. In fact, I lived on the same exact floor as
Laura,
Snively,
Mitra, and
Sam (though I don't claim to be anywhere near as cool as them).
Anyways, I'm now one of the Assistant Directors of Admissions at MIT. My job involves a lot of fun and exciting tasks - among them, I get to read applications, be on the selection committee, travel the country, and meet all sorts of interesting students, parents, counselors, and alumni. I also help coordinate our freshman and transfer admissions processes, oversee our low-income and first-generation-to-college recruitment efforts, and am in charge of the MIT
QuestBridge program.
My favorite activities are eating, sleeping, and playing addicting video games. I watch way too much terrible (amazing?) reality (and regular) TV, and have seen every episode of
Friends at least 50 times, no joke (though I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of). I love all kinds of music in all forms, and love (ab)using parentheses. Welcome to my blog!
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