Astrology Forecast for the Class of 2023 by DJ Rock

It’s an incredibly exciting time of year, as the Class of 2023 is arriving to campus to begin their orientation to MIT. I’m excited to connect with our newly enrolled class through a number of events over the next week. Tonight I’ll be at a welcome dinner for students in FLIPOP, the new First-Gen/Low-Income Pre-Orientation Program designed to help students from marginalized backgrounds with their transition to MIT. Additionally, I’ll be at a diversity and inclusion conversation hosted by the Office of Multicultural Programs, LBGTQ@MIT, and the Office of the First Year – three amazing campus resources that are all here to help students navigate their college transition.

In order to prepare, I reached out to Crissy on our Data & Analysis Team (while you all still have plenty of time to think about future careers, if you love analyzing data, there are jobs at universities where you can use data to improve admissions processes and student support services!). Although Crissy was balancing many high-level projects this summer, I asked her to help me with one of the most important and high-stakes projects I have ever worked on: before I met the incoming class, I needed to know their astrological energy so I could best prepare myself.

Here are the results…

*Disclaimer: The data for the US population birthdays comes from this website – and we’re not too sure of its accuracy. Furthermore, we could only find data on US birthdays, but our incoming class comes from all over the world. Also, this is mostly just for fun, so just roll with it (unless you can find us better data!).

DJ’s Forecast

Whew, chile! There’s A LOT of Aquarius energy coming our way. In my honest opinion, I’m not entirely surprised. Aquariuses are known for being “the aliens” of the zodiac. They tend to chart their own paths, think unconventionally, and are unique personalities. This sounds a lot like MIT to me. I think that many of our students aren’t confined by convention and are excited to tinker and think outside-of-the-box. Perhaps our incoming Aquariuses were great at navigating college fit – the concept that there are some colleges that fit well for a student’s personality and joy, and others that do not. I can see an Aquarius coming to our Campus Preview Weekend in April and really finding their people here.

We also seem to overrepresent in the Sagittarius department. Sags are known for their fire sign energy (explosive, loud) and also for genuinely finding joy in caring for others. Perhaps Sags faired well in our admissions process because they were able to connect to our mission of using STEM and other academic areas to make the world a better place. Sags not only like to go out into the world to adventure, but most Sags I know genuinely want to make the world better.

What about Pisces and Scorpios? I have some guesses. Pisces are incredibly empathetic and great support systems for friends. I wonder if some of our Pisces applicants felt uncomfortable writing about themselves in their college essays, or procrastinated a bit because of caring for those around them. Any pisces applying this upcoming year – know that we value your empathetic ways, but we want to learn about you in your college essays. Feel confident in writing about yourself (maybe start journaling now so you get used to it), and also let us know about the ways in which you care for and support your community in your essays. Also, start your apps now; procrastination is NOT your friend in the college app process.

Scorpios, on the other hand, tend to be all about control. My guess is that some scorpios may have been too focused on controlling the process, that they weren’t able to let go. Perhaps they went to a college visit, and instead of sitting back and listening about the values and overall vibe of a campus community, they were taking notes on fine details and missing the larger messages about the campus. Or, instead of using their authentic voice in a college essay, they tried to be in control and write what they thought admissions officers wanted to hear (which, by the way, never works).

Conclusions

Should you no longer apply to MIT if you’re a pisces or are you automatically accepted if you’re an Aquarius? Certainly not! Again, we’re not completely positive that our US population data is 100% accurate, and regardless, you can still see that many students were admitted with all of the zodiac signs (it’s almost as if we’re not lying when we say we want to admit a well-balanced class of different types of students with different personality types and accomplishments).

More importantly, if you haven’t caught on already, the advice I gave to each of the signs above is applicable to ALL applicants (furthermore, these are just sun signs – there is a complicated astrological world with moon, rising, mercury, venus, and many other signs as well).

And for current MIT community members, there seems to be a lot of air signs (aquarius, gemini, libra) coming to our campus this week. That means there will be a lot of great ideas and adventure coming our way, but maybe less organizational skills (which makes me, as someone who manages some students, both very excited for new projects and programs, and also very nervous about students not showing up to scheduled appointments or booking random weekend adventures on a whim).

While I was hoping for more leos in our class (my own personal bias for my sign), I am very excited for all of the amazing first-year students to begin their journeys at MIT!