John DeTore '80

Hi, I am John DeTore, and I am an EC. We do the interviews for MIT admissions. If you come for an interview, you might even get me. (Since there are about 2000 of us, you'd have a 0.05% chance, give or take.)

The MIT admissions process does not require an interview, but as you have probably figured out, they are encouraged and they do improve your chances of admission. I think you will like having an interview. After all, after seventeen years of life, hopes, dreams and preparation, do you really want to boil it all down to a few sheets of paper? Wouldn't you just like a little while to talk about these things? We would too. It's why we've put such extraordinary effort into organizing the EC program, a program that had really blossomed, by the way, under Stu's leadership.

A little about me... At MIT, I received degrees in Civil Engineering (SB '80) and Transportation Systems (SM '83). But I am not a Civil Engineer. I fell in love with investment management through some "other" classes I took at MIT and "changed careers" when I graduated with my Master's from MIT - not necessarily a course that I can recommend. I've done OK though, not to worry, and MIT has still served me well, by teaching me what it inevitably teaches everyone who comes here: 1) how to solve a (hard) problem, and 2) where one's personal limits are. I now have my own (small) investment management firm, so I get to do quite a bit of innovation and entrepreneurialism, which is cool, along with investment management, which has always fascinated me.

My hope is that this blog can be a dialog with the community that may serve to demystify the interview process. It's your turn to ask questions of us! (And, no, nothing you ask or say here makes its way back to your application.) I'll strive to answer anything you can ask.