MIT Regular Action Deadline Update by Mikey Yang '05

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I wanted to follow up with more details about the Regular Action deadline. Other than a few hours of downtime on December 31st, it seems that most students were able to successfully submit their online applications. I did mention that we would be flexible with the deadline, and as such, we’ve extended the deadline to submit your MIT Part 1 and 2 to tonight, January 3, 2013, at 11:59pm EST. You should click the final “submit” button for your online application by that time, but we strongly suggest you not wait until the very last moment!

To submit Parts 1 and 2, log in to your account on MyMIT. You can also go there to download teacher recommendation forms and the secondary school report form.

To reiterate a few other things mentioned in previous posts by Labs and others (because it’s worth repeating):

As mentioned in this post – it is perfectly fine if, through no fault of your own, your school forms (teacher recommendations, secondary school report, transcript) arrive a little later. We’re understanding and flexible with your teachers and counselors because we know they are super busy. We’re also aware of the teacher strike happening in Ontario – again, if your school forms are delayed a bit for reasons beyond your control, no need to worry (and no need to call or email our office – this will only further slow down the processing of application materials).

If you have already submitted application materials, and are waiting for it to appear on your MyMIT Application Tracking page, please be patient. As my friend Labs has posted, there is a giant pyramid of mail that we are working as quickly as possible to get through. Documents can take up to 3 weeks to appear on your tracking page.

We are receiving documents from over 12,000 applicants – when you account for the fact that each has multiple documents to send in (two teacher recommendations, a secondary school report, a transcript, and perhaps other documents too), we’ll probably end up processing at least 75,000 to 100,000 documents or more in the next few weeks, and only a handful of staff on hand to do the processing.

Please do not call or email about missing materials right now. All you will hear back is the same stuff I just wrote above. In a few weeks, after we’ve conquered the pyramid of mail (and virtual pyramid of electronic documents) – both of which will continue to grow as we try to conquer it, by the way – we’ll send out an email to those who are still missing key application components, and at that point, you can follow up with any documents that we’re still missing.

In the meantime, please do not resend multiple copies of your documents. It will only make the pyramid grow bigger unnecessarily, and thus slow down the processing of everyone’s documents.

As for the Midyear Report, hang tight. You should wait to submit this until your grades are available for your first semester or second quarter (depending on what system your school uses), or February 15th (whichever is earlier). More details to come on how to fill out the Midyear Report in the next few weeks.