MIT Admissions 2007 by Matt McGann '00
A quick look at this year's admissions.
This year, we received 12,443 applications for freshman admission, a record number for us and a 9% increase over last year. We admitted 1533 students total (including the 390 from early action) for an overall admit rate of 12.3%, or fewer than one of every eight applicants. We offered 499 students a place on the waiting list. Decisions (and, for admitted students, financial aid information) were mailed yesterday for all students, and will be online at https://decisions.mit.edu shortly.
As Ben has written before, for us, it’s more than a job. We put our heart and soul, and our best judgment, into every decision, and most decisions are extremely difficult. Most students who applied to MIT this year were excellent matches for MIT, and most were extremely qualified. Our task is to choose from these many, many excellent applicants to bring together a class.
Today, when the decisions come out, I know you will feel a range of emotions. I ask you to please be civil and kind in your comments in today’s entries. One of the things that make these blogs special is that there is a respectful community. I ask that, even if you become very upset today, that you refrain from bad language or demeaning others. In past year’s decision threads, I have felt very good about our blog community and the ability to keep things civil, and I trust that you will follow that tradition this year.
We’ll have more to say about the process for the admitted students, the not admitted students, and the waitlisted students in the days and weeks to come. In the meantime, we’ll provide open threads today for all three groups.
I know I speak for all of the admissions officers when I say that this was the most difficult year of admissions we’ve seen. There were more awesome applications than ever before. It made reading the applications a joy, but it made turning away students that much harder. Thank you for applying!