high schools, highway miles, and an MIT story waiting in rural ohio ft. Max B. '24
- by Nicole Cooper
- April 30, 2026
The STARS College Network begins a college fair with a 45 minute presentation on navigating the college application process! Here I am - doing my best to welcome everyone.
There are a lot of things I expect when I’m visiting high schools across rural North Appalachia during a spring recruitment trip with the STARS College Network. Long drives. Beautiful views. Laughing with 20+ partner institution admission officers due to sleep deprivation and my fantastic comedic timing. The occasional “you’re from MIT??” double take. What I don’t always expect is to hear about an MIT alum who attended the small high school we are visiting on our trip.
The bridge and water views are next level
me and a bridge!
During one visit in rural Ohio (one stop on a trip through Northern Appalachia stopping southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of Pennsylvania), I was talking with a group of teachers while setting up for the college fair, about what we were doing out there (there is always time to chat with teachers and counselors before the students and families roll in). I speak with them about how we are traveling to more rural communities, meeting students where they are, trying in our own small way to make MIT (and other institutions) to feel a little less far away. These teachers were so excited sharing with me a story about a student from their high school who had gone to MIT and just recently graduated. They all spoke about him with a kind of collective pride. One teacher mentioned how excited he was to hear that we were visiting his very own high school on an outreach trip.
Naturally (or not so naturally???) I asked if anyone had his contact information.
She paused for a second, smiled a little, and said, “He’s actually my son.”
That kind of moment sticks with you.
So I did what we often encourage students to do, I followed up. I reached out, told him about the visit, and asked if he might want to share a bit about his own experience, what it was like coming to MIT from a rural background, and what those early moments felt like.
He enthusiastically agreed to chat with me! While I enjoyed our time learning about his story over zoom, I will pass it on over to him to share about his experience coming from a small-town in Ohio to MIT.
College fair at his HS!
Thanks Nicole! To get the intro out of the way: my name is Max Burns, and I majored in course 2A (mechanical engineering) with a concentration in medical devices. I graduated from MIT in 2024, and am now working on lower-limb exoskeletons at Stanford for my PhD. I grew up in Logan, a small town in southeastern Ohio, known for its natural caves and hiking trails.
Anyways! I’ve been glad to hear that there’s now an effort to increase recruitment from rural areas. For most of my life the prospect of going to a “fancy” out-of-state university wasn’t something I had considered. After all, nearly all the college-educated people that I met had attended public universities in
Ohio. When I decided to apply to MIT, I remember feeling exceedingly anxious about how I would stack up to the other applicants. I was lucky to attend a high school which had some AP classes, but I hadn’t even heard of programs like science olympiad, nor did I have high-school research experience or national accolades. I can imagine a similar experience for most students from rural districts, which just don’t have the population density or funding to support the same programs as larger urban districts. One saving grace for my anxiety was an Read More
