Only 13 percent of MIT's applicants got in this year

Admit Rate for 2010 Smaller Than Usual,One in Eight Gets In
By Angeline Wang
ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR

Only 13 percent of MIT's applicants got in this year - a recent low
for the Admissions Office, which expects that an even higher percentage
of admitted students will enroll this fall than last.

Out of 11,373 applicants to the Institute, only 1,474 have been
accepted, but MIT hopes to admit students from its waiting list as
well, something it hasn't done for the last three years. Last year,
14 percent of the applicants were accepted, and in 2003 and 2004, 16
percent were accepted.

Of those accepted, the percentage who actually come to MIT, known as
the yield, has steadily increased in the last few years. It hovered
around 55 percent in the late 1990s, but jumped to 60 percent in 1999
and hit a high of 67 percent in 2005 for the Class of 2009.

"We are planning for an increased yield [of 68 percent] this year,
and therefore we did admit fewer students," Senior Associate Director
of Admissions Stuart Schmill said.

"The key for us is doing two things: admitting students who are a
great match for MIT, who are interested in the things we do here, and
not letting finances drive their decisions," Schmill said. "If we
do those two things, students will choose to come. For students who
want an analytical education, there is no better place than MIT."

Another lure for prospective students is the Institute's new
financial aid initiative, where MIT will match Federal Pell Grants for
all eligible students, Schmill said.

Harvard last year and Stanford this year have also announced plans for
increasing financial aid for students from low income families.

The 1,474 acceptances includes 377 applicants admitted early, as well
as 107 international students. There were a total of 2,575
international applications.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia are represented, as well as
61 foreign countries and territories, Schmill said. This year's
admitted class is 52 percent male and 48 percent female, according to
Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones. Twelve percent of the deferred
applicants from the early applicant pool were accepted during regular
admissions.

The Institute also raised the admission of under-represented minorities
back up to 19 percent, which is close to the 20 percent accepted for
the Classes of 2006 through 2008.

According to e-mail from Jones after Early Action decisions were sent,
the Admissions office "redoubled our recruitment efforts for this
cycle" after getting only 14 percent under-represented minorities for
the Class of 2009.

Instead of waiting for the decision letters which were mailed out
Friday, a majority of the applicants checked for their decision online
Saturday.

"Within two hours of the decisions going live, approximately 7,000 of
the 11,373 applicants had checked the site," Schmill said. "More
have been checking through the weekend."

Earlier this month, the College Board discovered errors in the
processing of October 2005 SAT tests, resulting in the miscalculation
of at least 4,000 students' scores, of whom 28 had applied to MIT.
Colleges were immediately notified.

All of the applicants were being considered in the regular action
candidate pool, Schmill said. Their applications were re-reviewed, but
no admissions decisions were changed.

"The College Board problem did not affect the cases of the 28
applicants involved," Jones said. "I can only wonder, though, about
the students applying to Early Decision programs at other places who
might not have been admitted in December because of the score
change," Jones. "It certainly shakes your trust in the College
Board."

The writing section of the new SAT test was not a requirement for this
year's applicants, as not all students have taken the new test.
According to Schmill, the scores from the writing section were
collected but not used to evaluate students.

"We'll do some analysis on the scores with this year's group and
know how to use the scores next year and in the future," he said.

Perhaps this correlates with another number reported in the
NY Times recently- the number of people applying to ten or
more colleges is increasing, something like one in six does this now.

Also correlates with the average senior class age is about 5 million
new-
larger than the 4 million in the boomer years. Two thirds of them say
they intend to go to college; much higher than than decades ago,
because a college degree is seen a necessary passport to the middle
class.
Plus e-applications and the common-application (accepted by several
hundred colleges) make it easier to apply to multiple schools.