Calling all MIT Sloan 2008 applicants

One each day for me.

TJ,

I assume you'll be at the reception of Tuesday evening. I wonder how many other candidates will be at this shindig. I can only assume probably about 18 including us.

End of AdMIT Weekend, after a party at Beacon Hill

Myth 1: There are no Indians at Sloan.
Not true, I got to meet plenty of them...

Myth 2: Only geeks study MIT.
People DO party hard as they study hard. I went to 2 parties, so I saw with my own eyes.

Myth 3: The ladies.
Man, Sloan is the MIT with the ladies! Not that for me this counts as I'm married, but I can assure that there are lots of beautiful women there

All in all, I had a pretty good time in Boston-Cambridge. The Boston area is pretty amazing - although the weather was very snowy - and the people are smart, human, cooperative and very friendly.

I believe though, that they a underestimate the "power of the event" as in some situation they could have been more organized. I meet many interesting people, and I could see the entrepreneurship is the main driver there. They are building some new dorms, and a new amazing building that will be ready in 2010.

I met one guy who got into HBS and Sloan, and is heading MIT; one girl deciding between Kellogg and MIT, and decided to go to MIT; a Brazilian guy that decided to go to Kellogg, and several other people still deciding.

Some stats they gave us:
4000 applicants
715 is the mean Gmat
60% from US
20% Asia
7% Latam

And yes I walked through the infinite corridor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_corridor

cool report Kwam! Looks like these admit weekends are all pretty good at convincing you to go to their school.

4,000 is crazy...if thats just for R1. I think I may have met the Brazilian guy at DAK, I know I met a few people who were going to the Sloan event. The GMAT numbers this year seem even higher than usual.

BTW I think number is for all rounds, even being for all round it's a 33% increase. Adcom people said that it's been a very tough year working constantly overtime.

Ya even so 4K for all rounds is huge. Last year they were right over 3K so that puts then well into the teens for admit rate this year. I wonder if other top schools will see a similar increase.

I'm surprised more people don't apply to MIT, since it is a UE school and has a larger class size than say Anderson or Haas. I think Anderson was near 3000 last year, and Haas was 3200. Both are supposed to go up to near 4K this year too... scary!

The cali schools probably get a lot of applicants who just want to be in California so they dont apply anywhere else. MIT and most schools in the east dont get the same location advantage. That said MIT should have a 15% or less admit rate this year, and thats pretty damn impressive. Makes me feel a little better about that ding It would hurt a lot more if they had a 50% decrease in applications.

One more perspective.

It would be safe to say that the most MBA applications are filed by Indian IT pool. MIT has a reputation(deserved or not) that it is very un-friendly to this pool. Therefore, a lot of desi folks who think nothing about applying to Stan or HBS or Haas or UCLA, also think that MIT is a lost cause. If MIT can turn around this rep, then I have no doubts their app volumes will increase even more dramatically.

I was going through courses listing on MIT website and they are very rigorous than courses (at-least those I'm familiar with) at other schools. Below is description for optimization course. Its similar to graduate courses in engineering. Is this true for courses in accounting, finance and other areas also?


Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization
Subject: Operations Research/Statistics

Description: In-depth treatment of the modern theory of integer programming and combinatorial optimization, emphasizing geometry, duality and algorithms. Topics include: formulating problems in integer variables, enhancement of formulations, ideal formulations, integer programming duality, linear and semidefinite relaxations, lattices and their applications, the geometry of integer programming, primal methods, cutting plane methods, connections with algebraic geometry, computational complexity, approximation algorithms, heuristic and enumerative algorithms, mixed integer programming and solutions of large scale problems.

I didn't apply because their essays were an absolute pain in the backside. Too many of them and all of them far too boring - it just put me off, and I'm sure there are others in the same boat. I had heaps more fun doing the PPT for Chicago and the creative essay for NYU. Get with the times MIT.....

NC, I think that the thought that Indian IT people dominate applications is way off base. They may be the toughest group but they dont make up the biggest portion. Most schools get roughly 40% or so international applicants, and I would say far fewer than half of those are Indian. Yes a lot of Indians apply but so do a lot of Chinese, europeans, and canadians and when you total these up they outnumber Indians. Also many Indians applying arent from the IT sector either. Plenty of Indians I have met have been in financial services, consulting, and other types of engineering. Indian IT probably in reality make up only around 10% of applicants, they do seem to dominate the messageboards and you dont see many IB or MC on here but reality these people probably apply in far greater numbers.

Just a little perspective. Though Indian IT probably make up a very small percentage of any class so it is a very difficult group.

Sure, you may be right. My point is that if MIT improves their rep, the increased applications from this pool will add to their volume. That's all. My statement about Indian IT is mainly because schools and admissions consultants assert regularly that they form the majority of the apps.

That's what they said during the AdMIT weekend, that they are rigorous specially during the "core". I talked though to a friend of mine - class of 2009 - and he said that he's doing fine (engineering background). I was really impressed with the summer interniship stats for next summer, every single brazilian has already a place! And for the graduates, many - not only my pool here - already have offers, from JP Morgan, GE, to Google.

Hey Kwam,

Thanks for the update... Was wondering if you were interested in and managed to find out about how well MIT grads normally fare in traditional fin ser jobs i.e.: IB, research or even PE and VC?

sounds great, but its a real shame you will be matriculating at chicago gsb instead