How to get into MIT

So i was at local Math competition with about 25 local schools and close to 1,000 kids (Berkeley came in second by a few points...we have to get some kids to study the new test on Statistics). In the sponsors lounge while enjoying some coffee and donuts, two different volunteering parents (one from Palm Harbor IB and another from Robinson IB) asked me: "How did your son get into MIT?"

IB stands for International Baccalaureate. It is the public schools attempt to compete with the private schools. They basically get the smartest hardest working top 200 kids in a school of 3,000 students and put them with the smartest hardest working teachers, through a college prep curriculum where they end up in AP Cal, AP Bio, AP English, AP History their senior year. Education beat writer Jay Mathews of the Washington Post loves the IB program. I personally think you can accomplish the same thing with the AP program, but i understand you have to give it a fancy name and called it something different than what they do in the private schools like Tampa Berkeley, Jacksonville Bolles, Orlando Lake Highland and Ft Lauderdale Pinecrest.

So i thought about that question. How did your son get into MIT. First let me start off by saying NO ONE will ever know the REAL reason why anyone gets into any school. Over my 40 years of being in education, i can only say that there are many variables and it differs from school to school, from year to year. Many of the variables are beyond any one's control. Usually there is also luck involved.

I have enough stories to fill a book. Some that i know personally was a nephew who applied to Yale as Chris Mooney and got rejected. Re-applied as Christopher Suarez and got accepted. Another nephew who applied to Georgetown for the International Law program and rejected. Re-applied to the Georgetown for International Studies and got accepted.

There is no doubt that perseverance helps. College want to see and like to read about kids who really want to come to THEIR schools, not just apply to 10 schools.

Even in my son's case, he originally applied for early action at MIT. He had to submit a few more letters before they took him in the regular admissions period.

I also want to add that the college does NOT make or break a person. Most people will be successful in life NO MATTER where they go to school. And in today's world, many claim that graduate school is what really carries the weight in the business world.

Have you ever gone to a doctors office, look at his diploma and walked out because he or she did not go to Duke or John Hopkins ?

I personally was signed to play at Jacksonville University because the Head coach from JU went to the WRONG gym and saw me playing (all told in my book Two Second to Go, blogged here). The first time the coach from JU called my house, i was visiting my brother at Villanova...he thought i was being recruited by Villanova...lol. The second time he called my house, i was at Georgetown University playing pick up ball, he thought i was being recruited by GU...lol

And in the end the only reason i was signed by JU over spring break of my senior year, was because some kid in NY turned them down the night before. By The Way, i ended STARTING on that JU team my FRESHMAN year !! I am so glad i turned down Harvard and Holy Cross and Bucknell and yes, Georgetown University.

I tell my senior girls if they really want to get into UFlorida, just put down you want to study engineering. They only have 20% females in that program, and will knock the door down to get more girls into that program. Of course you have to have the gpa and SAT scores to get in too.

Getting back to my son and how to get into MIT. Like i said before there are many variables.

One was that MIT has just hired a new FEMALE president (beating Harvard to punch AGAIN !!) and she stated that if Stanford and Duke could have academics excellence and good sports too, so could MIT (by the way Harvard's football team went undefeated the year before). So she instructed the admissions committee to give us much weight to captains of sports teams as to class president or school newspaper editor. I notice that first year that many of the best players at MIT were freshman. It was one of the best sports years for MIT. In basketball, they eventually won 20 games for the first time in the school's 100 year history of playing basketball. And the following year they went to the D3 NCAA tournament for the first time in the school's history.

The fact that my son was 6'5" and played 4 years of varsity basketball and was captain his senior year helped. Plus they won three district titles. He also played football his freshman year and ran track his senior year.

Second my son had straight A's at a very prestigious high school. But not too many students from his high school get into MIT. And some who do get in, do not end up going to MIT because they do not give scholarships like Harvard or State schools.

He took several AP courses, including AP Calculus, AP Bio, AP Physics, AP Chemistry.

He was also elected into student government by his the student body.

He started the R/C club and learned how to fly RC planes. Which was very important later on in his studies at MIT. He ended up winning a national R/C competition while at MIT.

Even with all that and very high SAT scores, he was still deferred at MIT.

Cal Tech in California offered him a $100,000 Presidential scholarship. UFlorida offered him a full ride including spending money every month.

It also helped that we had several Berkeley alums who were very successful at MIT. Evan Pruitt played soccer for MIT. Lee Murfee, PhD also played soccer for MIT. Everet Redmond, PhD majored in nuclear engineering. So Berkeley Prep had a good school rep. My bother Mel earned his Masters degree at MIT and still had many connections with several professors there. I also had some friends on the faculty and they kept encouraging me and my son to keep writing letters to the admissions committee. You never know we will put one candidate over the top.

Brandon wrote about his experience with seeing the Space Shuttle take off in Florida and wanting to be involved in travel to MARS. He also wrote about dealing with his mom getting breast cancer and having to fight to stay alive. I wrote about Brandon babysitting at age 14, which was very unusual for a boy. And working at age 15.

Brandon also spent two weeks of his summer vacation at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

And then we got lucky. The best student with the highest SAT scores, decided NOT to go to MIT, but enrolled in Harvard instead. Harvard gave him a full ride.

So now we had to get a college loan for $120,000 to help pay for expenses even after he was awarded a $60,000 financial package.

Was it worth it ? You dam right it was. While his fellow high school classmates came home to live with their parents because of the terrible job market (only 15% of his high school graduating class of 2005 got a job out of college in 2009...remember the depression of 2008 and 2009) Brandon got 6 job offers from the leading engineering companies in the country.

He patented his first RC plane in 2010 and show it off to the TOP Brass at the Pentagon.

Oh did i mention i was born in Cuba, so that makes Brandon a first generation American. We have the Kennedies to thank for that little added mind set in Boston.