正式加入MIT大军

有没有娃想上MIT的虎爸虎妈？我家娃想上MIT， 我看了下MIT的录取率和要求，这比登天还难啊。 GPA4.2以上， 大赛金牌， 还要有一手绝活。娃认定了MIT， 我也不好泼凉水， 希望在这里跟大家学习怎么准备四年高中， 怎么申请MIT。 先谢谢大家， 祝大家龙年大吉， 梦想都成真！

下面这个十几年前的故事现在没有可能了吧

My husband got into MIT after his guidance counselor and everyone else told him not to bother applying. And that's just it: for many “normal” students, the hardest part about getting in to MIT or another top college/university is simply daring to apply.

For context, my husband’s high school had metal detectors at the doors and fights broke out daily. It offered all of five AP classes; my husband didn't know more existed. His senior year, he had to miss one so that he could go home early every day and babysit his younger siblings. He wasn't in tons of sports or clubs or fancy extracurriculars: he worked in a game store at the mall, cleaning up after punk kids who knocked over display cases. Almost NOBODY from my husband’s high school went to school out of state, and no one saw a reason he should be any different.

Except for my husband, of course—and MIT. What's not “normal” about the man I married is that at 17 he had the guts to take the huge risk of applying. As a teacher who has known many students from similar schools, I now am aware how rare it is for these kids to believe that they belong somewhere like MIT. Schools like this, sadly, reinforce the idea that elite schools are beyond the reach of these students.

But MIT is exceptionally egalitarian for a top school. They're merit-based and they're ridiculously good and spying students who look totally normal but have the fire and skills to succeed. They saw things on my husband’s application that his guidance counselor missed: how he spent his hard earned money buying tools and parts to build drones and go-karts every day in the garage. How babysitting his younger sister every day helped him become incredibly mature and responsible. How DARING to apply to MIT when no one in his school and done so in years suggested he had the fire and willpower to succeed there.

Ten years later, my husband has an aerospace degree from what is arguably the top engineering school in the world, an ungodly amount of debt, and has made some of the best friends anyone could ask for, with whom he started his own company. He's still an incredibly normal person who spends most of his out-of-office time doing what anyone else would do. At this point in our lives that means chores, errands, and video games.

The moral I draw from his experience is that anyone who wants to apply to MIT should do so, and especially those students who seem, or think they are, “normal.” MIT will have to turn down lots of these people, because yes, admissions at highly selective schools is somewhat of a crapshoot. But they will also select lots of ordinary high schoolers from around the world who they understand have what it takes to be part of that community. And desire is a huge part of it. So if you really want to be at MIT, go for it!!