We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it. (100-200 words)

Only a few of you will have the natural instinct to be 100% honest here and let loose. The REST of you are likely going to ask yourselves some version of the following: “what can I say here that will impress the admissions committee the most”? Dear, dear applicant… this is your opportunity to unclench, and let loose. If your answer here is boring, guess what that says about you. If your answer here feels overly manufactured, guess what that says about you.

MIT has the luxury of picking out, from among the smartest candidates on planet Earth, the individuals who ALSO have a vibrant personality that will synergize well with other geniuses. So they get to take 100 over-qualified candidates, and find the 5 or so that light it up for them the most. Don’t blow these opportunities to be cool and likable. The way to be likable is to make honest admissions here, and prove that you’re unafraid to do so.

So, what stuff actually gives you pleasure? What stuff lessens stress? What stuff makes you smile? What stuff makes you giddy? What stuff makes you feel alive? Make a list. Aim for ten items. Ten things that no one around you necessarily knows about. Maybe they do, but maybe they don’t. Maybe these things that you do for the pleasure of it are private or hidden escapes that don’t appear on any bulletin boards in your school. Doesn’t matter. Make a list of ten.

Okay, phew. Hopefully, that was fun. In fact, hopefully, it became MORE fun once you started to get into the groove a bit. But now, you have a list of ten things. Which of these things do you think someone else MIGHT write about? Cross it out.

How many items are left? (If you have zero items left, we have another plan for you which we’ll get to in a minute.) Of these remaining items, which one feels the most unusual, or the one that is most “you”? Which one has a unique story behind it? Which one CONTRASTS with your profile the most? Let’s say your resume is chock full of science awards… imagine how boring it would be to learn that in your spare time, you like to experiment with growing plants. Good lord. It would be much cooler if instead you talked about how you are obsessed with costumes. Costumes in movies, theatre, Halloween… anything involving a costume, you’re all over it. (Weird! And cool!) Or, that you are determined to make a new flavor of soft drink, and in your spare time, you combine different fruit juices and vegetable extracts and other ingredients. Or, you’re extremely obsessed with Asian pop music, and you’re a blond-haired blue-eyed Alabaman with an uncomfortable history of not-so-open-minded grandparents.

Conflict is interesting. Clashes are interesting. Surprises are interesting. Think about what your “resume” says. And then see if anything on your list of genuine hobbies or interests somehow draws a contrast to it or “adds dimensionality.” It’s boring when everything you do feels predictable. Think about the best books or movies. Did any of them lack conflict?

Oh, and as promised, for those of you who lined-out all ten possibilities, fret not. Either you can take another swing with an additional five. Or, you “un-cross-out” those ten and look at them another way. Instead of asking whether someone else may talk about these, ask yourself if your particular relationship with any item on your list is somehow unique. For example, yes, I’m a Marvel comic book geek just like a million others, but… not in the same way. My obsession is with … {insert unusual twist that dismantles the possibility that someone else will write about the same thing}. This way, you can write about something someone else might, but in a completely different – and surprising – way.

Once you lock the thing or things you’re gonna write about, here’s a way to structure it:

1. Two options for opening this sucker. You can either tell us about the thing straight away: What it is, what you do, how you got into it, why you like it, etc. Or, you can set up what kind of stuff your “busy schedule” is chock full of, and what’s MISSING that’s CRUCIAL TO UNDERSTANDING YOUR SOUL. This will SET UP your reveal for “the thing you do purely for pleasure.” Either way will work just fine. [40-70 words]
2. For Part II, you’ll wanna make mention of how this activity fits into your overall picture. Does this fill a void? Does it counterbalance something else? If you took this AWAY, what do you think would happen to your state of mind and emotional balance? Hopefully… something. This is your chance to identify what that something is, and explain it to us. [30-60 words]

Learn more and explore each step of MIT’s undergraduate application process here.

MIT brings people with diverse backgrounds together to collaborate, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to lending a helping hand. Describe one way you have collaborated with others to learn from them, with them, or contribute to your community together. (100-200 words)

The name of the game here is humility and ‘growth mindset.’ Are you someone who is more interested in solving problems than being right? Or are you the type of person who loves saying ‘no’ to people because it makes you feel powerful?

This one can’t really be faked, and therefore, tip of the hat to MIT for asking a question that only truly ‘growth mindset’ and ‘humble’ seekers can answer credibly. 

To answer this question well, you need to understand (and embrace) the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And it can’t be lip service. Be very careful here, and understand that when students don’t really ‘get’ this concept, but can ‘say the right words’ to make it seem as though they very much get and embrace this concept, it always shows. 100% of the time. If this doesn’t come naturally to you, then this may then be a neat opportunity for you to go through an important reckoning where you grapple with this idea, to understand it as faithfully as you can. You can retroactively apply that to a situation where you may have gone through the moves of participating in a team, without fully embracing it, but graft this insight onto it, and even discuss that evolution in your thinking. Or, you really do ‘get’ this concept, and have the experiences to draw from. In either case, the trick is to show how thoughtful you are of this concept.

What does it mean to collaborate? It’s not just joining forces, that’s too easy, and misses the entire point. Usually, a collaboration requires a willingness to relinquish control. It means you may need to swallow your pride, or develop comfort around an aspect being suboptimal in your view, in order for the entire project to carry out. It may mean doing something you’re not perfectly comfortable with, in case doing so facilitates someone else’s ability to succeed, and that that is part of an overall bigger win. A true collaboration comes with all kinds of trades and compromise and strategy and tactical savvy, and also emotional intelligence. Reading people. Being able to adapt, bend, pivot, improvise.

Another key phrase to focus on here is ‘learn from.’ This happens every year, and it amazes us every time it happens. The strongest applicants – the ones with the highest scores, and coolest accomplishments – are also the ones who seem to want to learn more, and don’t rate themselves as being the greatest. In contrast, amusingly, the applicants who haven’t achieved nearly as much, but have done reasonably well, are often eager to puff themselves up and tend to rate themselves as high as possible, and often lack a ‘seeker’ mentality. If you’re gambling on someone who is most likely to be wildly successful later in life, you pick the student who is eager to learn from others. That person is going to get better and better and better and better, while the other kid may be ‘the high school prom king’ at age 17, but is going to flame out fast.

Where in your life can you show evidence of genuinely wanting to learn from others in a community setting? Sometimes the coolest version of this can come from wanting to learn from your peers, also known as folks you may view as your competitors (!). If in your story, you can provide evidence (genuine, sincere evidence) that you recognize that others may have something to teach you, this is strong. 

Okay, so now that we’ve thought through the key themes, let’s organize a first draft:

1. Establish the goal first. And then the plan. Was it always a group thing? Or could it have been a solo project that you realized was better served if executed as a team? Or was it always a community project to begin with, that you simply participated in? Any of the above is fair game, just set up for us what the end goal was.
2. Now explain what the ‘collaboration’ entailed, with a focus on the trials and tribulations that came with it. There must have been a reason this was fraught, whether internally for you, or because there were challenges inherent to the circumstances. Explain some of your thought processes along the way, grappling with the value of teamwork, versus the value in going solo, etc. Or not. Just explain what made this situation challenging, tricky, high stakes, unique, thought-provoking, etc. 
3. Now explain what you learned about the meaning of collaboration, about humility, about learning from others, etc. It doesn’t need to be the case that this experience reaffirmed beliefs you already had that were perfect from the start. In fact, usually these stories tend to be stronger when you reveal that you learned something along the way which means (necessarily) that you began the experience ‘less evolved’ than how you were by the end. Whether it was observation, or analyzing some kind of growth, take us through it.
4. How had this experience shaped the way you *now* approach the prospect of collaboration? Let’s get a forward-looking sense here, quickly.

100-200 words is not much space, but enough to capture all these meaty concepts!

Learn more and explore each step of MIT’s undergraduate application process here.

While some reach their goals following well-trodden paths, others blaze their own trails achieving the unexpected. In what ways have you done something different than what was expected in your educational journey? (100-200 words)

This is a neat question.

Before we get into it, one high-level piece of advice. Resist telling a story about an unexpected thing you did, where the focus is on how cool or interesting or brave the unexpected thing was. When applicants do this, it almost always backfires. Applicant does ‘an unexpected thing.’ But then the tone and implication of the essay is ‘Check out how amazing this unexpected this is, and therefore what that says about me!” And then here’s what happens: the reader thinks, “You think *that’s* unexpected? Well well well. Let me show you ten examples from just today of students who did more exciting, bolder, more interesting unexpected things!” To focus on the coolness of the ‘different thing’ you did is to invite a defensive posture in your reader.

Instead, make the story about why you chose to do something unexpected, what that was like for you, and how it went. Was it easy? Was it difficult? What was going through your mind before, during, and after? If you focus everything on that aspect, you’re sure to make it less about ‘compare my version to someone else’ and more about ‘compare my self-awareness, introspection, and thoughtfulness’ to anyone in the arena. That is the contest you very much want to enter!

Okay so, now that we have a strong orienting or approach principle, you can start leafing through your experiences, searching for an instance where something was expected, but you went a different way. Being different for its own sake isn’t all that cool, and also not that hard. The cool versions are ones that come with both purpose, and risk. When you were told to do something, or deliver something, or execute something, and you instead opted to do something different, what was it that made you consider a different path? What were you hoping to gain? By not doing what was expected, what might the consequences have been? Btw, nowhere is it said that this needs to be a ‘success’ story. In fact, you can think of ‘success’ here not in the outcome, but rather the approach. To have dared to do something unexpected IS to have succeeded, outcome notwithstanding. The key lies in the thought process and boldness that went into the decision itself. Take us through the rationale, your weighing of outcomes, the whole thing. What did you learn, not from the result of the attempt, but from the daring to try something different itself? 

Here’s a simple structure to get you on the right track:

1. Establish the original expectation, straightforwardly, without judgment. It should seem perfectly reasonable, and clear.
2. Now explain the light bulb (or knot in your stomach, whatever your reaction was!) that went off in you when presented this choice. What wasn’t sitting right? Or what new idea did it inspire? What gave you pause, propelled you to think differently, resist, whatever your response was? Take us through the conflict and reasoning you went through at the time.
3. Mentioning the outcome briefly if you want, assess the process of choosing an unexpected route, the risk you took, how it all felt. 

(If you have more than one example, you can use this general structure to sort through your stories, before writing them.) This will get you a credible first draft and then we can dig deep from there!

Learn more and explore each step of MIT’s undergraduate application process here.

How did you manage a situation or challenge that you didn’t expect? What did you learn from it? (100-200 words)

One key word to consider here: vulnerability. We need to hear about a time when you were knocked off balance. A time when you were absolutely uncertain of the outcome. When you doubted yourself. Maybe even when you lost faith in yourself. Certainly, a time when you felt like you didn’t know the answer. Or a time when you “did” know the answer… and you were wrong. The more willing you are to admit any of these, the more likely you are to seem like someone who has the ability to grow, and to play in the big leagues.

Your first challenge is to pick one example of when you made the biggest miscalculation of your life, or felt the most unsure of yourself… list a few examples that come to mind, and then focus on the one that represented the biggest “belly-flop.” The biggest blunder. The worst mistake. The most vulnerable moment, etc. Extremes are our friend here.

1. Take us quickly through your initial sense of things. The time ‘before the unexpected thing happened.’ Tell it to us in real time as though you were recording your thought process while it was happening; in other words, back when you believed you knew what was coming next. This is key.
2. Then explain the twist, what went wrong, the unexpected thing. Don’t dwell on the details much, just give us the gist. 
3. Now, and most importantly, take us through how you processed this twist. This is the part where you talk about feeling weightless, disappointed, angry, no longer confident, whatever the cocktail of emotions was… we want to know it all. Take your time, be honest and admit to it all, fully. The ‘admitting of it’ is most of the point here. “Can you be comfortable admitting that”? Because those who can… are the strongest amongst us.
4. Now, walk us through the lessons learned. See, it’s less about whether or how you ‘solved’ the twist, or even *if* you did, and more about learning how you deal with the unexpected. This is what MIT wants to gamble on. They don’t care about the outcome of this story, they care about the kid who learned something they’ll take forward and apply to future uncertainty. What did you learn? 

This essay is all about “can this kid handle major curveballs”? And not just can you handle em, but maybe… have you learned from enough curveballs in the past that now you CRAVE them because that’s how you grow and develop the best? We hope you’re familiar with curveballs and know how to hit em, because your first year MIT (or any college, frankly) is going to be a barrage of one curveball after the next.

Learn more and explore each step of MIT’s undergraduate application process here.

There is also one final, open-ended, additional-information text box where you can tell us anything else you think we really ought to know.

The only thing that should go here is a FACET to your overall profile that’s utterly MISSING from your application. Or, a red flag in your profile that needs addressing (bad test scores, a blip in your grades, something that you believe doesn’t represent you properly). Other than those two things, don’t just flesh out something that they’ve either “gotten” already, or worse, doesn’t advance their understanding of you in any way.

If your application is ridiculously lop-sided in ANY direction, and there’s MORE dimensionality to you that absolutely MUST be conveyed, find a coooooool way to convey it. This is gonna vary from candidate to candidate, but this extra thing MIGHT be the kind of thing you can just state outright and it’ll work beautifully. Or, you’ll need to package it ever-so-carefully (like in a humorous or creative way, or something), to make it WORK. Impossible to give examples because it’s all part of a complex, holistic assessment of what the REST of the application sums to say about you, and what’s missing, and therefore… what to include and how to include it.

Learn more and explore each step of MIT’s undergraduate application process here.