Jointly reported by:
Victoria Hwang Jr3S(3)
Goh Zhi Xin Sr3SCA
On 13 May 2023, a talk titled “The Sky’s the Limit – Our Roadmap to MIT” was held at the auditorium of Kuen Cheng High School. Both parents and students arrived on time and the talk kicked off at 8 am sharp. We were honored to have Professor Ewe Hong Tat, a MIT alumnus and Chaang Tze Shen Tristan, an MIT undergraduate student-to-be as our presenters of the day.
By sharing his personal experience, Prof. Ewe proves that failure is the mother of success, we should not be easily defeated and lose the ability to pursue our dreams. Moreover, everyone has different experiences, what matters most is how we choose to handle them and what we have learnt from them.
Prof. Ewe emphasized that curiosity is something that should not be neglected. As a matter of fact, exploring new things consistently leads to improvement. He also stated that the ability to research is a very important personal quality. Top schools will observe whether the candidate is willing to learn continuously and their virtues through their behaviors, differentiate between those who truly have passion and those who are doing it solely for the sake of getting into universities.
Prof. Ewe continued to shed light on MIT’s insights, academic wise and also a thing or two about the campus life it offers. Before ending his presentation, he also mentioned some of the qualities which MIT expects to see in candidates.
Up next, our newly admitted MIT student, Tristan Chaang, was welcomed by a round of applause from the audience. He started off by sharing his journey in Mathematics, which entailed multiple competitions, Olympiad training, and even publishing his own Mathematics textbook. The most memorable accomplishments he has made thus far was definitely going overseas to attend Mathematics competitions and writing his first-ever Mathematics book titled “Techniques for High School Mathematics Contests”.
Tristan also generously explained his admissions experience to MIT. Although he applied in 2021, he was unfortunately deferred during Early Decision, meaning that he was rejected. He, however, did not give up, and was accepted during the Regular Decision in his second application last year. He shared this information while mentioning how we need to go through failures to experience a great deal of success.
Besides that, he talked about the requirements to apply for universities overseas:
- 2 or 3 letters of recommendation (from both Science and Humanities teachers)
- Must take SAT/ACT
- High school transcript (full grades from high school)
- 5 scholastic and non-scholastic awards each
- Describe extracurricular/summer activities
- Short response essay
Even though most people assume that famous universities only admit students who have excellent grades, Tristan had more to say about it. He recommended everyone to read a blogpost called “Applying Sideways” by Chris Peterson SM’13 as it contains information relating to decisions, admissions, and advice about MIT. One piece of info that he has mentioned is that MIT did not admit a student who created a fully-functional nuclear reactor in his garage, which was enough to prove that there is more to education than intelligence. MIT admissions officers typically look for students who do well in school, are kind, and pursue their passion with great ambition. To quote, “Don’t do things to get into MIT, instead pursue your true passion”.
Once Tristan had finished off his speech, the long awaited Q&A session had begun. These questions were asked by both students and parents.
Q: Are famous universities necessary for my child?
A: Famous universities are only “famous”. I personally decided to apply for MIT because I had watched their open-courses and it encouraged me to apply because of their engaging education and lecturers. I also really liked the extracurricular activities the school provided.
Q: What should I do if my child doesn’t follow a set schedule for studying?
A: Everyone has different interests, so maybe once your child gets a grasp of their passion, they will start to pursue it even further. As parents, we should support our children. They should find joy in learning.
Q&A Session