today I'm going to be showing you guys exactly how to get into MIT how's it going my name is Ashton Herndon and as you can probably tell by now pursuing a career in the film industry has kind of become my thing I mean come on this should come as no surprise now and even though I usually hide myself up as the college admissions Guru there's been one secret that I've been hiding that I just have to get off my chest I am terrible with numbers I know I know it's very devastating to hear but that didn't stop me from trying to be the best damn student out there when I was in high school I would do anything and everything I could to be the most lethal academic weapon I mean I would pack my schedule with a bunch of different clubs try and build a ton of different inventions and really do anything I could to get into the best colleges possible and even though I had my heart set on the harvards and yells of the world one faithful morning is I was watching the best Boston campus tour out there I came across the one tool that forever changed my whole perspective on college MIT baby I mean for First Sight MIT was a match made in heaven from the beautiful campus to the insanely smart students endless resources crazy buildings and doing it all is one of the best schools in the country I started to think to myself hey I could really fit in here but even though seeing this place was a dream come true I became absolutely terrified because I realized that getting in here would be a lot harder than I thought it would be and after hearing that emissions are impossible but also very easy to get around and that it's all about the scores but also only about your personality I had no idea how to feel about MIT anymore and I started the question if I even stood a chance at getting in and that's why I'm here today I know that getting into college can be a super stressful process and at times it really does feel impossible to get into these amazing schools but lucky enough for you I got a couple tricks up my sleeve to help you guys get a guaranteed spot here so today we're taking a little road trip so today we're going into one of the most intelligent places in America to see just how good MIT really is and even though it may seem like you have to be a human calculator to get in here there's a ton of different people out there that got in a completely different way than you think from International students to D1 athletes to even a couple of coding Geniuses out there no Stones being left unturned today baby all right we're keeping the interview train rolling today baby I mean yesterday we just finished up all the Harvard interviews which you can check out right here and lucky enough for us there's another world-class School filled with the best of the best students literally two minutes away so I mean I can just feel the knowledge pouring in by just simply being here I love it all right you ready ah see you're catching on now baby all right let's do this excuse me excuse me excuse me excuse me do you guys mind if I ask you a couple questions for a YouTube video yeah sure yeah sure yeah for sure yes yeah yeah of course yeah go ahead all right awesome you ready yeah yeah yeah let's go I'm ready you nervous maybe a little a little I'm definitely a bit nervous no slightly it's okay we got this we got this I have a little trick and I've done it at every school and it works every time I promise we're gonna take a simple deep breath here inhale and exhale you feel any better like Loki yeah I see I told you it works are you ready all right let's do it so first question what is your name were you from and how many years have you been at MIT my name is treya Kai McLennan Conrad case I'm from Oklahoma Wyoming Virginia Southeast London San Diego Miami Bay Area California Oakland California Aurora Colorado Baton Rouge Louisiana and I've been here for three years one year two and a half years less than a year a little less than a year a semester this is my second semester I'm a freshman I'm a freshman I'm a sophomore I'm a first year first year third year third year I am a first year wow we got a newbie here welcome welcome and what was your number one reason for coming to MIT I mean it's MIT it's one of the most in the country I don't know to be honest it's just like a really good school with a good reputation is the best school that I could come like this is the best school ever let's go get academics make a lot of money when you graduate it's pretty appealing I guess it was the American dream I would say it was like a childhood dream and then like when I became reality I just had to do it I really wanted to be academically fulfilled I feel like I wasn't really going to get that in Louisiana so when I got in it was like kind of a no-brainer and I got accepted I was full of joy so this is a dream come true match made in heaven love to hear it obviously everyone here is very into stem so I was very interested in like the topics and courses I believe it's been an interesting computer science like the best school for that they have a really good Aerospace program the curriculum here is way more Hands-On than a lot of schools I always wanted to like go to a place where I could like build stuff and coming here for a preview weekend the people are just really cool I didn't like realize this at first but the social scene is also pretty good I also play on the squash team here so I really liked all the guys on the team and I just like it was just like a really good fit for me I think so oh that's a big squash guy I love it so it might be a bit strange but essentially around 2021 I watched Spider-Man and I thought you know because like Tom Holland and everyone else are like getting in or not getting in I thought let me try I just thought that it would be cool to come over to the US from the UK so yeah that's another reason that is definitely the most interesting answer we've gotten today that's awesome I love that so obviously there's a ton of different reasons out there to come to MIT and whether you're a math whiz an artist or even just a well-rounded person there's a million different reasons to come here but at the end of the day this place isn't ranked number two in the country for no reason so all the coursework may not mean that everyone's happy with their decision so I decided to see if this place really lives up to the hype on a scale of one to ten how happy are you at that decision not because the school's not awesome it is but rather because I came here to find a job and like the Market's pretty terrible right now I'd say nine nine nine and a half maybe nine eight I think eight is a bit too low I would say a ten ten ten as well oh like 10 11 10 out of ten for sure also a ten you're the same exact reason honestly I did not think it was gonna be as chill as it was I thought it'd be super competitive and Cutthroat but it's super collaborative everyone loves to work together they love doing school but they also love going out as well just chilling out I like school but I also like having fun I think there's a good mix of that here at least for me it's a lot of fun that people are cool kind of just intense in like a in like a good way overall like at least academically I feel very a bit too satisfied it's a substantial workload it's a lot sometimes it's really hard classes are really hard here very demanding on the academic level but I mean that's what I signed up for sometimes you're just gonna be like grinding studying like all day but like they're a lot of fun people I mean it's definitely tough at times but I think overall like I really like what I'm doing and I like all the people here and I like Boston I think every semester actually gets better as you know I make more connections and my friendships get more solid now and then there's some weeks where it you know it goes down to like eight and seven territory but um I'm really enjoying my classes as you get older so I think it all evens out yeah wow that was very insightful great answer great answer damn I mean from the looks of it MIT really does live up to be everything you wanted more and even though this place May truly live up to that number two status there's still the question of whether or not you actually get accepted in the first place but even after hearing a ton of different rumors about how impossible it is to get in here you'd be pretty surprised with some of the responses we got so obviously you got into MIT which means you had some pretty good high school stats yeah I guess so what was your GPA your test scores and were you in any extracurriculars in high school I don't know man no one here knows how they got in so EPA I'm not sure about weighted but it was like 3. 98 397 out of four three nine nine unweighted I got one B I got like 1B freshman year I had a 4. 0 in high school 4.
0 4. 0 4. 0 GPA 4.
0 and weighted GPA all A's in high school I had like a near perfect GPM I got like 1B throughout the entirety of high school because like it was the pandemic and I could not be bothered to take a lot in exams so the system's a bit different in friends I mean for example in the US so I did GCS and air levels and I got the top grades and all of them so 10 grade nines at GCSE and four a stars at a level like a 95. 6 out of 100 maybe a 3. 7 of my French school I look at you guys very well-rounded love to hear it my SAT scores I super scored I took it a couple of times I think I ended with a 15 60 15 50 15 50 15 50 on the SAT 15 20 15 20 15 80 15 90.
1590 on the SAT we don't talk about sat we but ac2 is 36 36 on the ACT 35 Act was like a 34 sat was like a 15 50 or something dang okay okay extracurriculars I was like very involved in squash I was on the track team I also competed for my County at the national championships I played soccer um in basketball I'm on the soccer team here but I played soccer I'm on the soccer team here I did track in high school I do track here I also did soccer in high school I played soccer and I was recruited by the track coach here I did a bunch of like web development stuff and like coding projects on my own like through a lot of my time towards Mu Alpha Beta which was like this math Honor Society math team it's a math team stuff math and physics competitions in high school some music stuff some singing I sung a bit I guess I did a traditional Chinese instrument I played piano in like jazz band I played percussion in like School band I also founded a club for black students at my school which was predominantly white so it was kind of a novel thing honestly I include a lot of personal stuff on my extracurriculars like hanging out with my grandma that honestly like ended up being a big part of my application so I had a little EV Club where you convert a gas car to Electric so that's a big one wow damn next Elon Musk over here hopefully we'll see we'll see so as you can probably tell by now there really is no geeky stereotype or academic status that defines MIT and honestly these are by far some of the nicest students I've ever interviewed but at the end of the day the most important part of picking the right college is finding a place where you can truly be happy and lucky enough for you we got a ton of different answers to see if MIT would be the perfect place for you and I have one final question so now that you've been at MIT the amount of time that you have if you were to go back to high school do it all over again do you still think that you would have chosen MIT oh yeah totally yeah I think so yeah I think so yes yeah I do yeah hundred percent yeah 100 100 if I got accepted I would definitely still go to MIT it also ended up being away so I don't think there's any could change I definitely would have like oceans applied to more schools in the west but [ __ ] happens I'm not sure what I've picked MIT because I'm trying to get into Investment Banking like in New York for a more kind of traditional technical you know engineering stuff I don't think there's a school that comes even close to what MIT has to offer sometimes it's tough like sometimes I'll be sitting in the library like five hours six hours in a row just like why did I come here like it's really worth it maybe it's the most work maybe it's really rigorous but I feel engaged and I feel like I'm getting a deeper level of learning that I wouldn't have been able to get really anywhere else during the tough times there I think once you're on the other side of them and you look back on how much you've learned um I think there's like zero regrets on any of it the opportunities here are incredible so there's so many different like work opportunities research opportunities MIT like yeah and it's like it's everything I could have asked for I really enjoy what I'm studying I really enjoy like all the classes and like I really like campus culture and the people here the people here the place just everything that happens here just everything I dream do if so you heard it here first folks a dream come true so if you know all these kids come from a million different walks of life the overall message just keeps getting stronger almost everyone we talked to said that they wouldn't change where they are today and even if it wasn't exactly what they had in mind these amazing students ended up exactly where they were meant to be life is always going to throw challenges at and at times it may seem impossible to keep going but at the end of the day going to college at MIT isn't going to be easy so as long as you push through and keep your end goal in mind getting into your dream School is gonna be a lot less scary than you think just take a deep breath everything's gonna work out perfectly you got this I believe in you so with that being said if you guys found this video helpful please make sure to give it a thumbs up I do respond to every single comment so if you have any other questions or video ideas make sure to leave them down below I do have a playlist of everything you need to know about college so if you want to go check it out it'll be right here and if you want to join the family of over 5.
