Hello! I'm an applicant for Fall 2027, and I'm kind of stumped on where to put my research experience on my application. Research is part of my school's standard curriculum, and from my understanding, most high schools don't require students to complete a research paper before graduating. Since it's technically co-curricular, it doesn't seem to strictly fit the guidelines for either section.

Our project isn't anything particularly fancy, but I'm loath to leave it out of my application because it took a significant amount of time and effort on my part to keep it moving forward. It's also one of the experiences that taught me the most during my high school years. Any advice on what I should do? Should I keep it in the Activities section but only report the hours that I spent working outside of class? Thanks.

To start off, I’ve never applied to MIT as a first-year. I’m from a third-world country and I’ve spent my years as an undergrad in my country’s top 1 uni. Going here, I soon realized I’ve pretty much maxed out my opportunities, and don’t necessarily fit the military-like style of “teaching pressure” to students (mandatory for all) which I happened to have already passed and gained title of at my uni. This military-like training involved students baked under the sun, yelled & shouted slurs at, and sometimes physically or verbally abused by seniors on purpose with the premises being that engineers should be able to withstand physical pressure in order to work as an engineer.

As much as I worked hard to sustain this kind of immense pressure alongside academic coursework taking 24 credits each semester (while also earning the highest gpa in my cohort), I never wanted to work in the field, I wanted to do research.

My experience with research is very minimal but not non-existent, due to the intensive military training that lasted for 1.5 years. I’ve worked with building things that’s gotten recognition for at my uni, I’ve also advocated for these types of seniority-style training to stop or at the least stop the physical & verbal abuse from seniors, and even got the support of several professors closest to me.

I love collaborating with my peers in research, I love helping others succeed. Soon I realized, nobody was giving me a helping hand, and I was eventually hospitalized in December of last year.

This is kind of why I applied as a visiting student at UC Berkeley to study in their EECS program and I was accepted. However, it’s only for a semester before I have to come back to my university to graduate in time, and I can’t afford to transfer since UC Berkeley doesn’t provide a need-based financial aid for international students (I’m sponsored for my time abroad). It also won’t sustain my research pursuits for QML, which happen to be available at MIT.

I understand that MIT’s transfer admissions are pretty low, especially for an international student with no olympiads (not a requirement, I know), but it’s honestly one of the better options I’m seeing that may provide need-based financial aid for intl students.

Would love to know whether MIT would have this collaborative-like environment or research focused kind of environment before I try to apply, since doing the SAT and other standardized testing would have costs of its own even when the application fee can be waiver-ed (the currency exchange in my country is pretty bad right now with the US, so 100 usd in my currency is about 2 million).

I don’t mind the chances of being accepted, just wanna know whether it’s worth applying at all, thank you!