Does MIT Admissions Value Black Students? Their Decreasing Black Enrollment and Dismissive Recruitment Approaches Suggest Otherwise

Field Note 7

As a college admissions consultant with years of experience mentoring students—many of them Black—through the complex admissions process, I have a front-row seat to the realities institutions face when it comes to diversity.

MIT has publicly stated time and again that they want more Black students on their campus, but my experiences paint a different picture.

For years, I’ve raised my hand, saying, “I have Black students interested in MIT.” I’ve reached out to multiple representatives to share insights on what’s working, what’s not, and to highlight the very students MIT claims they want. Yet, time and again, my efforts are dismissed and ignored.

Only two members of MIT’s admissions team have shown genuine interest in my students. One was at a September conference, where we couldn’t delve deeply into the matter, and the other at an inclusion and equity conference in July. After that moment of attention, I felt encouraged and renewed my efforts to recruit Black students this season.

Less than a month later, I informed someone else at MIT that I had Black students eager to apply but hesitant to do so. Rather than asking how they could help, they rattled off the existing programs to recruit Black students. They did not seem interested at all in my students. My Black students were dismissed before they even had a chance.

The message during this interaction and previous interactions has been clear: we have our ways of getting Black students; we’re not interested in working with you or yours.

In my experience, MIT has built a wall of trusted sources. If Black students don’t engage with those sources, they’re not worth MIT’s time. In my experience, it’s rare for anyone from an underrepresented group applying outside their established networks to be seen as valuable, no matter how qualified or motivated.

My Black students in my community have tried to engage without me as well. They’ve shown up where MIT actively recruits, only to return disheartened. While their non-Black peers received materials, brochures, and encouragement, my students were met with skepticism. They were made to feel MIT wasn’t for them, despite being just as capable—if not more—than their peers.

The issue isn’t just MIT’s difficulty in recruiting Black students—it’s that their admissions culture dismisses Black students and others from underrepresented groups long before the application process begins. This attitude prevents talented, qualified students from even trying.

In a recent blog post, “MIT After SFFA,” Stu Schmill described MIT’s efforts to expand recruitment to improve access while lamenting the underrepresentation of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds. He warned that MIT’s inability to draw from the full range of human talent threatens the strength of MIT’s education and community.

I find it ironic that MIT claims to struggle to find underrepresented students while ignoring the solutions offered by my colleagues and me. We’ve reached out to Stu Schmill and others at MIT admissions, letting them know about a diverse pool of students—including Black students—who just need encouragement from someone outside our community. When we compare notes, the result is always the same: we’re dismissed or ignored.

Too often, I and others have walked away feeling diminished, as though MIT admissions centers their own fragility, invokes victimhood, and reduces us to an aggressor simply for sharing our experiences.

Still, I and others can’t deny students the chance at an MIT education. I will continue encouraging those I feel are qualified to apply, knowing that I will likely do so without much support from MIT.

In the absence of that support, my students gravitate toward putting applications in at and enrolling in peer institutions like CalTech, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and Carnegie Mellon. These schools, while far from perfect and at times facing issues that are concerning, have shown a much stronger commitment to offering the guidance and reassurance my students need to feel confident in submitting their applications, or at the very least, addressing the issues that hinder recruitment. These institutions have also been more open to welcoming a wider variety of Black students, even when they come from programs or high schools that are not part of an existing pipeline or schools the college regularly engages with.

In my experience, that is not the case with MIT. After experience, I came to the conclusion that MIT admissions culture decides who is ‘worthy’ of attention. I’ve spoken with other Black counselors and consultants who feel the same—MIT seems unwilling to recruit outside its established pipelines and trusted sources, making many of us hesitant to direct students their way.

I know I’m worthy. I know my Black students are worthy. And if my students are being overlooked, then other Black students are, too. Until MIT sees my students—and others like them—as deserving of their time, attention, and support, their Black enrollment will continue to decline or stagnate.

My only goal here is to raise my hand again and see if that results in a change in perspective & increased access. That way if MIT discusses their struggles in the next admissions cycle, they won’t be able to claim ignorance of the issues faced by Black communities. I am giving MIT yet another opportunity to address these opportunities or ignore them.

Capable and ready Black students who can meet MIT's rigorous academic demands are out there, but MIT needs to recognize that its current admissions approach is causing them to be overlooked, contributing to the decline in Black enrollment.