MIT Track distance

If his grades and times and ECs are good enough the coach to support him, he only has a 40-50% chance of acceptance. That’s great compared to the normal rate, but it’s not the guarantee other colleges can provide.

Look at Williams track times.

I would check out Pomona-Pitzer’s success in track, since they seem to have had no trouble bringing people to 14:20s and had a couple sub-30 10ks. Keep an eye on CMS this season, as well; they had a several under 14:40 and 2 under 14:20 last season.

+1. I had offers from a couple of the top Ivies, MIT, and a few other colleges. Although I think I'd have been accepted to MIT, I chose to take the >99% chance of acceptance (I also had great grades, ECs, test scores) at a peer institution that currently has a <5% acceptance rate instead.

I ended up taking a couple classes there anyway, so I didn't feel like I was missing out.

You are crazy to think a 9:10 guy is better than they guys on the best team in the country. He will be lucky to make top 7. What are his test scores? If not at least 33 ACT, he is in trouble. And do you know that the list price is $85k?

You are crazy to think a 9:10 guy is better than they guys on the best team in the country. He will be lucky to make top 7. What are his test scores? If not at least 33 ACT, he is in trouble. And do you know that the list price is $85k?

Agree with other posters: MIT coaches can help recruits get to a 50/50 chance of admission, and the recruits have to wait it out. Ivies and strong academic D3s like Williams, HMC, etc. can give recruits a 99% chance of admission, including an academic pre-read and financial aid estimate before they commit. At Ivies that includes a likely letter sent before admissions letters. So a recruit is giving up a lot of certainty to commit to MIT over other great academic schools.

their distance coaching is fine though.

+1 for PP. Fantastic program, i've heard nothing but good words about them.

Also… a recruit with those times and reasonable improvement (conservatively, sub 9:10 as a junior, perhaps sub 9 as a senior) is not a D3 level runner. He will be choosing from D1 programs and can look at Ivies if he thinks the academics are a better fit for him.

My daughter's best friend went there. She was on the women's team but according to her the culture was great for both teams.

The bottom line is if it gets him into MIT which is not guaranteed for even the best students he should go there. If the team does not work out there are numerous opportunities as you know in the Boston area to run independently, but the number one priority is academic, and MIT will help him for his entire life.

I'm assuming the MIT track is 400 meters/lap.

Pomona is a trap. They got lucky a few years in cross but their luck has run out. They only scored 4 points at the 2022 D3 Outdoor Championship - 2 in the steeplechase and 2 in the 1500. They only run fast at Oxy.

They returned their top 4 runners from their 2021 cross championship but they CHOKED in 2022. Their new coach is not doing well and their previous coach is doing poorly at Boston University.

Thanks for all the replies! We've talked about some of the other D3 schools mentioned (Williams, PP) and others not mentioned but I think we'll mostly focus on D1 schools (probably the Ivies). Obviously the chance at a school like MIT is hard to turn down, but I think there are other options that offer comparable academics and a much better athletic experience. I remember MIT bringing on a recruit comparable (or even faster) to where I think my athlete will be at back in 2018 - seeing that he didn't really improve at all was surprising and pretty worrying. He really doesn't want that to be his experience with college running.

I was in this situation and went to an Ivy over MIT because the prospect of D1 was super appealing. I regret it. The increased time commitment of D1 > D3 athletics has a really big opportunity cost at top tier schools.

For me, going D1 sucked a lot of the joy out of running and I believe D3 would have been a better fit for me. I could have spent a bunch more hours taking advantage of the amazing institution I was in rather than fighting to be a mediocre college runner.

Grass is always greener.

It sounds like you didn't belong D1 anyway because you weren't committed 100%. That's not an insult, it's ok to rather be doing other things. But there are a lot of people that are 100% committed where D1 is perfect and D3 would feel like high school track.

It’s 229.4 Smoots

MIT did just get a new distance coach and this cross season was his first season as a head of XC FYI

If he is more interested in running than academics, he will struggle in a stem field at any D1 school. You didn't provide income info. One of my kids chose an Ivy and we paid $300K. The other one chose our state school and paid a total of $15K. We are gifting the difference to the 2nd child. The 1st one started at $80K in a career last year and the 2nd starts at $90K this spring. Our 2nd child plans to buy a condo with the money while our 1st child is paying $1900 in rent.

My son is also interested in MIT, purely academically. He does run, though, and would like to run in college if he can. He is a junior and just ran 4:35 in the mile. Based on MITs recruiting standards we were hoping that if he can get down to 4:30 this year and have a good cross country season next year as a senior the coach may put in a word. I didn’t realize they were so good, though. Would a kid who will likely graduate with a time in the 4:20s (but maybe not as a junior) have a shot at a recommendation?

What other great tech schools out there have running programs that a kid like mine may get a coaches Rec at? We re starting our search this spring. Some other colleges he’s thinking about include Columbia, NYU, Cornell, mit, UPenn, Virginia tech, Georgia tech, Michigan. He wants to do comp sci.