MIT's acceptance rate for international students

MIT publishes its admissions statistics in more detail than most American universities, including a separate line for international applicants. Everything below comes from MIT's own admissions statistics for the Class of 2029, the students who started in autumn 2025.

The numbers

Source: mitadmissions.org, admissions statistics, Class of 2029.

Two things follow. More than half of everyone MIT admitted came through early action, so applying early is not a minor tactical choice. And an international applicant faces odds less than half of the overall figure: international students made up nearly a quarter of the applicants and about a tenth of the admitted class. A US applicant is 2.7 times as likely to be admitted.

Deferral and the waitlist

Most early applicants who are not admitted are deferred, not rejected: 7,486 of the 12,052 for the Class of 2029. A deferral is a second reading in the regular round, and 175 of those students were admitted, about 2.3%. That is close to the regular-round rate, so a deferral is a real chance but not a likely one. Send MIT the update it asks for (new results, a new project) and apply elsewhere as if the answer were no.

The waitlist is smaller and colder. MIT offered 561 places on it and admitted 10 from it, under 2%.

Applying this autumn: early action closes on 1 November. If MIT is the first choice, that is the round to use; the figures above show why.

The scores admitted students had

MIT requires the SAT or ACT. The middle half of admitted students scored 780–800 on SAT Math and 740–780 on Evidence-Based Reading and Writing, or 34–36 on the ACT. A perfect maths score is close to the norm rather than a distinction. What separates applicants is everything the score cannot show: olympiad results, research, things built, and teachers' letters that describe a student who goes beyond the syllabus without being asked.

Dates and money

• Early action: 1 November. Regular action: 4 January. Application fee $75.
• Need-blind for everyone, including international applicants: MIT decides without looking at whether a family can pay, and then meets the full demonstrated need of everyone it admits. Few American universities make that promise to international students.
• Cost: from 2025–26, families earning under $200,000 typically pay no tuition. The median amount paid by students on MIT scholarships was $10,268.

How MIT compares

Harvard admitted 2,003 of 47,893 applicants for its Class of 2029, as reported by the Harvard Crimson, about 4.2%. Princeton admitted 1,892 of 46,618 for its Class of 2030, 221 of them international. All three are now in the same range overall; MIT's distinguishing features are the separate international figure it publishes and its need-blind policy for everyone.

What an international applicant should take from this

• Apply early action if MIT is the first choice. The early pool is where most places go.
• Treat the scores as a threshold. 790 on SAT Math does not set you apart; its absence would.
• Show mathematics or science beyond school, in a form someone can verify: competition results, a project with code, published work, a summer programme with a selective entry.
• Apply widely. At 2%, no international applicant is a safe admit to MIT, however strong. Oxford and Cambridge are worth applying to alongside it: their admissions tests reward exactly the kind of preparation MIT looks for, and the application is a separate system with its own odds.