I'm a technologist who wanted to attend MIT but, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this thread, didn't make the cut. I've still had the opportunity to work for the US federal government, unicorn startups, and a detector team at the LHC. As you said, "The acceptance rate is so low, that it should not be used as a measure of self-worth and accomplishment.", and enjoyable, meaningful work can still be accomplished without the MIT experience (although if they get in, also good, I wish them well and hope they're accepted).

Likewise I know people who went to MIT and are now working shitty low paying jobs in unrelated fields of study and generally have failed to get their life together in reasonable time.

... the natural extension of you are not your MIT admission, is that your MIT admission is not you. Do you know they don't have their life together? What if they wanted something different than you? The tone of this comment sucks.

My read is that you can usually get here if you just fight long enough, lol. I didn't get in for undergrad or grad school, but am here doing a postdoc. My advisor here was also rejected for grad school and undergrad. In the end it's really, really important to remember it's just a school. It's a really good school with a good engineering/science culture, and I'm enjoying my time here a lot, but people make it out to be much more than it is. I think I did -- not that I'm disappointed.

As the parent of a student who was just rejected from MIT... I wonder if the reinstatement of the SAT requirement came too late. I'll never really know, but it is possible.

If their score wasn't in the 99% percentile it probably wouldn't have made a substantial difference.

'Heart set' attitude is irrational.

The most successful people I know as a class are the ones who turned down Harvard or MIT and went to a state school or somewhere private with incentives instead.

Granted, nobody does this anymore because credentialism is now an uncontrollable monster.