Off-cycle Admission is on an Exception Basis, i.e., we do not have off-cycle admissions.
Pre-requisites for Off-cycle Admission Consideration

A student can only apply for off-cycle admission with very strong support from a faculty member in the form of guaranteed funding and guaranteed advising support. If no faculty member can formally guarantee funding in writing, the student cannot be considered for off-cycle admissions. The recommending faculty should feel that the student will be evaluated as an Admit by peers in the Dept.

Reasons for Off-cycle Admission

In some cases, it may be desirable to allow a student to apply to the department outside the normal admissions cycle. Two reasons are:

  • the student is completing an SM in another department at MIT, and wishes to continue with their doctoral studies in Aero. The student may want to apply for early admission to be allowed to take the Qualifying exam (In 2010, the Graduate Committee determined that only students admitted to the department would be allowed to take the Qualifying exam).
  • a faculty member has an immediate need associated with a specific research project, and has identified a specific student for the project. This reason is historic and had not been applied in recent memory (at least since 2010). This is an exceptional case where a faculty needs to unexpectedly hire a large # of people and some of the project is best studied towards graduate students, e.g., a 10-FTE per year DARPA program lands unexpectedly and there are not enough folks around to staff it.  HQ in addition to GAC needs to approve.
Process for Off-cycle Admission

The process is the following:

  1. The sponsoring faculty writes to the Graduate Program Administrator, sponsoring the student and providing a formal guarantee of funding and advising support.
  2. The Graduate Program Administrator records the guarantee of funding and support, and approves the student to apply for off-cycle admission after a decision is made by the GAC Chair..
  3. The student replies with a full application, using the GradApply electronic system.
  4. The GAC chair and another GAC faculty (assigned by the GAC Chair) read the folder. If, in the judgement of the GAC chair and GAC faculty, the folder would be accepted by the sector during the normal admissions process (i.e., with strong support from the advisor and guaranteed funding), then the applicant will be admitted.
  5. If, in the judgement of the GAC chair and co-chair, it is not clear that the folder would be accepted by the sector, the folder will be sent to 3 other members of the GAC and/or broader faculty  for a full review, and the admission decision will be made by a simple majority.
  6. The admissions decision will be communicated by the Graduate Program Administrator to the applicant and sponsoring advisor.
  • No labels