Comparing the profiles of the people who got accepted and those that got rejected, the accepted are orders of magnitude underqualified. This school picks purely based on connections, other factors unrelated to aerospace engineering research, and mainly luck. Being rejected has nothing to do with qualifications at this point, and adding more experience, papers, and relevant research / work experience won't help you. Applying continuously and possibly getting MIT prof rec letters somehow is the only way. If you look on one of the MIT linkedin pages, they are actively promoting students that showed "resilience" by applying to AeroAstro more than 7 times... this is not normal

9 pubs (2 journals), interviewed informally with 2 faculty

Standard rejection email.

International applicant but did UG and MS in the US. Research directions are perception-planning for drones/robots. 1 first-authored pub at IROS; 1 first-authored pub at ECCV workshop; 1 first-authored submission to CVPR at the time of application

Generic email rejection, semi expected but still rough. Ivy undergrad, no research experience, 3 years in top industry. 1a/1r/1p

Didn't submit GRE scores

Why is the civil engineering department of nost school not sending out decisions for PhD yet!!!!. I am crawling out of my skin

Kind of expected, but still sad. Had a good fit with a PI with money. Congrats to everyone who got accepted!

This was my third shot and it's the same result again :') My friend with a less strong profile got in - surprised. You never know what goes in - the process is really a black box. You gotta keep going! Had a recommendation letter from a Sloan prof :')

Got an email to check the decision. Was my dream school, I hear they accept just one candidate per country or something similar. Waiting for other admit. 2 yr experience at a top firm

International student, 4 research papers with 2 in AAAI, Stanford Undergrad, Worked on thesis with Sloan prof at MIT, ICPC Finalist. Was very very hopeful especially after the interview

Really bummed. University gold medalist, dean's list, Math Olympiad winner, currently working as Senior Data Scientist at Big 4. Sold a startup for 6M, national-level chess player. Don't know what else they need. This sucks! The interview went very well and I answered all questions.