“A guy from the 90s got a 0 on the SAT and got accepted to MIT, because he figured out exactly how many questions to get wrong to get exactly a 0.  Because you get 200 points automatically for signing your name, so he had to get exactly 200 points worth of wrong questions and not answer the rest.  MIT was impressed.”

This is another myth spread around about college applications.  Unlike, though, the urban legends which are meant to be cautionary tales or explanations about the system, such as the legend of the college applicant who claimed his mother was dead on his essays, or the belief in the “Tufts Syndrome”, the urban legend claiming that getting a 0 on the SAT earned admission to MIT is more used a pessimistic statement about college applicants.  The basic message gleaned from the legend is that the college admissions system is strange, hard to explain, and sometimes entirely based on gimmicks.  Of course, this myth is mathematically incorrect; it is impossible to score a 0 on the test, the lowest possible score according to the College Board is 200.