Rania Al-Khatib was 23 years old, sitting at her family's kitchen table in Shmeisani, Amman, when she first typed "MIT graduate admissions" into her browser. The page loaded, and her heart sank. The requirements seemed impossible — GRE scores in the 90th percentile, research publications, glowing recommendation letters from professors at globally recognized institutions. She closed the laptop.
Three weeks later, she found JANA.
The First Workshop
A friend shared a link to a JANA admissions workshop on WhatsApp. "I almost didn't go," Rania recalls. "I thought it was going to be generic advice — the kind you can find on any YouTube channel." But the session was different. It was led by a JANA volunteer, Dr. Hana Mansour, a Jordanian woman who had herself completed her PhD at MIT's CSAIL lab and was now a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon.
Dr. Mansour spent three hours walking through every element of the MIT application — from how the Statement of Purpose is actually read by admissions committees, to which parts of the GRE score matter most for CS programs, to the unspoken criteria that strong letters of recommendation must address. "She told us things nobody puts on their website," Rania says.
"Hana told me that MIT doesn't just want to know what you've done — they want to know how you think. That changed everything about how I wrote my statement."
— Rania Al-Khatib, MIT MSc Computer Science '25One-on-One Mentorship
After the workshop, Rania signed up for JANA's one-on-one mentorship program and was paired with Dr. Mansour directly. Over the next four months, they met virtually every two weeks. Dr. Mansour reviewed five drafts of Rania's Statement of Purpose, helped her reframe her undergraduate research project at the University of Jordan as internationally relevant work, and coached her on how to approach professors at target schools for pre-application conversations.
Dr. Mansour also connected Rania with two other JANA alumni already studying at MIT — students who could answer the questions no admissions webpage ever addresses. Where do Muslim students pray on campus? Which professors are most welcoming to international students? Is the campus culture actually as competitive as its reputation suggests?
JANA Support Rania Received
- Access to JANA's recorded admissions workshop library (Visa, SOP, GRE prep)
- Four months of one-on-one mentorship with an MIT PhD alumna
- Peer connections with current MIT Jordanian/Arab students
- GRE preparation resource guide and study schedule template
- Review and feedback on five drafts of her Statement of Purpose
- Pre-departure checklist and housing guidance for Boston
The Acceptance
On March 15, 2023, Rania's phone buzzed at 7:14 AM. The email subject line read: "Decision on your application to the MIT School of Engineering." Her hands shook as she opened it. The first word was "Congratulations."
She called her mother first, then Dr. Mansour. "Hana cried," Rania says, laughing. "She cried before I did."
Life on Campus
Rania arrived at MIT in September 2023 already knowing two people — the JANA alumni who had been her peer guides throughout the process. She had her housing sorted before she landed, her first-week schedule planned, and a sense of what to expect culturally and academically. "I didn't feel like a stranger," she says. "I felt like I was joining something I already belonged to."
Today, Rania is in her second year at MIT, conducting research in human-computer interaction. She volunteers as a JANA mentor herself, guiding two Jordanian students currently applying to graduate programs in the US. "The best thing about JANA," she says, "is that everyone here has been exactly where you are. There's no pretending it's easy. But there's also proof — living proof — that it's possible."
"I want to be for someone else what Hana was for me. That's why I give back to JANA."
— Rania Al-Khatib, now a JANA mentor herself