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Originally Posted by simfish Busywork. While busywork is a part of every profession, busywork in school is pointless busywork towards a figure with fiat value. Moreover, time in school is limited and valuable, and can be much better invested in a high school research project or competition. Sometimes, the grade for a class is overwhelmingly determined by a single exam (and then the person may just have been sick that day). Also, some students make mistakes and study exactly the wrong things and proceed to bomb the exam. As long as the mistakes are not consistent, they're fine. There are USAMO qualifiers who make the occasional B in an advanced math course (Caltech 2006 admissions thread). |
I have so, so many problems with this mindset.
First, while pointless busywork certainly exists in abundance in most high school environment, it is not accurate to classify all assignments in high school as busywork. You seem to be expressing the view (which I've seen more than once in this thread and others) that any time a supposedly intelligent student gets a bad grade it's because they were too busy with research/other lofty, high-minded pursuits to be bothered with doing their homework. Even if this is true, I don't believe that high school students, genius-level or not, always have enough experience and maturity to be able to correctly judge when work is pointless. Many times in basic chem I felt that the textbook assignments were pointless and repetitive, but looking back I can tell that doing them helped me become a lot more competent at the subject.
Also, you then proceed to give more excuses for admits with bad grades that go completely against the prior argument. If a class is graded mostly on one or two tests (like, hmm, many university courses are), then busywork can't possibly be a factor in a student doing poorly. High schools are not filled with unreasonable teachers who fail sick students, and when people say they studied the wrong thing it usually means they didn't study at all.
The issue with this mentality of excusing student performance for some ethereal reasons about their quirkiness or personality is that it wrongs every student who grit his teeth and worked hard to get good grades and good scores. If MIT is looking for hard-working students who can survive in a tough science/math-oriented atmosphere, I don't know why they (or you) are making so many excuses for people who frankly seem unreliable and flaky. Maybe some excuses actually have reasons behind them, but I can't accept that it's a good policy to ignore hard-working, obviously intelligent students in favor of gut feelings.
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Originally Posted by collegealum314 #3 Jones claims she is lessening the stress of high school applicants by making the objective standards less stringent. I think making the criteria more vague makes the process more stressful. I know I didn't stress out at all over my MIT application. |
As an applicant still waiting on a decision, I can confirm that this is definitely true. I submitted my application in October, and I won't get a decision until mid/late May. I don't understand how that helps me to relax and enjoy my senior year.