MIT Admissions Have Become A Complete Joke - Page 6

collegealum314 · 04-08-2007, 03:08 PM

"I think it's the prerogative of MIT admissions to decide what students fit best and not yours, to put it simply."

I am an alum and am therefore part of the MIT community. I have a right to criticize it.

collegealum314 · 04-08-2007, 03:42 PM

But you have to be able to distinguish between someone who gets the grades and scores because he/she is a genius and the one who gets them because he/she is a grade-grubbing robot. I mean, you can survive MIT without an 800 on the SAT I in math; you can't survive MIT without creativity, resilience, and a little patience.
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I agree, although I think it shows discipline to always show up and perform in _every_ class even if you don't happen to like that class. Even in one's major, there are things which are boring and monotonous but must be mastered.

The issue of selecting for "passion" needs to be done carefully. I had passion, although I thought that would come through the teacher's recs (which it did for MIT and CalTech.) I just don't want the students to have to _say_ "I have passion" on an application. I was uncomfortable bragging about myself or appearing to have a flamboyant personality and I think many high performers in math and science (especially at age 18) are often deficient in that area. I mean if I have an "A+" in a class and another guy has an "A-" and he _says_ he has passion and is going to change the world, should that guy get in over me? I personally felt it was inappropriate to say something like, "I want to be the next Einstein." Look at the teacher recs to decide who has passion.

I just think there are too many talented people who aren't grade-grubbers to be tolerant of a "B" in math or science or more than two or three "B's" overall in MIT admissions. A caveat to this is if the person does something extraordinary like qualifies for USAMO or is an INTEL finalist or something; if they show they are really significantly smarter than the guys with perfect everything, then by all means take them. Also, if you have two guys from the same high school and the teacher recs say the guy with a couple of B's is really at a significantly higher intellectual level overall than the guy with perfect grades/scores then I would consider favoring the guy with a couple of "B's". It's just that with the top ivies the guy with the best recs and the perfect record in terms of grades, test scores, and competitions; may still not be favored over someone less impressive in all of these areas. I don't want to see this happen at MIT.

KirbusPrime · 04-08-2007, 06:11 PM

Scores mean squat. End of story. With all the prep that's out there, scores are not a great indicator. You really don't know what smart is until you see MIT (or CalTech,CMU,etc...) push someone to the limit. As long as your scores are in the range, you're fine. I've seen a lot of these "amazing" 5x800 kids crash and burn here.

MIT looks for passion because you cannot lack passion and survive here. If you do things just to get them done, MIT will bury you. You need to have a certain degree of personal pride to do well here.

And also, people REALLY underestimate athletics. I can't speak for URM's, or females, or other people that are complained about on here, but I can vouch for athletes. My athletic background has been CRUCIAL to me doing well here. I can't tell you how many times I've been buried by work, and I just sit back to myself and recall all the days in HS where I'd get up at 5 AM to lift and run, go to school, and then have practice. Or triple sessions in 100 degree heat in August. Or the "first aid station" (a garbage bucket in the middle of the track). Regardless, athletics can push your physical and mental toughness in a way that nothing else can. Even physical toughness can be important here. Your body really starts to wear after a couple all nighters.

Sorry for the rant. But really, just because your friend, who is "the smartest guy you know," didn't get into MIT and someone who had SATs that were lower did, doesn't mean that MIT admissions is crazy.

pundit · 04-08-2007, 06:22 PM

This thread has become a complete joke. Threads like this show up every year, in some form or another.

Listen people, just the play the game. You know as well as I do that things like "passion" aren't exactly common among teenagers (Jones said something to this effect herself). Make yourself look good on paper, and then forget about it.

Obviously, MIT will still be MIT 4 years from now, and they will still be known as the math/science powerhouse of the U.S. No matter what YOU think, this will not change.

I know it's cliche, but I have to say it once more: Life isn't fair. It wasn't meant to be fair, and it will never be. MIT doesnt accept every single 2400 4.0 ISEF applicant... who cares? Move on with your life.

simfish · 04-08-2007, 07:48 PM

So, has MIT actually compiled statistics of average GPA among its regular students, as compared to URMs?

The problem is a lack of reliable controls. Now, I think we can effectively accept that the average URM's SAT scores and HS GPA are lower than those of the average white/Asian applicant. The problem is that SAT scores and HS GPA are not very good controls for college GPA, especially considering that most students who are MIT-calibre already have such high GPAs/SATs such that people who get lower GPAs/SATs than others often have lower GPA/SAT scores due to factors unrelated to academic capability (perhaps the person made stupid mistakes on the SAT I Math, or the person doesn't want to study for more hours on his homework at diminishing marginal utility per hour when he could be doing something far more useful instead). As a result, it's virtually impossible for us to objectively compare URMs with white/Asian applicants.

Moreover, recommendations and essays are flawed in their own ways. Essays can be modified by parents/peers/teachers, and recommendations always reflect on the teachers personality - not all teachers are equal in their ability to write good recs. While URMs may be given the benefit of the doubt with respect to essays (since it's often assumed, even unconsciously, that they don't have as many opportunities for proof-reading essays as do other students), we really don't know if that is such the case.

Of course, MIT is changing its focus. It's no longer exclusively geared towards math/science. As a result, it's trying to look for criteria beyond math/science. It's already hard enough to distinguish people's capability in math/science, given that GPAs and SAT scores are already high.

In any case, a good question to ask is - why favor URM diversity in favor of some other form of diversity - say regional? Perhaps affirmative action can be described as some sort of experiment (as Sandra Day O'Conner said with respect to AA in the workplace). But then the "experiment" continues - often for differently cited reasons.

One interesting change, after all, is MIT OCW. Now, out of the pool of qualified rejects who would have otherwise been accepted were AA not around, how many of them would actually take the initiative to study OCW materials? Not many. Perhaps more would do so if self-study in courses was more valued than it had been in the past. Personally, I went to an early entrance program at state instead of gunning for a top institution, and I'm glad I did, because I still can learn as much as I want to - just by means of self-studying (though I do skip my courses so that I can self-study more).

Nonetheless, it's my belief that the Internet will help level out informational asymmetry between institutions - in that a truly self-motivated learner really can learn a lot of the course material of top universities by himself by checking out textbooks from university libraries (or downloading them off BitTorrent), going to university webpages for solutions and notes, and posting questions on online forums like artofproblemsolving.com. Not going to "institution X" doesn't have the academic penalty that it used to have, thanks to the impact of the Internet on informational asymmetry.

Master0fBalances · 04-08-2007, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LauraN

I really don't think I'll ever understand why some people are so convinced that colleges go out of their way to make applicant's lives miserable. For one thing, unless you are a mind reader, your use of the word "deliberate" is completely unfounded. Also, the "match criteria" are written all over MIT's website- there's a page for it specifically, and we blog about that kind of thing all the time. I think just being yourself is a whole lot less stressful than freaking out about standardized tests, but to each his own. (As for the SATs, I'd gladly abolish them completey if I had the power. Just saying.)

I've seen the match criteria posted and blogged upon. The problem I have with them is that they're mostly unquantifiable, and I've never seen a blog post or other explanatory medium about how exactly MIT admissions connects the information they receive in an application to these criteria. It just seems like voodoo at this point. (If there is such a blog entry that I've overlooked, I'd love to read it.)

Also, your assumption that my stress exists because of standardized tests is rather insulting and unjustified. I never retook any SATs, and got them all over with in my junior year. (2350, 730mathII, 790chem, and yes, I know that the numbers matter not at all, but I have no reason to stress about them.)

My stress is caused by having to wait for the better part of a year to find out if I get into the school I've been dreaming about going to since sixth grade, especially when I applied early specifically to avoid that happening. Now I'm trying to get excited about another school, putting my deposit in and all of that, while the knowledge still lurks that come May I'm going to have to go through the entire decision process once again. I think I'm justified in feeling jerked around by the admissions office.

simfish · 04-09-2007, 08:12 AM

Quote:

The measure for academic success for decades has been a person's intelligence quotient, or IQ. But new research published in the journal Child Development says that a thought process called "executive functioning," which governs the ability to reason and mentally focus, also plays a critical role in learning, especially when it comes to math skills...

In this study 141 healthy children between the ages of three and five years took a battery of psychological tests that measured their IQs and executive functioning. Researchers found that a child whose IQ and executive functioning were both above average was three times more likely to succeed in math than a kid who simply had a high IQ.

"[The fact] that executive function, even in children this young, is significantly related to early math performance suggests that if we can improve executive function, we can improve their academic performance," says Adele Diamond, professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia.

The question is - how does this research apply to the ability to succeed at MIT? (or to succeed in the most theoretical fields?) The issue here is that we need to control (a bit) for intelligence. Now, most students, granted, are fairly weak in math (they struggle with grade school math courses, and often must ask for help - courses we usually can breeze through without much effort. Most of them are pretty much through with math once they reach calculus - that is, if they reach it). The research cited above is based on such students.

Another question is, can the same research apply to those of higher IQs, who may think and reason differently? Perhaps they have alternative strategies of seeking a solution to the problem? Perhaps they find looking for help easier? But as we get up to the higher IQs - it's possible that IQ may be a stronger control for the ability to do theoretical math than other factors (we need a control group again, but theoretical math may be out-of-reach for many MIT and even Caltech students - who struggle over their problems sets and must frequently get help, whereas stronger students in the same pool can do the problem sets with not much help). Most people who get into Caltech/MIT are probably at the 99th percentile of math ability, and the difference between 99.9th and 99.5th is far huger than that between 60th and 70th percentiles. The bell curve distribution of IQ does a good job of quantifying this - but it may still be that the difference in ability of 130 and 135 (in math) may be larger than that between 80 and 85 (though at such high IQs, IQ becomes a fairly poor indicator of math ability). I generally don't think that IQ means much at higher IQs, but there may be another test that correlates more with mathematical ability than with IQ.

Nonetheless, http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/02/25...ult-of-genius/ is an interesting take on this - even non-geniuses can handle the material. They won't be Nobel laureates, but at least they can still do a good job at research. And as for how this relates to MIT, MIT will still manage to admit a number of very-talented students, while admitting a larger number of people who aren't that smart, but who can still succeed in research/other high-cognitive ability occupations.

Now, I'm not a Caltech student, but I read the Caltech boards, and based on what I've gathered from them, many students initially want to major in math or physics (50% IIRC), but the Caltech curriculum shows them that math/physics may not be their forte (often due to their struggles with the problem sets).

Of course, MIT and Caltech are not purely focused on theoretical math - and most of their respective applicant pools do well in their own non-math fields. MIT's admissions are catered towards "is the applicant good enough to succeed in MIT core?" And if so, intelligence/SAT scores/etc really don't matter beyond that (for most applicants). Nonetheless, we do know that some very high level students are rejected or waitlisted (ones who may get Axlines at Caltech). What do we make out of that? The problem, again, is that it's difficult to compare how well MIT does on competitions like the Putnam were such students accepted, with how well it would do in such competitions were they not accepted. Of course, the Putnam isn't the best indicator of how good MIT students are (since school performance on the Putnam is based on the top few scores, and MIT can still do well on it even if it accepts all at the top in terms of USAMO/ISEF/USA(X)O, rejects some near the top, and admits URMs below them). Whatever, MIT has its own mission, and somehow, such mission has changed from what it was before.

The other issue, of course, is that executive functioning/work ethic is very difficult to quantify in high school students. Teacher recommendations are the only way to quantify this characteristic in HS students. And frankly speaking - students who do the minimum to "A" a class may still have a very strong work ethic - they just may be using that work ethic towards self-study, rather than to do more busywork in a class which they find too easy. Even then, those with less self-control could potentially be more creative (in that they don't filter out stimuli that could provide insights to their work),and yet have enough self-control to succeed in school (even if they don't get straight A's).

Of course there are other issues as well - work ethic may be partially contingent on environmental circumstances. But the psychological tests do seem to show that conscientiousness (in most people) seem to be relatively consistent in a person through time.

collegealum314 · 04-09-2007, 03:20 PM

"Now, I'm not a Caltech student, but I read the Caltech boards, and based on what I've gathered from them, many students initially want to major in math or physics (50% IIRC), but the Caltech curriculum shows them that math/physics may not be their forte (often due to their struggles with the problem sets)."
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I doubt this...When I was at MIT a lot of people were more interested in physics than their major but didn't major in it because they felt it was impractical as a career.

If you struggle in mechanics and E & M (the two physics requirements), then you won't survive electrical engineering & Computer Science. Because EECS was the major of choice by 60% of the undergrads at the time I went there, I would say that you can conclude that they didn't choose it because of trouble in E & M. It's far more common for someone to drop out of engineering into pure science because engineering is so much more of a grind.

Also, a lot of people used not study at all in basic physics because it was pass/no record the first year and almost everybody passed anyway.

Maybe CalTech is a little different because they require a couple of extra physics classes, but frankly I thought quantum mechanics was no big deal compared to engineering.

cghen · 04-09-2007, 03:43 PM

Disclosure: I'm a junior physics major at Caltech.

Quote:

Originally Posted by simfish

Now, I'm not a Caltech student, but I read the Caltech boards, and based on what I've gathered from them, many students initially want to major in math or physics (50% IIRC), but the Caltech curriculum shows them that math/physics may not be their forte (often due to their struggles with the problem sets).

It is definitely true that a large fraction of students entering Caltech expect to major in math/physics (especially physics), and a large fraction of those students will end up in other majors. A few reasons for this might be: the conceptual difficulty of physics/math curriculum, worried about post-graduation opportunities, or exposure to other interesting fields at Caltech.

Quote:

Originally Posted by collegealum314

It's far more common for someone to drop out of engineering into pure science because engineering is so much more of a grind.

That's pretty rarely seen at Caltech, and I'm a bit surprised it's seen at MIT because while engineering is a pretty big 'grind', most bright dedicated students can be proficient in it (if they're technically oriented). For physics and math (especially math, in my opinion), very bright students just might not 'get it' so to speak and wouldn't have any success no matter how much effort is placed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by collegealum314

Maybe CalTech is a little different because they require a couple of extra physics classes, but frankly I thought quantum mechanics was no big deal compared to engineering.

I'm curious, to what level of quantum mechanics and what part of engineering are you referring?

lizzardfire · 04-09-2007, 03:51 PM

I'm a freshman in EE at Caltech. I think cghen really hit the nail on the head in describing some of the differences between math/physics and engineering majors here.

That being said, I think that the switch from math/physics for many students isn't just the conceptual hardness that cghen spoke of but is also that many students don't really understand what college math is like. For example, I loved calculus in high school. Then I took Math 1a at Caltech, which I hated. Although I never intended to be a math major, if I was that would have ended it for me--although I still love the problem solving based math (we have it here under our applied math major) I can't stand the proof-based approach that "real" math takes. After writing this I realize it's very close to what cghen is saying, although I'm attempting to impart that even some people who are capable of doing the work just don't enjoy it.

Other things can be similar; students who had a practical education in high school may not realize how analytical the pure sciences can be... etc and end up switching to a more practical field to pursue what they enjoy.

Finally, I've never heard of anyone here dropping engineering for a pure science. I've heard of people dropping a hard engineering for an easier one, though--Caltech's ChemE and EE programs are slightly notorious for their difficulty level (not so much conceptually, but in the enormous amount of work required).

collegealum314 · 04-09-2007, 04:45 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by collegealum314
Maybe CalTech is a little different because they require a couple of extra physics classes, but frankly I thought quantum mechanics was no big deal compared to engineering.

I'm curious, to what level of quantum mechanics and what part of engineering are you referring?
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Just one semester of quantum, although it was quantum physics for chem majors so maybe it was watered down...however, I also took abstract algebra (also called group theory) which is supposed to be a hard class to understand.

I majored in electrical engineering and computer science, although I did take some core classes in Chem E too. One difference between engineering and pure science is that it seemed in engineering you have to be really on-the-ball and keep up with class; in pure science and theoretical mathematics you can generally derive everything from scratch.
I remember in fluid mechanics they would give you equations to apply which came out of nowhere; there was no way to derive them.

cghen · 04-09-2007, 07:32 PM

^ I think that's a fair assessment.

Sklog_W · 04-09-2007, 07:53 PM

^Yep, ChemE fluid mechanics has crazy equations. For the first month or so I was convinced that there was nothing else to discover in that field because every two seconds they would say "and Nikuradse derived this equation as well when the Reynolds number was above 2000, we won't derive it though." Literally 10 equations about flows all of which were never derived in either class or the text. Amazing. And Nikuradse made every equation too.

dis-grace · 04-10-2007, 02:52 PM

My question is, are high school students really the best judge of talent of high school students? One poster here said that none of the kids who got accepted to MIT from his/her school could hold a candle to the ones rejected from his/her school -- that the accepted kids were never described as the smartest.

Your point?

Maybe they showed something to MIT that they don't show to their fellow students. Maybe you're a bad judge. Maybe most of their potential is inside of them, whereas "the smartest kids" leave it on the surface. Maybe their potential runs deeper. You can't know. Einstein and John Nash are two examples of people that you would've thought were nothing compared to "the smartest kids" if you'd known them when they were young.

dally · 04-10-2007, 08:32 PM

MIT-bashing threads on the MIT forum... conflict, yum.

MIT does kind of brainwash people into thinking their admissions process is super-great, etc, etc, but of course it can never really be fair. Yes, URMs are favored...because of their perspectives. If you don't think that's right, then that's a pretty clear indication that you yourself aren't a good fit at MIT. Which I think is really valuable...even if their admissions process is unfair, it at least is open and clear enough that you get a very good feel of the school itself. Their admissions people are so nice, too - so though they might not be the epitome of fairness, at least they're cool!