<p>I’m all with intparent on down-rating students who are protecting their GPA’s by not taking challenging courses.</p>
<p>When it comes to assessing student academic quality, I agree 750 is no different from 730. In a lot of cases, 800 is really no different from 750, and even on the SAT I Math part, the student with a 750 might actually be better than the student with 800.</p>
<p>What I haven’t seen addressed is this: There are students who could score 1200 on a single section of the SAT (verbal, math, or writing, not combined) if the SAT went that high. There are students who have taken a lot of really difficult courses, developed their abilities so far on the academic side, that to lump them in as “academically qualified” and move on to consideration of other qualities seems to me to be not really getting it–not understanding how far out the top of the academic group can stretch.</p>
<p>These students are stretching themselves plenty, even if they are not all scratched up by the cats they are trying to train.</p>
<p>I think the set of students who could score 1200 on the math section of the SAT I by itself may well include a few students who scored 750, and not 800. We don’t know, because the SAT is just not that hard. </p>
<p>Recentering the SAT scores tended to push dissimilar students into the same score boxes. I imagine that there were multiple reasons for doing this, but one consequence was that differentiation among students near the top dropped off, especially on the verbal section (now critical reading, I guess).</p>
<p>I think the analogies had to be dropped because it’s not that easy to come up with really good, tested analogy problems, and the ones that CB had were all memorized by students in foreign countries, leading to weird scoring outcomes. Just a guess, of course.</p>
<p>Cliff’s notes: None of the references to cats are literal. I would have plenty of qualms about admitting a student who worked with cats and exposed them to any possibility of injury.</p>
<p>My kids all finished their undergraduate studies some time ago. And they went to the sort of places people tend to give up their left arms for. So the discussion is theoretical for me at this point. I am interested in how all this impacts society. If it does.</p>
<p>In response to PG’s # 274, I think that a lot of really bright students want to go to MIT to be taught by the faculty there. A few were additionally attracted by the hacks (now outlawed). As long as there are some kindred souls among the undergrads, the really bright students don’t need the entire undergrad cohort to be at their academic level.</p>
<p>There is a biography of Richard Feynman (MIT undergrad) called “No Ordinary Genius.” Geniuses of the Feynman level are extraordinarily rare. But I think there are a few out there.</p>
<p>For ordinary geniuses, everything that has been said about plenty of other places offering essentially just as much is absolutely true.</p>
<p>For the no-ordinary-geniuses, contact as an undergrad with faculty at the really top schools is tremendously valuable, not only to them, but to their fields of research for sure, and sometimes to the country as a whole. For example, as an undergrad, Feynman worked with John C. Slater (of Slater determinants in quantum mechanics). There weren’t too many people like Slater around on faculties elsewhere. Feynman also took grad courses at MIT. He later did some things that were valuable to the country.</p>
<p>I have no axe to grind on behalf of Peter Perfect. Admit him, admit Betty Bright, admit both, admit neither–fine. I’d like to see Greg Genius go to the right place, though.</p>
<p>“My kids all finished their undergraduate studies some time ago. And they went to the sort of places people tend to give up their left arms for. So the discussion is theoretical for me at this point. I am interested in how all this impacts society. If it does.”</p>
<p>I don’t think it does. The “problem” of the 95% of MIT applicants who are rejected and overwhelmingly go on to other fine schools is a non- problem. It’s only a problem if you define MIT as the center if the universe, which would be an odd thing to do. </p>
<p>“response to PG’s # 274, I think that a lot of really bright students want to go to MIT to be taught by the faculty there. A few were additionally attracted by the hacks (now outlawed). As long as there are some kindred souls among the undergrads, the really bright students don’t need the entire undergrad cohort to be at their academic level.”</p>
<p>Isn’t pretty much everyone at MIT “really bright”? This is where arrogance starts to creep in. If we were talking about East Bumble Directional U where a 21 ACT and a pulse get you in, that’s one thing, but we aren’t. </p>
<p>John Slater received a National Medal of Science. Here are where the other National Medal of Science recipients (in 2010-2011) teach/taught:
MIT (2)
UT-Austin (2)
CalTech
Utah
UCLA
UCSD
UCSC
Rice
USC
Harvard
Chapman
Rochester
Maryland</p>
<p>Also:
NYU (Courant)
UPenn (Vet)
Stanford (Med)
Stanford (SLAC)</p>
<p>Some of the aforementioned schools are just a little easier to enter than MIT.</p>
<p>As someone who was a post-doc, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that the academic & research talent in the US runs very deep.</p>
<p>BTW, while MIT may reject Feynman these days, he’s very likely to get in to Harvard, as Harvard loves kids who place highly in national competitions (Feynman won the NYU math competition senior year in HS by a wide margin, so likely would have done well in current national math competitions).</p>
<p>In real history, MIT took Feynman but Columbia rejected him because they had a Jewish quota in those days.</p>
<p>pg: at this point I am concerned about what the college arms race (excellent sheep) does to all “our” kids. What does it mean to plan an education around impressing ad coms? Or getting into a top 20 school? Or any school?</p>
<p>PurpleTitan, there are believable rumors that the Nobel Committee was about to award the Prize to John Slater, but that he died just a little too soon. He was a giant. Some of the National Medal of Science honorees are also Nobel Laureates, but quite a few aren’t. What is relevant to a Feynman-esque student is the presence of a really good person in his/her own field, not the possibility that there is a biologist of that stature when the student is a physicist, or vice versa.</p>
<p>I imagine that Feynman himself would get into MIT, still. I think he would have been about equally well-served had he gone to Princeton instead, and worked with Wheeler as an undergrad. But that might have prevented him from working with Wheeler in grad school, so the actual arrangement worked out better for him, in my opinion. Since Feynman was Jewish, he faced considerable discrimination for many years in his career (as you have noted), including the point when he was looking for faculty employment. The letters written on his behalf then are a considerable embarrassment. That prejudice is mostly gone, but personally I suspect that there are de facto caps on other ethnic groups at present. (I don’t belong to any of the “capped” groups.)</p>
<p>95%+ of MIT applicants are ordinary geniuses, or perhaps just very bright. I’m happy to count myself among that group. Certainly, nobody is about to call me a “magical genius,” as Mark Kac called Feynman. Other places do work fine for ordinary geniuses.</p>
<p>I don’t see how it is arrogance to recognize truly exceptional capability, when one sees it (or reads about it) just a few times in one’s lifetime. There are some breathtakingly brilliant people out there. Not all of them also have Asperger’s or anything similar. I don’t understand why one would object to observations of fact.</p>
<p>Among the reasons that I keep commenting on MIT: I think Harvard is looking pretty hard for future billionaires. Most exceptionally good scientists will not reach anywhere near that level of wealth. Additionally, Harvard states that each year they admit 200-300 students who are “among the academic stars of their generation.” MIT admits about half of the students they identify as academic stars. (Perhaps Harvard only admits half of the identified stars too–their statement gives a different impression, but it is a bit ambiguous.) Harvard has a much broader academic range in the university. (I know there are humanities majors at MIT, but really . . . ). While I imagine that Harvard would recognize and admit a Feynman-esque student, I don’t believe that Feynman applied there. Harvard’s environment is definitely not all-tech, all-the-time, if the student is looking for that. Caltech admits are talent-based, so I’m not posting about them. I do have reservations about Caltech’s no-affirmative-action policy. I think it is misplaced, and have said so elsewhere.</p>
<p>If Feynman were truly a “magical genius”, he should have been able to achieve great things at many places. I doubt that MIT and Caltech have a monopoly on things.</p>
<p>": at this point I am concerned about what the college arms race (excellent sheep) does to all “our” kids. What does it mean to plan an education around impressing ad coms? Or getting into a top 20 school? Or any school?"</p>
<p>That’s a choice. No one is forced to play that game I’m glad I live in the Midwest where there isn’t such mania over the top 20 schools. Plenty of extremely bright kids go off to big 10 state flagships and don’t “arrange” their lives around needing to get into top 20 schools. My kids certainly didn’t. I’m really sorry some people work themselves up in a lather of top 20 or disaster, or MIT or disaster, but that’s their own darn fault. </p>
<p>Someone who seriously thinks that the world is over if they don’t get into MIT ISN’T smart, alh. Regardless of what their SAT scores or contest rankings are. Some on this thread only seem to recognize one form of smartness. </p>
<p>I think the bright kids do try to figure out what an elite is looking for, not assume it’s their hs value structure. This isn’t about a lateral move to another hs or even a better hs. Now it’s college- and some mighty competitive ones.</p>
<p>If some kid discovers adcoms like service- and she goes out and does something meaningful- bless her, she did it. Is it wrong to do, because adcoms value it? Really? This isn’t Montessori or some alternative program where kids get to explore at their own pace and leisure- there are other colleges for that. You want high stakes? Then understand it’s not a casual game. </p>
<p>Raw genius isn’t enough. This really, seriously, isn’t about what the kid wants, the common, “I dreamed of Harvard since I was in pre-k.” “I want to study with MIT’s professors.” Or some special entitlement program to turn awkward geniuses into mad scientists. This is about what the elite institution wants- and can choose. Hit the ground running, add to campus vitality, in and out of the classroom.</p>
<p>And Harvard isn’t looking for future billionaires. You can think it, but that doesn’t make it so. </p>
<p>In fact, I think many folks have no solid idea what these schools actually look for- they talk about their kids’ app process and success, try to glean the meaning of stats from various reports, make assumptions that quirky is the thing (after all, the PR folks put out that a unicyclist got accepted.) Why not dig into what the colleges themselves say?</p>
<p>lookingfoward, I heard directly from someone that worked in the Harvard admissions office that “Harvard isn’t necessarily looking for the smartest students, they are looking for the students who will be most successful.” That doesn’t necessarily translate into becoming billionaires, of course. But there is an underlying goal there and “most successful” doesn’t equate to "most successful physicist,"at least not usually.</p>
<p>Most hs value structures have no place for someone who is Feynman-esque. Such people are very, very rare.</p>
<p>Raw genius needs contact with experienced genius to become refined genius, and actually accomplish something. I think it does make a difference if this happens at the undergrad level. It’s a formative period. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter for those who are just really, really bright, I think. But in the biographies and autobiographical anecdotes of Feynman, you can find clear evidence of the impact of the MIT faculty on him. While I am perfectly good as a professor for many smart students, I would not in fact be perfectly fine as a professor for the Feynman-esque. Would Feynman eventually have emerged as extraordinary anyway, if he had been stuck with me (allowing for the time warp)? Maybe. But perhaps not, or not in quite the same way, or not as soon by several years (maybe more than 4 years delay).</p>
<p>This issue exists for a very, very small number of people. Posters on this thread are certainly entitled to regard it as totally irrelevant.</p>
<p>You’re making assumptions here. Harvard definitely want the most successful physicists. They want the most successful everythings.</p>
<p>BTW, the “looking for future billionaires” charge is more fairly levied at Stanford. Not sure if their adcoms looks for that, per se, but I put their administration on the more mercantile end of the scale.</p>
<p>I just wanted to add: Feynman would never have accommodated himself to “what the elites are looking for.” Actually, it’s funny to contemplate that, in his case. He did seem to knuckle under on the NY Regents exam in English, but I think he was actually thumbing his nose at the examiners. </p>
<p>I don’t think Feynman ever became a mad scientist. Whether he was ever awkward or not is in the eye of the beholder.</p>