5 Little Known Tips for Getting In

Parents Forum
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<p>"But who are these “superstars” that you’re concerned about? My younger kid graduated from high school with a kid who had 2400 on his SAT’s, rejected by MIT and got off a waitlist for an HYP school. My very bright late bloomer kid went to a state school for engineering and graduated magna cum laude. They are working at the same place now that they have graduated from college. "</p>

<p>@sevmom - I see this a lot, let’s call it the “State Effect” :wink: - the thought that the ultimate goal is the job and if you would end up at the same job, the path was not so relevant. I have mixed feelings about this, because to me college is about more than professional preparation, though of course that is a major component. (Actually it’s not even a “major component” to some. I remember Harvard people making fun of us for “utilitarian majors”)</p>

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<p>“To move to the humanities for a second, if you’re a very bright but not super intellectual community service type who decided to major in English, it probably doesn’t matter to you one whit whether or not your school offered an undergraduate course on Ulysses, or whether your Victorian Lit survey taught Middlemarch or The Mill on the Floss (both are by George Eliot; the former is a far longer, but also a far better novel). On the other hand, the option of taking on some more advanced texts at the undergraduate level may be very attractive to the serious literature student.”</p>

<p>@apprenticeprof - I regret to say that “The Mill on the Floss” was assigned to me in college but I just could not get through it. Do you think I would like “Middlemarch” better? :)</p>

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<p>@fretfulmother:
The path may be relevent, but who is to say that the state school path is worse or better? Yes, the student body isn’t as carefully selected, the bureaucracy is generally worse, and it may be more sink-or-swim, but that also hones kids to be better at working with bureaucracy, deal with different types of people and environments where they won’t be coddled. For some kids, it may be worse. For others, it may make them better.</p>

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<p>@PurpleTitan - I did not suggest otherwise. Only that I question the conclusions based chiefly on “final” employment.</p>

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<p>Apparently no one on here can understand the concept of DIFFERENT opportunities. Yes the opps at CMU may not be the same as those at MIT. But that just makes them different. That’s all. </p>

<p>It’s like the losers on other parts on CC who bemoan the fact that they didn’t get into Harvard and now they’re settling for Duke. Oh big deal. There are still more than enough opportunities at a Duke, more than any one person can take advantage of anyway. So maybe there are only 25,000 opps at a Duke and 30,000 at a a Harvard. You can only take 10 of them anyway. </p>

<p>Why are some of you so fatalistic, so predetermined that there are One Best Paths? All of our lives are shaped by random circumstance. If I hadn’t gone to been placed in a certain dorm, I wouldn’t have met my H and my kids wouldn’t be here. Well, so? I would have met some other nice guy and had a nice life - it just might have been a different looking life, that’s all. There IS no one “right” opportunity in life. </p>

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<p>^I will never understand this mindset, no matter how many times this subject is discussed. To me the One Best Path mentality shows a decided lack of faith in one’s kids, and implies a sort of necessary transference of responsibility for the kid’s guidance and nurturing from the parent to an institution. Some of these hothouse orchids (I think that term fits more than “snowflakes”) are so delicate that they can only thrive under the most particular of circumstances. As rare and special as they are, they have few traits of adaptation. And as most of us know, adaptability is an important life skill long beyond the college years.</p>

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<p>It seems to me that the posters who say that “no One Best Path exists” far outnumber the posters they are trying to rebut.</p>

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<p>Are we even reading the same thread? I don’t understand the last three comments at all. How does it imply desperation for a given route to analyze that route?</p>

<p>My own children will likely have very different paths than I have had, which is as it should be. Who is judging?</p>

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<p>I was thinking more about what it means to take high stats kids, vs. well-rounded kids, etc. in the context that I think QM and LF and others were getting at.</p>

<p>Yes, it’s true that our current “top score” possible, say 2400, isn’t a great differentiator among the very brightest kids. I understand the point of view that while high stats are a gate-keeping device, and adcoms then go to other factors of varying importance/value, why don’t we think about the kids who would have gotten even higher stats but those scores couldn’t be measured?</p>

<p>I think some are saying that if only we could measure that really super-duper high score, and then use <em>that</em> as a gate-keeper with looking at ECs and so forth beyond that requirement, that admissions would feel more fair at places like MIT. That maybe, some brilliant genius types would more clearly make the cut-off and get the slots.</p>

<p>However - I would say that MIT and similar absolutely do have access to those “scores beyond 2400” - that would be the kind of achievements that they also measure and ask for - the USAMO, as I mentioned before, would work for mathematics. Probably other people know more than I do about the parallel measures in other areas.</p>

<p>It is true that HYPSM do not use the USAMO or equivalent as their gate-keeping scores; the bar is lower, at what are still very high scores and grades. Are they high enough? I think that’s an interesting question. What happens when you raise that bar and look less at ECs? Well, I’ve been at Caltech (as a grad student, but still) - there is a very different “feel” at Caltech, a place that indeed is openly less about the well-rounding for their admits. My not-very-charitable impression of Caltech was that it was like the nerdiest 20% of MIT. And I say this as a proud nerd! :slight_smile: I bet that’s perfect for a lot of kids, even though it was not perfect for me (and would be even less perfect for my children).</p>

<p>The whole college search process is ideally about finding a good fit, which then will grow into a great fit when the kid goes and adapts.</p>

<p>On CC, as in life, there are competing factors that include the elusive “prestige”. No one is immune from that worry, whether defending or attacking it as a value…</p>

<p>Finally - did someone say that hacks are no longer allowed at MIT? (Were they ever allowed, or just sanctioned?) Does this mean no more Orange Tours etc…?</p>

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<p>Hi lookingforward, I have not been speaking for you as far as I recall. I haven’t been trying to speak for you. I have occasionally been quoting your posts without setting up the quotation box/line, or paraphrasing your posts. </p>

<p>I have also been drawing inferences about your philosophy occasionally, based on the comments you have posted–and to me, anyway, the inferences do not seem to be much of a stretch. If my inferences are wrong, it would serve the CC community for you to correct them.</p>

<p>I have advised students to follow your advice, and to pay no attention to my suggestions for changing the admissions process, if they really want to go to a “top” school. In case any student missed that, buried in my verbiage, I reiterate that advice here.</p>

<p>If you give me some examples where I am or seem to be speaking for you, I will avoid it in the future.</p>

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<p>I have not been posting about One Best Path for really bright students. Many choices are functionally equivalent for them. If we go down from really bright to merely bright, then as my freshman calc prof, John von [X] used to say, “At this level, it doesn’t matter whether you are being taught by John von [X], or by John von Neumann.” (I was a student so long ago that my high school did not offer calculus in any form.) I did not follow the One Best Path, nor do I support the view that one exists.</p>

<p>However, I think that the country is well served by matching the very small number really talented people with the best faculty for them, at the undergrad level. I do not intend to offend anyone by suggesting that there are people out there who are very far ahead of the really, really bright students. </p>

<p>It has been suggested earlier that the super-bright students are admitted to top places anyway, under current admissions policies. I remain neutral about that, since I do not have enough evidence to say. It seems to me that the policies would not favor them, since a very large number of people clear the bar to be “qualified.”</p>

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<p>I agree with fretfulmother. The level of the education offered at different universities may differ. This may have no effect on eventual employment. If one is interested in the educational content itself, it might matter.</p>

<p>The example of Middlemarch vs. Mill on the Floss was given above. I have mentioned elsewhere that when I was studying German in college, we read Duerrenmatt’s Der Richter und Sein Henker during the second quarter of the second year. mathmom, at Harvard, read this book in the second semester of the freshman year. I do not doubt that the differences in level of difficulty continued all the way to the senior year, and to grad courses. I took Faust at my college, and did fine. I am not certain whether/how I would have handled Faust at Harvard (assuming that a full course was offered on it, and not combined with other works of literature–actually the latter is more probable).</p>

<p>So you could argue that my college was better for me than Harvard would have been. This might be quite true. I’m only claiming “bright.” I have put in so many disclaimers already that it seems unnecessary to say that when I am concerned about the super-bright, it is not myself nor offspring (nor most likely, eventual grandchildren, if any) that I am writing about.</p>

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<p>I should have credited apprenticeprof on the George Eliot.</p>

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<p>One more item re Feynman: The book list (a number of posts back) should probably carry a hazard label. I was just looking at Meg Urry’s (Yale astrophysics prof) opinion column on the CNN site today, and she wrote:</p>

<p>“Richard Feynman, a famous physicist second only to Albert Einstein in the pantheon of 20th-century physics, was unusually candid about his womanizing in his popular memoir, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.” For his male readers, there was the occasional tip about how to pick up women in bars. For female readers like me, there was only a sense of alienation.”</p>

<p>Sadly, this is true, too. I overlook it because Feynman lost his first wife, whom he truly loved and treated with all tenderness (as is apparent from his other writing, if not from the Surely You’re Joking book). She had tuberculosis, which was misdiagnosed. Feynman thought that it was tuberculosis well ahead of the physicians’ realizing that it was. I think they believed it was Hodgkin’s disease. But he didn’t mention his idea, because he figured they knew better. Feynman’s wife accompanied him to New Mexico during WW II and died there. They were in their twenties. At one spot in one of the books, he mentions walking by a store window display of dresses, and thinking, “Arline would like that.” But she was already dead. This brought tears to my eyes.</p>

<p>I think this early experience hurt Feynman so deeply that I don’t judge his later behavior too harshly, though I view it as problematic. </p>

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<p>@QuantMech - yes, I would agree with that assessment of Feynman and his books (per Urry). It was very alienating to me as a woman, and also there were “class” issues with his games of leaving penny tips for waitresses under piles of silverware and so forth, described as humor.</p>

<p>It may well be that a school like MIT today wouldn’t want someone who would treat women and waitstaff like Feynman did. I bet it is true that a LOR from a teacher describing that kind of behavior would be a major negative and possibly torpedo someone’s admission. Should we argue that Feynman should have been admitted (if today) anyway? I can see it going both ways. Maybe people need to learn how to behave like decent human beings, no matter how many std deviations they are above the norm in genius.</p>

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<p>@fretfulmother‌ That was a response to those who are lamenting a problem that I haven’t seen. People don’t often say “School X or bust” on these boards, as far as I can tell, yet many posters proclaim the perniciousness of the “X or bust” attitude.</p>

<p>Like a Neopuritanical jeremiad.</p>

<p>(But what do I know? I’ve only been here for two years.) :-/ </p>

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<p>Double post.</p>

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<p>When I applied to MIT, my top two EC’s were “Computer Science,” and “Math” (and my other three were violin, piano, and quiz bowl, so there wasn’t anything exciting there.) My essay was about computer science, and I think I even spent most of my interview talking about academics. So I don’t think adcoms ignore academics once applicants are deemed to be academically qualified, </p>

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<p>@Exodius - duly noted! :)</p>

<p>I think posters who decry the “School X or bust” attitude are responding to the perceived prestige thing. It’s hard to distinguish between:</p>

<p>(a) School X or bust!
(b) School X is the best!
© Everyone will think my kid is better if s/he gets into School X!
(d) I [or my community, or my extended family] will be extra proud if s/he gets into School X!
(e) School X is the best for my kid!
(f) The world values some parts of School X more than School Y!
(g) School X is the best/goal for some kids [who have abc qualities]!</p>

<p>It sounded like this thread was about (g) and its intersection (or not) with the admissions procedures. I mean, after the initial response to those five “secrets”.</p>

<p>I think that if instead of “MIT for geniuses” we were saying that School X was the best for kids with dyslexia who want to study Marine Science, that no one’s hackles would be raised.</p>

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<p>I agree, Exodius: the idea that anyone here is arguing for “one true path” is largely a strawman.</p>

<p>In any case, the argument that because you might actually turn out to have a better experience at school A than school B for any number of reasons, you are a loser for preferring school B, which looks better for you on paper, is completely illogical. The chance of one of those unpredictable intangibles shaping your experience is equal at any number of schools, so it is pointless to choose based on them. We develop preferences based on the knowledge we do have - i.e, the best information we can gather about a school’s academics, social vibe, and extracurricular offerings.Sure, I’ll buy that you’re a loser (or at least immature) if you actually believe going to CMU rather than MIT is a tragedy, but no one is saying that on this thread.</p>