<p>*I want kids who do USAMO to be doing it because they love math, it’s fun, this is cool, I love solving these problems - not because there’s a golden ticket attached to it. *</p>
<p>Okay - I think you and QM are now describing the same students. </p>
<p>adding: and their favorite math problems just happen to live at MIT : )</p>
<p>I really don’t care what school it is. My issue is whether your behavior on the board is professional. If it isn’t, that kind of impacts (for me) the value of the advice you give. Would the others on your team regard posting as an anonymous admissions officer (as opposed to yet another concerned parent, which you also seem to be) as appropriate professional conduct?</p>
<p>Professional conduct? Huh? What assumptions are you making? What behavior? I share my observations and opinions, same as anyone else. On some matters, I don’t have to guess or go by what someone else thinks or some digest on NYT. I make no claim to be an adcom. QM wrote something about that on a thread and we exchanged messages. (Or, at least, I sent her one.)</p>
<p>If you want to vet what I say, go for it. </p>
<p>A closer read may help, alh. I am not an adcom. And others on my team are on CC, including adcoms. (They run through the results threads on Ivy Day, as well, put them up on a big screen.) I do not reveal specifics about getting admitted to my college, don’t suggest specific steps. I talk in generalities that some people get and others don’t want to know.</p>
<p>So…what? It’s fine for people to say admissions should weigh academics more, how kids can pad long resumes, that adcoms will be against you if they had bad pizza in your town, that they this or they that? And not ok for me to weigh in based on my experience and observations? I don’t reveal trade secrets. I use “imo” or “ime” far more frequently than the guessers do, who are adamant. </p>
<p>Take it or leave it.
Don’t hate me because I argue with QM. She and I do fine, disagreeing.</p>
<p>“I want kids who do USAMO to be doing it because they love math, it’s fun, this is cool, I love solving these problems - not because there’s a golden ticket attached to it.”</p>
<p>I really don’t think it’s possible for there to be any other reason/way to do USAMO. Already lots and lots of kids try and don’t make it to the AIME, let alone the USAMO. Anyone who sticks with it, by definition has to love the math that much. I just don’t see a risk… The kind of kid who would do the USAMO is probably also already hoping it gives him/her an edge at college admissions (almost 100% likely assertion) - so to make it more of a sure thing wouldn’t change anyone’s motivation, I don’t think.</p>
<p>PG - have you looked at the AIME and USAMO problems recently? It’s not something you could grind for over a few years and then achieve; it’s not just more practice (though the practice is necessary, too). That kind of thinking is simply not possible because a parent tells you to do it, any more than a 3.5 minute mile is possible.</p>
<p>QM - that said, I’m opposed to having any golden ticket to MIT. I only brought up the USAMO because in a way, it does differentiate the true SAT 800s from the 1200s etc. I still think that someone who acts like a jerk (Feynman) maybe doesn’t “deserve” admission, no matter how much of a genius he may be. Colleges are about creating a community, even (especially?) super-duper colleges.</p>
<p>To my mind, Caltech’s slightly different focus from MIT in this vein, has not created a better campus community. I actually think it’s a much worse community, even for geniuses.</p>
<p>"The kids in those families aren’t going to start lining up to do USAMO to increase their chances at certain schools. "</p>
<p>But kids in other families WILL be forced to at least attempt this, at the expense of their own interests. That’s who I’m concerned with. It’s not what it does to MIT admissions - it’s what it does to applicants. </p>
<p>LF: I don’t hate you. My response to your posts has nothing to do with your exchanges with QM. I am just really exhausted with this idea of creating a profile to impress colleges. Which I see as totally different than creating a positive story to explain your individual choices. I think I’m in agreement with xiggi here. </p>
<p>A decade ago, on this board, parents used to at least pretend their kids wanted to go to certain schools because that school was the perfect fit. Now I read a lot of how to fit the kid to the school. And I think it is really pertinent to this ongoing discussion.</p>
<p>PG: we can’t save those kids from those parents. imho. I think fretfulmom’s explanation is extremely helpful.</p>
<p>We could decide to opt out of elite college admissions and enthusiastically support our state schools. There is a lot to be said for that idea. imho</p>
<p>I don’t say (artificially) create a profile to impress them. Many who say that point to some anecdote, some kid they know or some reports about a kid who scammed Harvard. </p>
<p>I also don’t say create a positive story to explain your individual choices. I do say, make wise choices, in the first place, as Texaspg is trying to do. </p>
<p>I do say, it is possible to get to know a college well enough to see what they like, learn from that. Most kids don’t. Ime, many kids don’t even begin to know how to present themselves on an app for a competitive college- because their entire frame of reference is hs and what hs teachers and admins like to see and grant accolades for. On this count, we should help them- not with crap, but with well considered understanding.</p>
<p>This idea kids should just be natural and authentic is risky- many kids misinterpret that advice. They write about granddad because they love him. They admit some things better edited out. We can help them or pretend it’s all a crapshoot . It’s not that different from seeking a job, where you ensure you cover the points (obvious and subtle) that that employer seek and skip the extraneous. </p>
<p>So, some more pleasant disagreement with lookingforward (I’ve been sarcastic at a few spots before, but this is sincere):</p>
<p>Why would I object to “robot” and not to “grade grubber”? It is because I take these words to have different connotative meanings. A “grade grubber” is unquestionably human, though engaged in some undesirable behavior. A robot is not human. I think that labeling people as “not human,” even in jest, is wrong. (Just to be clear: I know nobody thinks they are literally robots.)</p>
<p>If “grade grubbers” were called “grade grubs” instead, I would object to that.</p>
<p>PG makes a valid point about the problems that could be caused if students were forced to focus on mathematics, in an attempt to score points on the USAMO and thereby be guaranteed admission to MIT. I do worry about the possible unintended consequences of the suggestion. The reason that I do not fear it as much as PG does is this: It seems to me that reaching the level of scoring points on the USAMO is sufficiently hard that almost no one could be “forced” into it, any more than I could have been “forced” to become an Olympic swimmer.</p>
<p>My thought is that there are enough prior contests leading up to USAMO, and there are enough early indicators of whether a student has real mathematical talent, that even the most tigerish of parents would be likely to conclude that their efforts were better spent elsewhere, if they were trying to help their children prepare to become competitive for “top” school admissions. It’s a question of aiming for one of about 20 spots that would come with a guarantee, vs. 1200-2000 remaining spots, where a quite different strategy would work better. (The figure of 20 has been whittled down from the total number of students who score points on the USAMO by junior year of high school, based on the facts that only a fraction of them will prefer MIT over other schools, and some fraction of the people who score points on the USAMO are already being admitted to MIT under the current admissions system.)</p>
<p>There are some high schools that do exceptionally well in producing USAMO competitors. But the large majority of students at those schools do not even qualify for USAMO. It’s really quite hard. Zero on the USAMO is an honorable score.</p>
<p>fretfulmother, #442: I am not sure that Feynman acted like much of a “jerk” until he lost Arline–maybe not like a jerk at all. The behavior that one could rightfully object to comes after that, as I recall.</p>
<p>"We could decide to opt out of elite college admissions and enthusiastically support our state schools. There is a lot to be said for that idea. imho "</p>
<p>@alh - I think there is indeed a lot to be said for this option. We did a college tour this summer and the state schools were incredible in what they can offer with their size and resources. The tour guide made an impression on me at UMD-CP when she said, “you can’t make a big school out of a small school, but you can make a small school out of a big school.” Probably this is old news to some people, but to me, it was the first time I’d thought of it that way.</p>
<p>Caltech is not for everyone, that is for sure. Of the people I know who went there, a fair fraction of them really disliked the place. There are some joke videos about Caltech problem sets on Youtube, and I think they are pretty authentic. I am not sure that the Caltech admissions philosophy is at fault for this, though. There are other factors, including the extent to which the grad students and post-docs outnumber the undergrads, and the wide range of pre-college preparation that even the students admitted to Caltech have. Their entering classes are about 250 students (maybe a bit more, I’d be very surprised if it were 400). It’s a pretty small community.</p>
<p>Further, to PG’s point about students being force to prepare for the USAMO to get one of the auto-admit spots I suggested: If my parents had decided that my becoming an Olympic swimmer was the surest route to Stanford for me, they would probably have been right. However, when I placed 12th or lower in the local town’s swim races in my own age division, for a couple of years running, they would probably have abandoned that particular idea. </p>
<p>alh, I just read your post #433 and am <em>literally</em> laughing out loud! Thanks! You really made my day! </p>
<h1>447 - I read one whole thread as a commentary on how we label and distance ourselves from those who aren’t like us. And woke up this morning thinking, "on noooo… am I really going to spend another week of my life once again (unsuccessfully) attempting to reclaim/reappropriate “special snowflake” ?</h1>
<p>I’m not.</p>
<p>This thread teaches me to just let go… : ) : ) : )</p>
<p>adding: thanks QM - I’m working on humour, since my kids don’t think I have any. And I’m trying to lighten up in my old age.</p>
<p>I understand that QM and others feel there are specific genius-types whom MIT has turned down, at least in the past, and that they feel that is not consistent with MIT’s mission and ideals.</p>
<p>In my little corner of the world, however, I have seen absolutely zero evidence that the students with the best academic abilities are frozen out of reasonably equivalent elite academic options, at least so long as they follow a reasonable application strategy. </p>
<p>I wrote a long post with detailed stories, but decided it was too specific to make public. The bottom line, though, is that my experience is that colleges like HYPS generally opt for people who are legitimately intellectually engaged in what they do, and who are recognized by others as intellectually engaged. Which generally means very high grades (but not necessarily the highest grades) and very high test scores (but not necessarily the highest of those, either). It can be consistent with lots of ECs or very few ECs. I have seen Asian students with few (and stereotypical) ECs chosen over legacies and URMs with better grades and test scores and much flashier ECs. In each case, the Asian kid was universally respected by peers as someone who was smarter and more interesting than anyone else.</p>
<p>The college admissions staffs aren’t perfect, Lord knows; they can make mistakes. I don’t think they generally all make the same mistake at once, though, unless there’s something they all see that makes the “mistake” not a mistake. (Or unless, I suppose, it’s the kind of random simultaneous occurrence of independently rare events that can happen when you have an n of considerable size.)</p>
<p>I don’t believe Harvard ever intentionally turns down an applicant who is one of the 20 people for whom Harvard might be a more valuable experience than any other college. If they identify an applicant as such, they accept him. At the same time, however, I also don’t believe there is anyone actually in that category. There may be a few score students who would not necessarily have the same quality of academic experience at all 20 of the top 20 colleges (whatever they are), but I doubt there are any who would not essentially find equivalency among 5-10 of those colleges.</p>
<p>"Caltech is not for everyone, that is for sure. Of the people I know who went there, a fair fraction of them really disliked the place. There are some joke videos about Caltech problem sets on Youtube, and I think they are pretty authentic. I am not sure that the Caltech admissions philosophy is at fault for this, though. There are other factors, including the extent to which the grad students and post-docs outnumber the undergrads, and the wide range of pre-college preparation that even the students admitted to Caltech have. Their entering classes are about 250 students (maybe a bit more, I’d be very surprised if it were 400). It’s a pretty small community. "</p>
<p>@QuantMech - I think it’s more than that. I’m not talking, at all, about undergraduate teaching (which is pretty good, thanks to more enlightened faculty pay schedule leading to less dependence on research at the expense of teaching). I’m also not talking about difficulty of content (which seems about the same as MIT or similar places).</p>
<p>I’m talking about the feel of the place - the utter disregard for affirmative action, as you’ve mentioned, leaks in an unpleasant way into people’s outlooks on that campus. It is then bathed in the highly un-diverse political climate of Pasadena, with the weird southern-CA lookism and lack of public transportation to more cultural experiences. I also found the culture to be anti-good-sport, even in the practical joke context. Like, MIT students build a working phone booth on a rooftop; Caltech students swap the green and red lenses on a traffic light in a real live intersection.</p>
<p>A close friend of mine was advised for a PhD by someone who at the time was the only URM professor at Caltech, and what he observed in terms of racism was astounding. When female faculty sued both MIT and Caltech about discrepancies in space and funding, a number of years ago, MIT settled and apologized; Caltech denied it all.</p>
<p>I myself interviewed to be a RA for the dorms at Caltech, and that was the first and perhaps only time I ever experienced anti-semitism in my life (harsh line of questioning about why someone would keep kosher, and a few other tangential issues). Homophobic and sexually explicit “jokes” were abundant in that process, as well. The Honor Code is something of a joke, with weird basement interrogations and people looking at each others’ exams left in envelopes.</p>
<p>As a mother and teacher, I have never recommended Caltech to my children or students.</p>
<h1>449</h1>
<p>fretfulmother: My family attended the same southern university for generations. My generation is the first to leave the state, except for very brief fortune hunting periods during the 1920s and depression years. My kids’ generation is the first to go to private out of state colleges. There were positive advantages to providing this generation with more educational opportunities than we had. On the other hand, this generation can never really “go home again” and the older I get the more that seems to trouble me.</p>
<p>“We could decide to opt out of elite college admissions and enthusiastically support our state schools. There is a lot to be said for that idea. imho”</p>
<p>I don’t think you have to opt out of elite college admissions to opt out of the concept that one should dance on the head of a pin over small differences. </p>
<p>@PizzaGirl - you are right on in terms of mid-western state schools. I had to defend going away to school instead of going to UofI, to most people we knew.</p>
<p>Hey, ok, you edited. 
But I still think you are right about UofI.</p>
<p>I’m editing my response to PG’s edited post as well. </p>
<p>PG: I still am not clear exactly where you stand on the elite college admissions arms race. It seems to me you set rather arbitrary parameters on what is excellent and/or acceptable with regard to colleges and sometimes this is a reflection of how your family dealt with this issue and sometimes it has nothing to do with your personal experiences? If you are going to talk about top 20, why is there an aversion to the idea of top 5? Or is there no aversion? All these rankings eventually become relative. Someone’s safety is another’s lottery type reach. </p>