<p>Exactly, SOG. “We” (meaning our most elite institutions) do not have a lock on the world’s genius potential. That’s why these conversations are so head-shaking to me.</p>
<p>Yes, SOG and sally. And QM, part of the “deft deflection” may be because MIT admissions is not the only thing to talk about. And MIT is certainly not the only game in town.</p>
<p>Why would we assume that super math geniuses would have top stats? Stats include high school grades, which include many subjects in which super math geniuses may not do all that well. MIT may well take a significant number of such people over students with perfect grades and scores, so it could be true that the admitted students’ stats are lower that the average applicants’ stats for this reason.</p>
<p>To your point, Hunt, I left out the bit from the FT article about Avila being expelled from high school. </p>
<p>Heck, some super math geniuses may not even have top grades in math.</p>
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<p>He has close associations in multiple ways. Irrespective of our talking over each other here, his knowledge of S is much more closer and deeper and outranks much of what I might say.</p>
<p>Hmm, Tpg, I always though you and gravitas were more accurate than many others, more up on what S says. But I don’t think I’ve seen xiggi’s perspective on S. Didn’t know. I get it. Thx.</p>
<p>“at MIT we admit people, not numbers” That is probably the admissions philosophy at most colleges that use an holistic approach. And it is probably frustrating for very high SAT kids to not be admitted when other kids with lower stats are. But it is not all about numbers. <a href=“Admissions statistics | MIT Admissions”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats</a></p>
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<p>I think about this frequently. I wonder if there are great potential poets and scientists and musicians who live in Malawi or India (or wherever), more concerned with food and shelter than with maximizing their particular geniuses.</p>
<p>Strike that. I don’t wonder - I know this must be true. I wonder about this, and then I think how lucky I am to be born in the developed world (and then I wonder if I am wasting my own potential…)</p>
<p>Super link, sevmom. Especially this sub: <a href=“What we look for | MIT Admissions”>http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match</a>
Different colleges use different buzzwords or phrases, but that’s a nice show of what a kid can build, what it’s good to show. I don’t want to see it dissected, thus devalued. But any kid or parent can read it, should be looking for info of that sort, stand back and try to see what they are saying, and learn from that. Sorry to harp on a point again, but you can see the difference between that picture and assuming it’s as flat, simplistic and ridiculous as a jam packed resume. Or pres of stu govt or raising a few dollars from a fun party. </p>
<p>If you’ve got it, show it. It’s delightful when these qualities are found. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Hyperfocus on one part and you miss the whole point.</p>
<p>Did you ever read about this guy? <a href=“Srinivasa Ramanujan - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan</a></p>
<p>Thanks, lookingforward. I figured all roads are going to lead back to something about MIT admissions anyway so why fight it!</p>
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<p>It seems like people have some kind of mental block of what you can get out of a number. MIT says that 700 and above are considered equivalent. 700 on the math either means you are extremely careless to the point where it may actually affect your performance in real classes or that you lack the basic mathematical intuition or mastery of mathematics to at least know how to solve all the problems on what is a remedial exam. Considered holistic or otherwise, in the extremely competitive admission pool, a person with a 700 Math score cannot get into MIT unless they just don’t care that all their students have proficiency in mathematics. It’s just unlikely that you could bring something else to the table that could push you into the top 1000 candidates–not being able to do mathematics is very limiting at MIT. And even in majors that don’t use math, like bio, abstract thinking ability is critical to coming up with new paradigms. </p>
<p>There are some assumptions in that paragraph that you may not agree with (e.g., math is important or predictive for biology performance), but that’s the logic. It does not boil down to “so and so has a higher number.”</p>
<p>Perhaps MIT has experience that shows it that some students with 700 SAT math scores nevertheless have sufficient proficiency in math to do well at MIT. That, is MIT may actually have data that is more accurate than somebody’s perception of what specific scores mean.</p>
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<p>@Hunt : I would not be opposed to this at all. I think it’s more like 250 per class that are admitted for showing great promise academically–Harvard’s statement is open to different interpretations, but that was how I read it. </p>
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<p>I don’t think Feynman would likely get rejected, at least not if his area is math since there are well-respected contests in this area. However, I’ve been in classes where the top person in the class was rejected for someone whose grade average was 5x theirs. Before people get hung up on the number, I would say the person was clearly head-and-shoulders over the other people. I only know this because some of these classes were quite hard, and there would be one person at 100% and literally the entire class below 30%. Everyone was at least at ivy league level in terms of stats. (And no one had any special non-academic talent.)</p>
<p>The point is that after a certain baseline academic ability, in my observation academic meant little–until you got to the point where you were actually winning math olympiads. </p>
<p>“It seems like people have some kind of mental block of what you can get out of a number. MIT says that 700 and above are considered equivalent. 700 on the math either means you are extremely careless to the point where it may actually affect your performance in real classes or that you lack the basic mathematical intuition or mastery of mathematics to at least know how to solve all the problems on what is a remedial exam. Considered holistic or otherwise, in the extremely competitive admission pool, a person with a 700 Math score cannot get into MIT unless they just don’t care that all their students have proficiency in mathematics. It’s just unlikely that you could bring something else to the table that could push you into the top 1000 candidates–not being able to do mathematics is very limiting at MIT. And even in majors that don’t use math, like bio, abstract thinking ability is critical to coming up with new paradigms.”</p>
<p>@collegealum314 - I agree that a 700 on the SAT-I-math would be on the low side for an Honors math student (never mind an MIT applicant, never mind an MIT student, never mind a successful MIT student). Furthermore, biology majors at MIT do have to use math - to begin with, they take the Institute required courses, and then there are a few more (Statistics perhaps?).</p>
<p>But, are we sure that 700 is the floor for MIT admissions? I had thought it was 750. (And I do think there’s a difference.)</p>
<p>If someone is applying to a LAC with 700 in math and 800 in CR then I could see that being a very different conversation.</p>
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<p>What I find suprising is that for all this lengthy discussion about MIT, the various Joneses, and the discussions about adcom’s choices in describing the applicants, those links would point to something new! I have to adMIT to thinking that everyone who was debating the finer points of MIT was totally (and I mean totally) familiar with the evolution of that forum for the past ten years? And for no other reasons that it has been the most popular and most discusses admission forum and the model (not often copied enough) for many schools. </p>
<p>Over the years, and thanks to efforts by people like Ben Jones (like him or not) it has brought much transparency (but VERY FAR FROM ENOUGH) to a process that is deliberately kept opaque at too many schools. It has been the place where many little corners of the thick rugs were lifted to make the applicants have a better idea of what to expect. And it also helped more than applicants as they embarked on telling what a GOOD LOR should be and what is easily viewed as pretty poor (think Chris is a dedicated students who does all his tasks without fail) and perhaps devastating (dare I to mention a description of a grinder or gradegrubber here? /sarcasm) </p>
<p>Perhaps as twisted as the idea might appear, in a way, I always assumed that people who engage in the deep discussions about admissions and policies were intimately familiar with what appears on the admissions sites and blogs, and also read the Stanford Senate minutes where people such as Dean Shaw explains the inner workings of his office to his colleagues and faculty members. But then listening to Coach Shaw happens to be quite instructive! </p>
<p>Regardless, this is all water under the bridge for me. And I personally “won” the admissions sweepstakes and have no kids. So this stuff really is at best a distraction for me.</p>
<p>I would tell kids that are coming up who are stellar students that striving to be a deeper, more creative thinker is important and will pay off down-the-line, but is not something which will likely be recognized in admissions once you get past the basic academic criteria (top grades/stats), at least at the top level of colleges. And if it is going to be recognized, you are competing for one of 200-250 academic slots instead of like 1500-2000, the size of the admitted classes.</p>
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<p>Humm, I thought that the opposite would be surprising as it seems normal that a school loses a good number of high stats applicants in the conversion from admitted to enrolled. It would seem especially true with the number of cross-admits at peer schools, and especially true in the higher ranges. In terms of stats, I think it works like this applicants<enrolled<admitted. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I have always assumed and expected that the stats of students shared by some schools in April are HIGHER than what appear on their CDS in the following October. And that the admission rates would almost always been higher than first disclosed. </p>
<p>Re Hunt #630: Yes, I have read a biography of Ramanujan. He sent a set of insightful equations out to a number of mathematicians. G. H. Hardy, the Cambridge mathematician, recognized some of Ramanujan’s results for the summation of series as known results, but derived independently by Ramanujan. He confirmed some, which Ramanujan had derived for the first time. Others don’t look right to current mathematicians’ eyes. Some of these are probably akin to some of summations of apparently divergent series done by Leonhard Euler. I wouldn’t recommend devoting a career to these, but I think there might be something that Euler (and Ramanujan) understood about series summations that we don’t. So the results might be worth looking at, as a hobby. Or perhaps the lack of current rigor in the results led Euler and Ramanujan astray.</p>
<p>I fought pretty hard against some of my colleagues to have students from China and India admitted to our grad program (and from other foreign countries as well, but those are the leading two, in terms of numbers). I semi-succeeded.</p>