<p>5 percent of MIT ENROLLED class did not have a score higher than 700 on math – and 25 percent in reading and writing for that matter. </p>
<p>This said, focusing on one SAT score can misleading as students might have a M690/R800/W800 with SAT Subject scores of 800. And, fwiw, this goes back to TPG point about Stanford wanting more Hum students. There is more to MIT than strict math! After all, the school appeals to students such as Mollie Bat. :)</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Oh, gag. You’d think that someone with a 700 could barely be trusted to balance a checkbook. Talk about being a drama queen. </p>
<p>Oh, what the heck . . . re fretfulmother, #635: Here is the 2012-13 Common Data Set for MIT:
<a href=“MIT Institutional Research”>MIT Institutional Research;
In particular, look at the section on First-Time, First-Year (Freshman) Admission.</p>
<p>It shows 740 SAT I Math as the 25th %ile line for the entering class at MIT. So 25% of the entering class scored at or below 740. 6.1% of the entering class scored between 600 and 699 on the SAT I Math. </p>
<p>It’s normal, maybe even universal, for the stats of the enrolled class to be lower than the stats of the “class” sent acceptance letters, the admitted class. But I have never heard of a situation where the accepted or enrolled class has lower stats than the applicant pool. That’s very hard to imagine. It would mean, I think, that someone with below-median stats had a better chance of admission than someone with above-median stats.</p>
<p>That said, if any college could have that situation, it might be MIT, because uniquely MIT doesn’t have some group of people with SATs in the low 600s applying in case they have a chance, or because they are athletic recruits.</p>
<p>@Hunt, that’s a good point. I would think people who have the intuition to really excel in math might make a few mistakes on the Math SAT (not the subject test). 3 mistakes corresponds to a 750. I got a 760 (made two mistakes as shown on the score report) but an 800 on the subject test and a 5 on BC since there is more lee away on those tests. One of my friends who is starting his math PhD at MIT and got into a slew of top schools got a higher score on the verbal section of the general GRE.</p>
<p>Also, many brilliant students are nonconformists which is great when interacting with professors, but could be very off putting with high school teachers. That could be the different between an A and A- in many classes.</p>
<p>I ended up getting into five top ten theoretical physics grad programs. However, I got Bs in math during high school. The reason for this was not that I didn’t know it (in fact I could explain it and understand it better than kids who got higher grades than I did), but because tests were not based on intuition and understanding the material, but strictly on speed. I do not process information as quickly as some (my processing speed is only average) and it gets much worse to the point of being impaired in time situations. When I got to graduate level physics courses though, I would score very highly on take home tests. My first perfect physics test was actually in graduate quantum mechanics!</p>
<p>My younger son got a 690 in math. He took Calculus BC as a senior. He’s just not speedy in math. His intuition in math is actually much better than most kids interestingly enough. (At least according to his pre-calc teacher who whizzed so fast they were doing Calc AB exams by June.) Don’t forget also that MIT has majors like architecture and business where it’s perfectly fine to be good but not brilliant at math.</p>
<p>My older son took the AIME every year he was in high school, but never got an 800 in math on the SAT. (He did on the PSAT.) He somehow managed an 800 on the CR both times and also on the subject test. He was not good enough for the next level up however.</p>
<p>As for the applicants at MIT having higher scores that doesn’t surprise me at all. That’s why the MIT admissions keep harping on the fact that it’s not all about numbers, you HAVE TO bring something else to the table.</p>
<p>In previous discussions, I’ve criticized students who think homework is boring and beneath them, and who think they are smarter than their teachers–such people generally have this attitude all through life, and are failures. However, there may be a very few people who really are smarter than their teachers, and who are totally bored by the homework, and who don’t do it–thus taking a hit to their grades. They might also think that the SAT is stupid and pointless, etc. They could have these immature attitudes and still be math geniuses, and it could be that MIT or some other institution will gamble that they will outgrow those attitudes if there is sufficient other evidence of genius.</p>
<p>"In previous discussions, I’ve criticized students who think homework is boring and beneath them, and who think they are smarter than their teachers–such people generally have this attitude all through life, and are failures. However, there may be a very few people who really are smarter than their teachers, and who are totally bored by the homework, and who don’t do it–thus taking a hit to their grades. They might also think that the SAT is stupid and pointless, etc. They could have these immature attitudes and still be math geniuses, and it could be that MIT or some other institution will gamble that they will outgrow those attitudes if there is sufficient other evidence of genius. "</p>
<p>@Hunt - I agree very much with all of this.</p>
<p>“Who is wise? S/he who learns from everyone.” OTOH, “Smart is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wise is not putting a tomato in a fruit salad.”</p>
<p>I’ve had a lot of smart kids in my life, but as I tell anyone who will listen, smart is nothing you earned, but kind is something you can be proud of. There are kids every year who don’t do homework [and get low grades] and claim it’s too boring and request on that basis to move to Honors level classes instead. The answer is normally “no” - the spots are already taken by people who are smart <em>and</em> hard-working. It sounds like colleges have much the same perspective in most cases.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for a student who feels so much smarter/bored that s/he doesn’t do the HW or cooperate, <strong>and also has no one in his/her life to correct this behavior</strong> - because that attitude will set a kid back much more than the lack of a few IQ points. Grade-grubbing, too, always causes greater loss of character than gain in points.</p>
<p>More leeway is an understatement! While the Math Level I is more like the SAT Reasoning test, the Math Level 2 is a none other than a test that rewards the mastery of a TI calculator. Both the SAT Level II and the AP come with extremely generous curves. To earn a perfect score on the regular SAT, one needs to know every answer or know when not to guess whimsically or leave one blank.</p>
<p>Perhaps the claims that schools do not get fixated on a “lower” score on the regular SAT stems from their ability to measure the additional tests presented by the student, and know that not everybody is interested in retaking the SAT to improve on a 680-750. Or that some students simply did run out of Saturdays after getting the poor advice to wait until the PSAT scores are in! </p>
<p>I find it unlikely to the point of implausibility that any student who is a “math genius” wouldn’t get at least a 740 on the SAT-I-math. At least, if this person had had a Western, typical, exposure to math topics and was willing to expend a modicum of effort on the exam. And I think that’s the population we’re really discussing here, in the main (Western students who try hard).</p>
<p>So it’s not that MIT’s math geniuses aren’t getting above 700 - it’s that MIT also lets in non-math-geniuses, consistent with its mission.</p>
<p>Fretfulmother, inasmuch as I’d agree with a real “math genius” inability to score above 740, this could happen if the kid did not review at all and pay attention to some arcane presentations or bizarre use of symbols in some SAT questions. In addition, there is the potential problem with the elements of time, tiredness, and possible lack of concentration. And then there might be physical handicaps that make the time element a bigger problem. </p>
<p>There’s one kid I know well who fit perfectly the “so smart/bored I can’t do the homework” pattern. Was it obnoxious and immature? Of course! Did she "suffer’ for it in college admissions? Of course she did! So what happened when she got to college (a world-class large public university that admits purely on stats)? She triple-majored (only in stuff that interested her). Her professors adored her – because she really was smart, and because working on stuff that interested her and challenged her she was fully engaged and tireless. Also, she matured a bit, and she noticed that her professors and TAs knew more than she did, so she was a lot less snotty. She won prize after fellowship after prize. She went directly from undergrad into a top-5 PhD program in the field she liked best.</p>
<p>Most really selective colleges to which she applied rejected her. (There was one women’s college exception that was willing to take a chance, but she didn’t like it after visiting.) Is there anything wrong with that? Of course not! No one thought she somehow deserved admission to a top college notwithstanding her bad attitude. On the other hand, it really wasn’t hard to predict she would knock the cover off the ball in college, and if some hyper-selective college HAD admitted her, it would have been fine, too (although she couldn’t have wound up in a better position than she’s in today).</p>
<p>Which goes back to one of my regular points: There are lots of different ways to get a good outcome. This girl could have benefited from going to Harvard, say, but not that much more than from going to the public university she attended, whose departments were ranked in the tier below Harvard’s. She got attention from the best faculty there, she formed real relationships with them, they taught her and helped her get a place on a really high rung for the next stage.</p>
<p>I’m remembering the time I watched the Math Team here where I teach; they were waiting for something to start and someone brought up some practice SAT Math questions on a phone to pass the time. The speed of those kids was astounding; I’m no dummy and I had barely read the question when they were done.</p>
<p>None of the questions even required them to use a pencil, let alone challenged them - and those weren’t all “math genius” level, just Honors/Math-Team. Who admittedly were very good at “school math” so maybe that’s your point.</p>
<p>And if you look at College Board, even a 780 on Math is at the 99th percentile (anything from 770-800 is 99th percentile) and a 710 is at the 95th percentile. There probably are very few true “math geniuses” out there though like the person profiled in the article that Hunt posted.</p>
<p>On the Art of Problem Solving Forum, it is generally regarded as newsworthy if one of their contest participants did not score 800 on the SAT I Math section. It happens occasionally. Usually, the person had missed a single question. If the test session doesn’t have the Q&A service, there’s no telling whether it is CB that is wrong.</p>
<p>mathmom, if the admitted students have lower stats than the applicant pool, it suggests to me that not only do you have to have more if you are a high stats applicant (or at least be recognized to have more), but that MIT somehow finds the <em>more</em> more frequently in their lower stats applicants. Please excuse my skepticism. The argument that students with high stats are more likely to be lost to other colleges might apply if OperaDad’s comment had been about the students who enrolled (relative to the applicant pool), rather than the students who were admitted. I think OperaDad said “admitted.” I will double-check this later.</p>
<p>574 Well, I mean academic subject matter, as long as you include the arts in that. You are going to have high school students who are accomplished in various math and science fields, in writing, in art, and in music. There will be some, but fewer, in subjects like history, and there may not be many at all in subjects that aren’t really taught much in high schools, like political science, economics, psychology, architecture, anthropology, and lots of others. If you take only kids who have already staked out an area of interest, where are all your anthropologists, sociologists, etc., going to come from?</p>
<p>^^I liked this and wanted to comment. My kids grew up in the backyard of an ivy which allowed qualified local public high school students to take free coursework for credit. I don’t think this is unusual with private universities. So some high school students will have access to college coursework in their area of interest (which may be even more specialized than what Hunt lists), coursework not covered in high school, and will end up with the sort of letters of recommendation mathmom describes upthread stating this high school student outperformed upperclass students and graduate students in the course. And I guess this is the showing we keep talking about. It used to bother me quite a bit these opportunities weren’t available to all interested students but with on-line education maybe they soon will be. I don’t think you can successfully parent a child into that kind of path. You can only support it if they choose it. imho</p>
<p>And this is sometimes the type of student who can’t be bothered to do anything in which they aren’t interested. I don’t know if that is immaturity. Students recognizing the silliness of most high school academics is a mark of intelligence in my opinion. On the other hand, they need to make up their minds whether they want to play the game or not and whether they are prepared to deal with the consequences if they won’t. Again, I don’t think parents can “make” them play the game.</p>
<p>When these kids conform enough, I think they do extremely well in admissions and get to choose where they want to go to college. The difficult thing for me is figuring out what conforming enough means for kids like this. Basically, I think they have to own it though.</p>