<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>To clarify: I think parents can insist their kids respect their teachers and do their best not to let them know they are smarter. That is doable. They have to learn that imho. Also, you may be able to insist they stay in classes that are essentially worthless. That seems pointless to me.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can make anyone take the SAT seriously, but you can sure nag them to pieces. It doesn’t accomplish anything imho. If they are smart enough to see it’s silly, they are smart enough to decide themselves what to do with that insight. Seventeen is pretty young to go off the grid. : )</p>
<p>a couple of young farmers out in my rural community went off the grid after high school. They are very intelligent. They are self supporting and do good in the world. One of them spent some time at Bennington.</p>
<p>@ahl - I think the kind of child you describe in your last 2 paragraphs do extremely well once in the working world. They are usually the personality types that will not conform something as critical as their interests to someone else’s definition of what is advantageous or important. That would be soul crushing to these types of children. They usually end up in jobs that they are well suited for because they somehow find the personal fortitude to follow their instincts. Raising these types of kids can be challenging though.</p>
<p>“Admitted” students or “matriculated” students? If you want to go on what someone else said they were told, may as well check. I don’t have time to look, right now. Many people confuse the two terms.</p>
<p>I’ll second QM’s post. Specifically, it’s extremely rare for anyone getting to the USAMO stage to get anything other than an 800–on the very rare occasions they do, they got one wrong. This is just speaking from my own personal experience. I don’t ask, but I have known quite a few that volunteered it. And the non-800 among that group did earn some good-natured teasing–it was rare.</p>
<p>Not speaking of math “geniuses”, but it’s rare for people who can get A’s at MIT in engineering or the math-based physical sciences (e.g., thermo) to have gotten less than 740-760–what is generally the score corresponding to a couple of mistakes due to careless errors. Frankly, if you get beyond that, it’s going to be difficult to get B’s too. This is not to say that an 800 means you are likely to do well at MIT, because that’s not true at all.</p>
<p>I liked the book Indian Clerk based on Ramanujan and Hardy. Although it is fictional, much of it is supposed to be based on what happened to Ramanujan in England.</p>
<p>Just wondering if there is any self selection in this. Are the kids doing math competitions like USAMO also doing a lot of prepping for the Math SAT? Lots of practice tests for instance. Just curious. So, perhaps a kid that could get 700 + with no prep may still be able to handle the material once they get to college. </p>
<p>@sevmom - I doubt it. Kids who do contests like USAMO would be bored out of their minds doing a lot of SAT practice tests. My DS16, who is not quite at that caliber, but might approach it, took enough practice tests to cooperate with my request that he demonstrate that he could do it at the 780-800 level each time, and then no more.</p>
<p>However, the next tier down from that, i.e. the Honors, Math Team, regional winners - they may well do SAT prep as part of their general excellent scholarship. OTOH, they wouldn’t be in the group that takes a 700 with no prep and leaves it at that. ;)</p>
<p>Unless the acceptance rates by SAT scores is really weird, I don’t see how it’s possible for the average admitted students SAT scores to be higher than that of the average of all applicants. The acceptance rate goes up as test scores go up, but you’d need the opposite for this to be true.</p>
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<p>Collegeboard says you can not differentiate between a 700 and a 750.</p>
<p>That makes perfect sense as the members who find AOPS interesting are engaging in the exact activities tested on the SAT! Interest and mental acuity form a formidable combination. Yet, there is a high probability that the mistake(s) occured in the very first questions when the attention level is low. </p>
<p>As far as TCB making a mistake, the odds are extremely low. I only recall one question (in more than a decade) that was later removed for a possible ambiguity. On the other hand, they have allowed a question to remain despite an ambiguity in the problem statement as it did not change the correct answer.</p>
<p>On the other hand, careless mistakes are as predictable as rain in Seattle! </p>
<p>For what is it worth, if you want to see how a great math student approaches the SAT, check the posts of Miter94 in the SatPrep forum. And yes, he is from MIT! </p>
<p>How many kids do you think actually do significant prep for the math SAT? And how many kids are participating in these serious math contests? Just curious.</p>
<p>TCB, on occasions, like to throw some red meat in the cage! They also say that preparing for the SAT does not yield great differences. The devil is in the details, as those type of statements contain a ton of … fine print that is almost always overlooked by the sensationalists who report and repeat them. </p>
<p>Anyone who believes that a 2100 is similar than a 2250 in terms of admissions does that at his or her own peril. There might be a small difference between a 700 and a 750, but compounding differences make a LOT of difference. </p>
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<p>Is there an unfortunate negation floating in the above sentence? I think it would be rare for the average SAT of all applicants to be higher than the … admitted students’. Unless a school decides to push the Tufts syndrome to its maximum and reject all high scorers. </p>
<p>If memory serves, during the last years of the Hargadon regime at Princeton, I saw breakdowns of admitted students by SAT score ranges, and it was consistently the case that students with 750-790 on a particular test (either Math or, then, Verbal) had a somewhat higher rate of admission than those who scored 800 on the same test. Which, I think, was generally interpreted to reflect Hargadon’s relative dislike of “brains” in favor of “leaders,” and also perhaps some yield protection vis a vis its rivals. But Princeton was still accepting plenty of 800-scorers, then, and 800-scorers had a meaningfully higher likelihood of admission than those who scored 700-740. </p>
<p>And it was unusual enough to stick out like a sore thumb. At every other college where data was available, notwithstanding constant advice that SATs were irrelevant above some threshold level, kids with 800 scores were accepted at a much higher rate than kids with 750s (much higher, that is, unless the rate for both groups approached 100%). Plenty of kids with 800s were rejected at the most selective colleges, then as now. But it was clear that the intellectual qualities the colleges valued were more likely to be found among 800-scorers than among 700-scorers. That’s not very hard to believe, whatever you think of the SAT.</p>
<p>That’s why it’s really hard to believe that MIT really accepts a pool whose SATs on average are lower than the average of the applicant pool. For that to be true, the chances of someone around 740-750 would have to be better than those of someone with 800, across a pretty big population (which of course is much bigger for 740-750-scorers than for 800-scorers). That seems inconsistent with MIT’s reported 75-25 splits, though, for the enrolled class. 25% or more of the class has 800 on the Math SAT, and 75% or more have at least 750. The top 5% of the curve for the Math SAT is hinky, of course – instead of representing a smooth continuation of the overall bell curve, there are mini-peaks at 740, 770, and 800, and a random test-taker is equally likely to get an 800 or a 740 (and more likely to get an 800 than any other particular score higher than 720.</p>
<p>@sevmom, I have no idea how many kids prep for the SATs, but the contest numbers can be found at the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) website:</p>
<p>Piece of cake for … a small percentage of students. It is good to remember that the mean scores in the US is below 500. Take a look at the state by state comparisons. It is nothing to crow about, and especially not when removing the average of states where the SAT is attracting students who NEED or want a higher SAT. (ACT states) Close to 60 percent of test takers do NOT meet the college ready benchmarks.</p>
<p>13,000 students earned a 800 in math. Gives a bit of perspective to “Each year over 350,000 students in roughly 6000 schools participated in the MAA AMC Contests. Of these, 10,000 students qualify each year to participate in the AIME scheduled for late March/early April.”</p>
<p>Yes, xiggi, I meant probably a piece of cake for the kids who do well in the contests like USAMO, not for the general public. Sorry, I should have clarified that.</p>
<p>I was thinking more about the idea of kids feeling themselves too smart to do work or jump through hoops in their normal educational system. (Let’s omit for the moment someone with LD or other diagnosed obstacles.)</p>
<p>It reminds me of certain [teaching] colleagues at my first school I taught at years ago, who would say things like, “I’m too smart to teach to someone else’s curriculum; I don’t need to be validated by the AP because it holds me back.”</p>
<p>For any parents who would accept a kid thinking s/he was too smart or too special to do school hoops, would you accept a teacher saying that? I personally always thought both were insufferably rude, and probably not as competent as they claimed.</p>
<p>It was easier to achieve an 800 on the GRE Math (old scoring) when it was a computerized adaptive test. I think about 15% of the people who took it got 800’s. It was possible to miss more than one question and still score 800. On the older paper version of the GRE, a student who missed any questions might not have an 800. I am unsure about that, because it seems to me that only the scores were reported in the “olden” days, and not the number right/wrong/omitted.</p>
<p>On the new version, which goes up to 170, I think that a student has to score in the 99th %ile to get a 170. Still, that’s easier than the SAT I Math (probably) where a student has to answer all of the questions right to score 800 (at most administrations–occasionally at random there is a test where missing one on the math will still get the person an 800). Despite the large numbers of 800’s on the SAT I Math, I think that the cut line for 99th %ile is below 800.</p>