<p>Or Harvard’s view is “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.” (General Patton, speech to the 6th Armored Division of the 3rd Army, in England, May 31, 1944.)</p>
<p>I don’t endorse the content of the speech, certainly not in its entirety, but I realize that the context of war is different, and I can respect that.</p>
<p>If MIT thought the SAT was a “remedial test” and wanted some way to sniff out those who would score 1200 on an 800 scale – nothing, absolutely nothing, would prevent them from instituting their own test for applicants. The fact they haven’t done so tells you that they apparently don’t think sussing out the true math geniuses is as important as some of you would like it to be.</p>
<p>And I didn’t ask Harvard’s view of the world. I asked about Harvard’s brand equity, which is an entirely different concept altogether. (Concepts other than math, who’d a thunk?). Their brand equity is predicated on taking smart kids with leadership qualities, throwing them together with unbeatable resources and seeing what develops. That brand equity is not dependent on and does not require them to have THE highest SAT scores in the nation, at all. Very high, sure. But not THE highest. That teeters into egghead brand equity, which they don’t at all appear interested in owning. </p>
<p>@Pizzagirl - you seem very invested in taking down what you perceive as “eggheads” or “nerds”. I’m not sure why all the venom. I’m also not sure whom you’re tilting at, really. A lot of what you’re objecting to, no one claimed. (e.g. your parenthetical “Concepts other than math, who’d a thunk” comment).</p>
<p>It’s true, a lot of us on this thread, and perhaps in life, do think that math ability is valuable. That shouldn’t really be threatening to anyone else.</p>
<p>p.s. It’s not whether “MIT thinks” that the SAT is remedial. It really is a very basic math test for the kinds of kids who want to go, and are suited for, MIT.</p>
<p>"It has been interesting to learn more about these competitions and math circles and things like that. <a href="http://www.mathcircles.org/node/269">http://www.mathcircles.org/node/269</a>"</p>
<p>@sevmom, thanks for that link. I don’t know about any research along those lines, but it occurs to me, someone must have studied it, right? I bet it would be really hard to tease out the correlations from the causations. My un-data-driven guess is that it is like “club soccer” or similar - people with extra soccer ability would love to play more soccer with other good soccer players, and then they get even better, make Varsity, join fancier clubs, etc.</p>
<p>@QM - you don’t think the 10,000 hours thing is worthwhile at all, or just that it has to have some basic talent also? I mean, if I spent 10,000 hours playing basketball, I’d get a heck of a lot better at basketball - but if I spent those 10,000 hours on chemistry, I’d make even more progress. Was the theory that anyone can be a “genius” or just get a lot, like <em>a lot</em> better?</p>
<p>Q- here, lots of words to make it sound so anaytical, as well as genuine (or maybe heartfelt,) then see the end: <a href=“The Harvard Crimson”>The Harvard Crimson;
<p>fretfulmother, I think the theory was that anyone could become a genius at anything, by investing 10,000 hours. Your basketball example is apt. “You can’t teach tall.” [Borrowed quotation, obviously] I have a nephew who is 7’ tall. Of course, he has to work at ball handling and other basketball skills–which are considerable (I am serious)–but my other nephew who is 5’2" (and fully grown) is not going to be drafted by the NBA, no matter how much he practices.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link to the Harvard brand, lookingforward, #725. I will take a look at it.</p>
<p>PG #721, if MIT admissions agreed with me on what’s important, I would not have had any reason to make at least 1/3 of my posts! MIT admissions is not the same as MIT. But there’s not a strong drive to change things, because undergrads are relatively low on the priority list for most MIT professors. Obviously there are some MIT profs who are excellent and very dedicated teachers of undergrads, as well as being outstanding at research. But for the most part, other priorities tend to rank higher. </p>
<p>Quant, I don’t understand the logic of your argument. It is possible that there is no drive to change things at MIT because undergrads are low on the priority list for the faculty. It is also possible that there is no drive to change things because the stakeholders (faculty, deans, future employers of MIT talent, the funders of the zillions of dollars of research grants which flow to the Institute every year) are quite happy with the results of MIT admissions.</p>
<p>Why do you assume that there is a problem when none is in evidence? Every year the U gets more applications than it can admit. Check. Every year the U gets both restricted and unrestricted funds from a very wide range of sources. Check. Every year a bunch of faculty will be awarded the highest possible honor/prize in their field (not just Nobel et al… but Gold Medalist in Tribology and other discipline-specific awards). check. Every year some undergrads will win some competition for entrepreneurship by inventing a zany gosh-knows-what which will get a patent and a few million dollars in VC funding before these kids are old enough to rent a car. Check. Every year a young alum will take a company public and donate a million dollars to an organization which cures ringworm or has developed a portable non-polluting stove for rural Africa. Check.</p>
<p>exactly what is the problem you are trying to solve? That there are not enough beds to admit every smart kid in the world? Yawn. That’s what we’re still discussing on post 730 or so?</p>
<p>You’ve alleged before that there’s a big problem somewhere that a couple of math genius type kids get rejected from MIT every year. I’ve alleged before (many previous threads) that if those kids end up at CMU or Rice or Chicago or Berkeley (where there are ample opportunities for a math genius kid to flourish) somehow this is not an indictment of MIT admissions. Nor a problem that society needs to grapple with. I have yet to see you produce an example of the kid rejected by MIT who ended up at University of New Haven or Quinnipiac. In fact, since most of MIT’s 'not admits" (I hate calling a kid a reject) are going to end up at a peer institution, however you want to describe it… exactly what motivation would the faculty have for wanting to change what seems to be a winning formula???</p>
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<p>Yawn is right. This is a first-world micro-problem. No offense, QP, but every time you enter a thread it ends up in this same space–MIT…USAMO…poor underserved math geniuses. It’s a miracle any groundbreaking math work gets done anywhere in the world besides MIT.</p>
<p>Hey, I have posted my view that Harvard’s view is that Harvard is the best. At everything. Incontrovertibly.</p>
<p>If the reaction I got was just “Yawn,” I would stop posting. But my comments always seem to generate intense opposition. </p>
<p>I do understand that admissions doesn’t really work anywhere the way I think it should (maybe my university, but we have a pretty high admit rate). I understand that there is no stampede by admissions to adopt my viewpoint, now that I have expressed it. </p>
<p>I understand that there is more to potential than stats. I understand that the playing field is uneven, and people want to compensate for that (only right). I certainly understand that character is important. I understand that leadership and initiative are important too. </p>
<p>What I don’t understand is why my suggestions generate opposition that is really rather fierce (plus some equally strong support). </p>
<p>I posted before on a different thread that faculty friends of mine who work at MIT have remarked that they don’t understand how about 15% of the students they teach ever got accepted. It’s not a big enough deal for them to do anything about it, apparently. I don’t think their 15% figure has anything to do with a 15% figure that got bandied about by admissions in the past.</p>
<p>A lot of people understand that one error on the SAT I M can drop the score 20 or 30 points (commonly) and 40 points occasionally. So it’s no big deal to accept someone with a 760 or 770 over someone with an 800. I doubt that my faculty friends look at the Common Data set, though, to see the overall picture it gives. They think that admissions is taking the applicants they [the faculty] would generally consider the “best.” </p>
<p>My MIT faculty friends also know that MIT rejects students with perfect scores, and they do attach some significance to the SAT scores. The one person to whom I talked about this in detail thought that MIT was rejecting thousands of students with 2400’s. I don’t think that is true–I don’t think there are enough such people applying to MIT each year, even taking superscoring into account. It could well be an accurate figure for rejections of students with 800’s on a few of the tests, but not across the board. Since there are apparently 13,000 students a year with an 800 on the SAT I Math, then inevitably MIT would reject a whole lot of them, if the whole group applied.</p>
<p>Hardly anyone has the data to know the cross correlations of high SAT scores with high GPA (probably pretty good) and also with challenging curricular choices. So I think that a lot of people assume that the rejected students with exceptionally high SAT scores have an obvious weakness in other areas (aside from a weakness in cross-country unicycle riding or cat juggling). This is probably not true, actually.</p>
<p>Finally, for me this is the crux of the matter, if it is true. (I don’t know.) But here is what OperaDad reported on the Friendlier MIT Admissions site thread:<br>
" 09-03-2013 at 6:20 am
In their talk, the MIT Admissions office said the stats of the average Admit is lower than the average Applicant. As long as you are qualified, what you do with your talent is a lot more important than upping your stats by a few more points."</p>
<p>To me, if the admitted group has a higher proportion with some characteristic than the applicant pool has, that indicates a preference for that characteristic among admissions staffers. This still seems odd to me. There is no need to work hard to get high SAT scores! It takes no more time than everyone spends just taking the test.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that at Harvard, the stats of the average Admit are higher than the stats of the applicant pool in general. Why wouldn’t they be? Harvard is the best (kind of tongue in cheek, but not entirely).</p>
<p>My argument has always been that students at the high end of the talent scale are better able than most to take advantage of learning from faculty at the high end of the talent scale. While these students could flourish elsewhere (and often do), they will (in my opinion) flourish better at a really challenging school, with really good faculty. In fact, they should apply to Harvard–which will probably take them.</p>
<p>I cannot give specific examples of outcomes without really obtruding on people’s privacy (apologies to Henry Park for looking him up).</p>
<p>It appears that MIT takes academically weaker students than the average in the applicant pool, if OperaDad’s comments are accurate. I think that those students could just as well flourish at very good, but not “super-top” schools. In fact, I think they would notice the difference between the schools much less than the group of “super-geniuses” would.</p>
<p>lookingforward remarked earlier that admissions personnel are not looking for signs in the essay someone is “highly intellectual.” I can understand this at MIT, given the “Mens et manus” motto, especially the “manus.” For engineering, someone who really gets mechanical devices is a better fit than someone who can’t find the distributor, spark plugs, or the windshield-wiper-fluid reservoir cap in a vehicle, even given the manual. There are probably a few “highly intellectual” people like that. But it is a university, after all, and intellectualism has historically been valued within university communities.</p>
<p>I think it is valued at Harvard.</p>
<p>Fretfulmother - I was a math major, and I always did extremely well on standardized tests and math competitions (whatever they had in my day), so please rest assured I highly value math ability. </p>
<p>And thank you, blossom. </p>
<p>“MIT admissions is not the same as MIT. But there’s not a strong drive to change things, because undergrads are relatively low on the priority list for most MIT professors.” </p>
<p>QM. MIT admissions IS the same as MIT. They are no different from any other department – they are part of the same organizational mission. </p>
<p>Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of the article about Harvard’s brand:</p>
<p>The “core of the Harvard brand”: “self-perpetuating” “excellence, leadership, and tradition.” Professors marketing the Harvard brand get across the message: ‘We’re really great.” “Everyone in the physical world is re-linking back to Harvard.” Really? <em>Everyone</em> in the physical world? Oh, c’mon.</p>
<p>Harvard is not your father’s Buick . . . er, I mean not your father’s Harvard. It’s not stuffy. It’s not reinforcing the patriarchal hegemony. It’s very diverse these days. “Where? I don’t see a Harvard. That’s not a Harvard.”</p>
<p>They have come a very long way from the olden days [1972], when the “coat fund” was available only to male students. (Actually, I take that complaint quite seriously, and I’m glad they managed to change things in that area.) </p>
<p>I am sure that Harvard is better than it used to be, impossible as that may seem.</p>
<p>Actually I have only two real quarrels with Harvard. The first is implicit in the quotation above. Would anyone not at Harvard think that “Everyone in the physical world is re-linking back to Harvard”? Secondly, Harvard yard is a sea of mud for much of the year, and then it is replanted with grass, just before commencement. Oh, I suppose I do have a third, which is the documented inability of people at the Harvard commencement to explain why there are seasons. Of course, some of them were parents, who might not have gone to Harvard.</p>
<p>If undergrads are so low on the priority list for MIT professors, why is it so important that all the top math students get to go there? Wouldn’t their talents be better cultivated in a setting in which they WERE the top priority?</p>
<p>Re #735, PG, my university does not have a unified organizational mission (though there is some effort in that direction). Our admissions staff is definitely not the same as the university. The reporting lines are different, there is little cross-communication, and most of the faculty have very little idea what admissions is doing. I doubt that it is so much different at MIT.</p>
<p>sally 305, #737: Maybe the undergrads at MIT would be higher priority for the faculty if the faculty kept encountering super-genius undergrads (only partly tongue-in-cheek). I think that educating Richard Feynman was a pretty high priority for John Slater, along with his own research and the research of his grad students.</p>