<p>I’m glad you acknowledge it’s a difficult Q because so many on here seem to “know” that our bagpipe player just chose bagpipes because he wanted to be quirky and juggling cats on unicycles was already taken. </p>
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<p>This is a joke, right?</p>
<p>We forgot to acknowledge this: the most outlying of these outliers may not get into CMU, either. I’m thinking state school. </p>
<p>Bagpipe, juggler, expert knife sharpener, , whatever, not a tip, on its own, as one line in the EC section. C’mon. </p>
<p>Bogi, you don’t get into an elite for wanting it, you get in for them wanting you. Give admissions something to hang their hats on. It isn’t Everest. Or create special special programs for special special kids, where they can focus on their special talents and not have to be mentored into making their round pegs fit into square holes. This is nothing against kids with special needs- in fact, it’s saying, find the right place for them, by recognizing what they need (as it’s getting painted here) is far more than a great prof or two, some lab time. </p>
<p>Yeah, I hope that’s a joke about CMU and Caltech but who knows. I’m gathering there seems to be an MIT or bust mentality with some of these “geniuses.” If you are going to Harvard or CMU or Caltech and still feeling “unchallenged and unfulfilled” , you are most likely CHOOSING to feel that way. And possibly feeling very superior as well and that is never pretty. </p>
<p>One of the terms and stereotypes I don’t like- “dumb jock.” </p>
<p>Caltech is as rigorous than MIT, at least in terms of theoretical classes. MIT has more hands-on opportunities (e.g., robot competitons, etc.) and has more varied applied science and engineering opportunities.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon is at the top research wise in computer science and related fields; in other fields it is not as good. Still, there are differences in pedagogy at Carnegie Mellon and MIT even in computer science; it would be nice if the top students got to choose what was best for them. </p>
<p>The question of how displacement of top students (not just Feynman level) from the super-elite schools might impact that student, the university, and the world at large is a complicated one. </p>
<p>I don’t know of anyone who went to Caltech and felt unchallenged. In general, I think Caltech is harder than MIT. I don’t think the environment is for everyone, though. The post by fretful mother [hope I have the right poster] makes me think that Caltech is for even fewer people than I had thought in the past.</p>
<p>With regard to CMU: Computer science is a special case at CMU, because it is so top flight. I doubt that anyone who went to CMU in computer science feels unfulfilled–though women are pretty drastically outnumbered there. Isn’t CMU the place where the “Dave to woman ratio” among computer science majors originated? That is, some university actually had more computer science majors named David than it had female computer science majors.</p>
<p>For the purpose of analysis, let me stipulate that <em>everyone</em> my field at CMU is stronger as a professor than I am (perhaps contrary to fact–no real point in going into that). So there are probably some undergrads in existence who might outgrow me, but would <em>not</em> outgrow the CMU faculty, while the students are still undergrads. Great! It’s not a super-large-number of students, I would hope, but there would be a few. Students in that bunch who are rejected from MIT will do just as well at CMU, though they wouldn’t do just as well at my university (assuming that the people at my university are more-or-less at my level). But I think there are some very rare undergrads who would outgrow the people at CMU, too. They actually belong at a university with even better faculty, in my opinion.</p>
<p>This goes back to my point that faculty recruitment generally succeeds “uphill.” I know of a few faculty members nationally who have moved to lower-ranked schools, but that usually happens for family reasons–such as a spouse’s job or the environment for the children. Sometimes the lure of a named chair with a lot of research support will be sufficient to move a faculty member “down,” though usually not by much. Sometimes, the opportunity to hire a large number of younger faculty in the same field will cause a faculty member to move “down-ish.” Sometimes a whole new building will persuade a faculty member to move “down-ish.” Between universities “uphill” could vary by field, so the comparison really needs to be done on a subject-area by subject-area basis. But unlike water, faculty members generally flow uphill, if they move at all.</p>
<p>Re PG’s #792: The point is that scientists with significant interests outside of science are so few, among all scientists. </p>
<p>Two of the Nobelists I know have such interests. One developed his musicianship on the piano during childhood. The other took up viola so that the family (his wife and children) could have a string quartet. This didn’t happen in time for college admissions. I realize that my comment about forming a family string quartet was ambiguous; the way it wrote it, that might have happened when he was younger–but it didn’t. So I will grant you one of the Nobelists I know, who would probably be admitted under the existing evaluation procedure (though piano is such a “common” instrument). Unless they are totally hiding their outside interests (a possibility, I grant), none of the others would have been admitted at MIT. </p>
<p>[Modified comment for clarification] It just occurred to me mid-post that another of the Nobelists I know does have an outside interest, too. It’s in philosophy, but that pushes him over into the suspect “highly intellectual” category. </p>
<p>I think Harvard would probably have taken most of them, though. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I suspect that Harvard might have rejected a few people who eventually became Nobel laureates. There is no way I can think of to determine this, unless it showed up in an autobiography or biography of the Nobelist.</p>
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<p>I think you’re giving them too much credit. </p>
<p>The point is that scientists with significant interests outside of science are so few, among all scientists. Well, I can only say that the engineers I know are usually quite inquisitive sorts, with varied interests. “Significant?” I don’t know if that word matters for side pursuits. </p>
<p>I think many did have significant side interests, but they usually recede to the background and exist as diversions as one gets older. If you’re going to do it right, running a lab tends to suck up all your time. I’m not sure I would qualify music as a side interest, as it really is another form of engaging your mind. </p>
<p>What I will say is that the top academics that I knew were completely engaged in their classes in high school and academic pursuits were almost always their primary emphasis; plus, they sought out ways to grow academically beyond their classwork. Taking a college class is groan-worthy these days, but its something a future academic would be excited about. Some were talented at sports, but they did so without practicing in the off-season. In contrast, the emphasis of a lot of successful ivy leaguers was juggling community service and other non-academic pursuits while still consistently getting above the cut-off for the “A”. </p>
<p>You may have a point with the difference between engineers and scientists in your remarks in #809, lookingforward. While I think that scientists tend to have a stranglehold on being “inquisitive,” the remaining implications are interesting. When I was interviewed for MIT (sorry! sorry! to bring that up again), my interviewer remarked that I seemed more interested in science than in engineering, and that MIT was more of an engineering school. He said that Harvard was a better fit for scientists.</p>
<p>This came as a great shock to my 17-year-old flyover-country self. I thought Harvard was for arts and letters, and MIT was for science. I hadn’t applied to Harvard. Perhaps the question of whether I had also applied to Harvard is something that the interviewer was trying to get at obliquely. In any event, MIT admitted me, though I didn’t go there. </p>
<p>But it is perhaps true that the outside pursuits of pre-college, budding engineers typically involve a lot of invention of devices and construction, or at least software and app design. So they have something to “show” for it, where some scientists would have “deeper understanding” to offer, but limited proof of it.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the Nova show about the robot competition in the course at MIT, but it didn’t make my heart race, nor make me think I would really like to do that! Quite the contrary. You know those dreams that people sometimes have that they have not gone to a foreign-language course all semester, and now the final exam is coming up? Thanks to the Nova show, I have dreamed more than once that I am at MIT, the robotics competition is in 24 hours, and I just have a heap of parts. :)</p>
<p>Finally, a question, lookingforward, if you are willing to comment: If you have two applicants with 4.0 UW GPA’s, is there a difference in the evaluation of one who managed to get above the cut line for an A in courses by the skin of his/her teeth, and another who had the top A in all of the courses? I would guess that the one who was frequently just above the cut line had more time to spend on other pursuits, though that is not necessarily the case. I would guess that the person with the top A in all the courses probably learned more in school, though that also is not necessarily the case.</p>
<p>One article about the difference between scientists and engineers. The comments after the article are interesting. <a href=“Scientists vs. Engineers | The Scientist Magazine®”>Scientists vs. Engineers | The Scientist Magazine®;
<p>Thanks for the link, sevmom. I have just skimmed the article and comments so far, but plan to return to it when I have more time. I hadn’t really been thinking so much about MIT admissions from the standpoint of selecting engineers, specifically.</p>
<p>MIT does take some of the brightest minds in math and science, that’s for sure. My kids are no geniuses but the article did get me to think about how kids gravitate to certain things. We bought our kids all the usual things growing up, exposed them to different things- music, history, art,etc. They liked music (and did fine on their instruments) but we didn’t really do private things outside of school. They both loved sports and were both athletic from the beginning, particularly the youngest. I bought science stuff like chemistry sets and those kinds of things held some interest . But, looking back now, they both loved all the wooden puzzles and LOVED Legos and were very good and fast at doing anything Lego related from the beginning. Probably more budding engineers than scientists. They both really liked physics in high school and my older had to decide between applying as a physics major or engineering major in college. Now in their twenties, the two main things that they still like are engineering type things and sports. Lots of other things too-travel, video games, hanging with friends, etc. But most kids seem to end up in the right place for them. I was a non STEM type person but I realized pretty early on that neither of my kids were going to be the next Springsteen or Picasso or Hemingway !</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>From QM and I am late to the party… but I have known several MIT professors (and worked with two in a professional capacity) many of whom claimed to work as “reader’s and weeders” (their terminology) during admissions seasons. Either they were lying or telling the truth. If they were lying I wonder what their motivation might have been.</p>
<p>If they were telling the truth, it suggests to me that like employees everywhere, professors at MIT are not a monolithic group. SOME of them volunteer for such duties as reading undergraduate applications. SOME of them do not and then like to kvetch that they think the standards have gone to hell and that 15% of the admits are dolts.</p>
<p>In my own department at work- some of my team members volunteer for everything- planning the departmental retreat/learning sessions, developing training modules for new employees, participating in corporate activities such as community volunteer day, etc. Others do not. They volunteer for nothing unless they are shamed into it by their manager, but they sure do complain. They think the presentations at the retreat are boring. They don’t like the venue. They think the salad bar at lunch as too many vegetables and not enough protein.</p>
<p>This is human nature. It’s kind of obvious that if you don’t like what happens at your department’s retreat it’s an easy enough solution- next year, volunteer to be part of the team that plans the events and the content and the much-loathed task of working with our corporate event management people putting together the menus. It’s not rocket science but you can easily fix the problem with your own time and energy.</p>
<p>But they don’t. They like to complain. I suspect that since MIT admissions welcomes faculty participation in the admissions process, it is just easier to complain about the do-do’s that get admitted, then to have to make time on your calendar to read endless numbers of applications in order to weed out the dolts.</p>
<p>QM- I bet if you suggested to your university’s admissions department that there were scores of faculty dying to participate in the process of shaping the incoming class, they’d be thrilled. Who wouldn’t want another pair of hands and eyes in a highly labor intensive process?</p>
<p>You are quite right, blossom, that the faculty are not monolithic either, any more than the entire university is. If the MIT faculty members you know said that they help sift applications, I am sure they do. Unfortunately, there is no good way to trade information on the departments in question.</p>
<p>I think it is not right to portray my MIT faculty friends as “liking to complain,” though. Among the people that I know, there is no question that their top priority is research. They care deeply about the quality of the grad students and post-docs they work with, and spend time to recruit the best they can get. They need to fund quite large research groups, where only a fraction of the grad students and post-docs come with their own money. For the most part, the grad students who do have their own fellowships do not have enough funding to cover their entire grad programs. This means that the faculty members have to spend a lot of time writing research proposals. They publish a lot and travel a lot. My more famous friends are away from home 15 to 20 weeks of the year. Some of the faculty have to be scheduled 2 or 3 years in advance, if you want them to come out where we are and give lectures on two consecutive days. In this context, provided that there seems to be a good number of strong undergrads (which there are), replacing the lowest 15% of them is low enough on their priority list that they (reasonably) conclude they don’t have time for it. Also, I think that a lot of them are actually unaware that stronger applicants are out there.</p>
<p>On top of that, though, there is the scientist vs. engineer question. All of the MIT faculty that I know are in the sciences. All of the students that I know who have gone to MIT, or been rejected there, are scientists or mathematicians. All of the students I have read about on CC, and felt sorry about their rejections from MIT, are scientists or mathematicians.</p>
<p>There are truly some different qualities that one would look for in an outstanding engineer vs. an outstanding scientist. There is a lot of overlap, to be sure, but the goals, temperaments, work process, and nature of the “products” of the people in the two areas tend to be different. If someone had said to me 3,000 posts ago: “Hey, MIT admits quite a few high quality engineers in place of some of the scientists/mathematicians you would like to see admitted (who are really extremely good)–it’s an institute of <em>technology,</em> after all,” then it is possible that I would have had an epiphany 3,000 posts back. The emphasis on “more” makes sense in that context, but I found it misleading. I know that MIT does take some strong pure science/mathematics types. Their group of undergraduate mathematicians has some top-quality people in it, and has had, for quite a while. Still, if they are emphasizing engineering over science/math on the whole, and they take people who turn out to be top-flight engineers in place of strong scientists, okay. They might say so.</p>
<p>(I still don’t think 700 on the SAT I Math is enough to be a top-flight engineer, but that’s an issue for another day.)</p>
<p>With regard to my own university, I’m basically happy with the way that admissions works. The average high-school GPA of our enrolled students seems awfully high to me, and it’s a bit difficult to believe that those GPA’s have been achieved in really rigorous coursework. However, it is entirely possible that I am under-estimating grade inflation + the benefit of weighted GPA’s. I’m happy with the students I see in my department. Naturally, I think they are stronger than the rest of my university’s students. (Please allow me this bit of parochialism.) </p>
<p>Of course, maybe what I suggested in #816 is not the explanation.</p>
<p>To speak further to blossom’s example of the departmental retreat/learning sessions, if someone didn’t like 15% of the menu, would it be worthwhile to spend whatever time the planning and organizing committee requires, or just select from the remaining 85% of it?</p>
<p>@QM - for what it’s worth, in my experience at MIT and talking to other MIT-ish people, there is a perceived hierarchy in ability among the departments, with physics at the top, then math, then maybe the engineerings (not sure what order here - maybe aero/astro first), then chemistry, then bio, then pre-med people within bio, then various humanities, last management.</p>
<p>I don’t report this so that people can yell at me for snobbishness (I don’t even necessarily share this hierarchical viewpoint, but am just reporting it) - I mention it because if your hypothesis is that MIT’s admission department is picking slightly “academically weaker” people who will be engineers, that could be supporting evidence, at least vs. physics or pure math.</p>
<p>If we wanted to delve into more stereotypes that will make everyone upset, I guess we could posit that the weakest admits to MIT might well be “management” types who fill in for so-so stats with “great leadership skills” - and maybe the ones who see early enough that they won’t be competitive in STEM, are the ones who switch into the very small number of “humanities” majors.</p>
<p>I do take some of it with a jaundiced eye, because I know that for a long time, people in STEM who did things like use color in slideshows, or dressed up “too nicely” - were viewed as maybe a little bit suspect in terms of actual braininess by fellow nerds. I think that this is somewhat lessened now by greater diversity of people types in STEM, or at least I hope so.</p>
<p>It could be my imagination that there is this hierarchy, but I will offer as anecdote that one of my first math professors told the class, “people in the math department who pull A-/B+ can expect to be at the top of their classes in engineering”.</p>
<p>On your other point that I tried to mention previously too, I think that being kind and humble (and not getting a charge out of being superior on contests) is hugely important.</p>
<p>And re. Caltech, it sounds to me like for the kids who like Caltech, it can be fine. I know there are those who love it and feel supported and who thrive. But it’s a small place, and not with an institutional commitment to any kind of diversity.</p>
<p>Re @bogibogi as well - I agree completely about MIT being a very nurturing environment to people who are a bit too nerdy to be really well-suited to certain other places. It also allows those people at MIT who would be “ok” but not great socially elsewhere, to thrive and be the “popular” kids sometimes which is also interesting and can feed on itself so kids actually get more socially adjusted, with more friends, bf/gf, etc. I think that MIT does all this pretty well while still having a commitment to all kinds of diversity - and indeed, maybe because of this commitment.</p>
<p>And to remind everyone - I still think admits to MIT are plenty nerdy. 
I see this every year in my school’s applications, admissions and in who ends up going there.</p>