Angry over the college admissions process

Pizzagirl · December 1, 2012, 9:34am

No argument. But I think people of substance are bothered or at least take note of the fact that awareness of USAMO is very limited, mostly to affluent or historically-strong schools, and that fact therefore make them uneasy with the idea of saying that qualifying is an auto admit. I mean, it’s like saying that you’ll take everyone on the national high school water polo championship team. Sure, their achievements in athletics may have been great, but who are we kidding – it’s overwhelmingly rich-kid-prep-schools that offer water polo in the first place.

Moreover, MIT - like any elite university - wants diversity in geographic recruitment. The pool of fish trying to swim to MIT is already quite thick in the areas that USAMO skews to. MIT doesn’t need yet another Silicon Valley or yet another Exeter applicant.

bogibogi · December 1, 2012, 10:02am

My comparison was to point out that a top notch athlete is held in a higher regard than a mathlete who is at the same level of competence. The feeling I get from this thread is: my kid could have done well in competitions, he just chose not to. As if the USAMO kid said, “I like math competitions so I’ll just show up and compete.” This totally discounts all the hard work and brainpower involved in making it to this level.

Even our STEM high school will have high gloss front page pictures of our losing football team, with barely a mention of the kid who got a gold medal at the International Physics Olympiad. I believe the priorities are wrong.

The reason that USAMO awareness is limited is that it is only the top students who are lucky enough to participate. As I mentioned, over 400,000 students participated in the AMC, which is the first step to getting to USAMO. If a student has interest in math, it is not likely that he has never heard of the AMC. The MAA will work with anyone who wants to take the test. I know plenty of homeschoolers sit for the exam, so it must not be that difficult to arrange it.

SteveMA · December 1, 2012, 10:14am

We found schools that had auto admit for certain test scores, Truman, a CC favorite, being one of them. I know of no school that auto admits athletes, musicians, etc. Yes, they have a leg up on the admissions process but they still have to clear hurdles to get to that point, starting with the NCAA or the NAIA academic guidelines, which are very low, but still there. A coach can’t say “I want you, you are in” at any school.

SteveMA · December 1, 2012, 10:17am

bogibogi–thankfully our school does a great job recognizing students that do well in ALL aspects of education, sports, math team, Science Olympiad, etc. While we have a great football team, the marching band gets a LOT more “press” from the school and the football boosters will be the first to admit that if the band doesn’t play at halftime, their concession stand profits are cut in half :D. If your school is overly focused on sports, get on the parent committee or school board to change that.

Pizzagirl · December 1, 2012, 10:24am

And I think you’re kidding yourself that most hs math teachers in this country are aware of these contests or promote them in any form to their students. At most, they may have a toss-away comment about it, not a call to action. I think there is a real let-them-eat-cake mindset going on here about how well known these contests are. Life isn’t fair. I totally get that. Wealthier kids and more plugged-in parents can provide more opportunities. I totally get that, too.

However, it doesn’t take away from the level of achievement to note that this is a WILDLY skewed test in terms of who participates.

Look, here’s a somewhat useful analogy - suppose MIT (or whoever) said that if a student worked in a research lab for x amount of time, he or she was an auto-admit. Who gets to work in research labs? Well, golly gee - kids who live in metro areas where there are labs, kids who have access to colleges (e.g., professors’ kids). In my area, two big labs are Argonne and Fermilab. Well, they’re located in far-off suburbia and guess what? No kid is working there who isn’t a) well connected to an Argonne or Fermilab employee somehow and b) wealthy enough to have his or her own car to be able to get there and back, since there is no public transportation that would work. It doesn’t take away from working at Argonne and Fermilab to note that those opportunities aren’t equally distributed. Again, people of substance note these things.

eireann · December 1, 2012, 10:29am

Let’s also remember that most sports don’t get the press of football and basketball. The best teams at many elite schools are not well-known and well-recognized sports (Stanford and Duke are exceptions). We’re talking about sports like squash, rifle and rowing. These are not sports that typically get much press or fans on gameday at all.

lookingforward · December 1, 2012, 10:42am

QM, 2215- but you aren’t really suggesting a cap of 18. You are figuring it’s 18 over what they currently accept without knowing how many they do take.

For all we know, they take as many as makes sense- in the end losing a few to geo diversity, “rest of the story,” or something else, as others point out. Or some other college is preferred, the kid’s free-will choice or financial considerations. Our sense of who’s left out is based on anecdote (someone knows a kid who…) or assumptions based on stats for matriculated kids.

Bogi, yes, if my kid were a math wiz, I’d be asking the teachers what more she could do. One major point swirling, as PG, Sally and others note here, is that not all parents can offer their kids that level of savvy. Even among the sort of parents who tend to post on CC, there is a lean toward accepting the kid’s high school status as “enough.” This isn’t like SAT/ACT, where every hs kid knows it’s de rigeur. (We even get CC kids asking about SAT2’s, though.)

Yes, “passion” gets a lot of time on CC. It is misunderstood. It has more to do with what a kid is passionate about and how he pursues that, while still being rounded.

So, what this is stripped down to becomes: if a kid is passionate about math and pursues the tests, reaches some arbitrary level, isn’t that “enough?” And, over a thousand posts, it is not convincing us.

Saying it’s a mere 18 isn’t doing the trick. Warning us of losses to society isn’t doing it. And, we are still left with the question: if the math tests should guarantee a kid a slot, what happens when each prominent test then gives kids an “auto-admit?”

I think it’s interesting none of the MIT reps on CC has commented.

SteveMA · December 1, 2012, 10:58am

eireann–of your examples, rowing for women are the only scholarshiped sports at the DI and DII levels though. Are squash players highly recruited?

sally305 · December 1, 2012, 11:04am

Sigh. Again, I don’t think it’s about “priorities.” Spectator sports have been around since the ancient Greeks’ and Romans’ time, if not longer. Throngs of people can sit in stands and watch them and cheer on their favorites. People can RELATE to athletes, even if they can’t do what the athletes can do. But this is not possible for physics or math competitions. It doesn’t mean people (at least educated people with smart kids, i.e., most CC readers) are not impressed by those accomplishments.

Having said that, you can look at the overall dumbing down of our society–especially the rise of the anti-science set–and reinforce some of your conclusions pretty easily.

eireann · December 1, 2012, 11:08am

At a school with a competitive team in any sport, you can assume that there is recruitment going on. Probably from mostly from elite private schools with the examples that I listed. My point is just that it’s not like these athletes are getting an enormous amount of public recognition either. Harvard and Yale football get a lot of attention when they’re playing each other, but for the most part, they don’t. MIT’s rifle team is one of their best teams, and I doubt that high schoolers participating in rifle get much press recognition at all.

I think the kind of press and recognition that’s being attributed to athletic accomplishments really only goes to a few sports for the most part. Yes, football’s in the paper. At my high school, coverage of the sports without major spectators was an obligatory blurb where the reporter had not actually been at the event. A student was just as likely to have an article and picture in the paper for something like History Day or math team as for a non-major sport.

Pizzagirl · December 1, 2012, 11:11am

I completely agree it’s a shame that local papers promote football / athletic success and not academic success. After my kids graduated, I contacted the principal and indicated how disappointed I was that her monthly letters to parents started out congratulating athletic prowess and THEN academic prowess. You’ll get no argument from me that society should value academic prowess more than it does. That still doesn’t lead me to the conclusion that performance on one particular test obligates MIT to admit a given kid or that it should trump other institutional priorities. Nor does it lead me to the conclusion that MIT “owes” anybody anything other than a fair chance at presenting his / her credentials.

lookingforward · December 1, 2012, 11:22am

^ same here, also complained (about press coverage.) But, the sports stats here are routinely publicized as part of the local inter-hs sports league (or association or whatever it is.) That pipeline exists. Publicity for who won math, language, writing, history, etc, would be up to the individual hs.

At my kids’ hs, the emphasis was on the team, not the individual.

Gourmetmom · December 1, 2012, 11:23am

My son was sent the flyer for USAMTS early in 9th grade - before he had ever heard of the AMC or other math contests. So, they must have a method of searching for high performing math kids to give them an alternate way to qualify for the AIME. I will agree that there may well be students in some schools in some places where no one, including the math teachers, school administrators, etc., have heard of any of these contests. But, that’s a whole bunch of folks who have been under a rock. I think the bigger problem is in underperforming schools where the focus and resources are on getting students to attend class and graduate - there is just not time in the day for gravy activities like math contests.

However, I dispute the idea that there is a significant number of world class math students out there who have not been identified because they either don’t have access to high level math, or they don’t like contests. Math, like any other talent, has to be developed. Contests are the best way for students to develop and demonstrate their abilities. This is not unlike most other sports or activities. Pianists must continually practice and study, now matter how great their natural abilities. Athletes must work out and train to improve. That’s the real world. The argument that there are very many tippy top math students in the US right now who don’t participate in math contests doesn’t ring true for me. In the real world, students understand that college admissions are competitive and they must do some of these things to improve their chances. For math students, these contests are the best way to do that.

My son did not really like math contests, but he did them because a) his school’s math team needed him, b) it improved his skill level, c) it was a way for him to demonstrate his ability compared to students across the US.

QuantMech · December 1, 2012, 11:29am

Pizzagirl, have you taken a look at the USAMO questions? It is not possible for a student to handle these questions simply by being affluent, or attending a historically strong school. New Trier is a historically strong school. They had one USAMO qualifier in 2011. At the higher levels, affluence anti-correlates with performance on the AMC (MIT study I cited earlier on this thread). I can guarantee that having two STEM professors as parents is not enough to qualify for USAMO, even for a student who is interested in math.

collegealum314 · December 1, 2012, 11:31am

Although I understand what pizzagirl is saying, I don’t think the comparison to water polo is appropriate.

I’ll use a sampling argument. In my high school, everyone took the AMC and tried to do well if they were good at it. Everyone at our magnet schoolhigh school was one of the top 1 or 2 students at their previous school. And only 2% of people made USAMO. People who graduated phi beta kappa from MIT didn’t get anywhere close, and from my judgement, it was just from a lack of talent. I think 1-2% of valedictorians who are slanted toward math/science may be able to do well on this contest given the right preparation. So the fact that some may have not heard about it is irrelevant to the fact that the ones that have achieved something that only 1-2% of math/science-oriented valedictorians can achieve. I would say such an achievement is worthy of MIT admission. The only caveat I have is that I’m not sure how coachable the test is these days with the advent of Art of Problem Solving. However, although this may raise the bar, there is a certain point at which it only becomes coachable if you have immense talent. (And if you make the tryouts, MOSP, everyone gets the same training as there is a free training camp.

Someone brought up the individual science olympiads. They tend to be less predictive than the ones in math, and basically not as hard. They tend to be like AP tests on steroids. Generally, you have to do better on the individual science olympiads to get the same credit from universities as for the math olympiad tryouts.

lookingforward · December 1, 2012, 11:34am

No one is dissing the tests.

We are questioning whether that is enough for an auto-admit, all things considered. Some say yes. Some say no.

sevmom · December 1, 2012, 11:39am

And it sounds like most of these very talented USAMO qualifiers do get into MIT if they apply. If they happen to not be accepted, I would imagine there are other great schools that are happy to snap them up.

And agree, nobody here is dissing these tests.

SteveMA · December 1, 2012, 11:43am

collegealum314–I think your first mistake is assuming that the valedictorians are the best students in the school :D. Usually they are the best at doing their homework and studying a lot. Your more natural students, the ones that learning comes easiest aren’t always #1 in the class. I look at our high school and our #1 student works hard, studies for 5+ hours/day but that doesn’t make her the best student. The NMF from our school aren’t even ranked in the top 10 in the class. I suspect they are a lot like our son where they do their work, school comes easy to them, they test well but they also are highly involved in other aspects of school so sometimes they get an A- vs that A, so what. Our son is ranked in the 11th percentile for his class, yet was the #2 scorer in our state on the national math test last year. He also scored 8 points higher on his ACT, with no prep, then our valedictorian who has the worst test scores out of the top 25 kids or so in the class :D. Our son wants to major in math, our valedictorian is thinking about journalism.

collegealum314 · December 1, 2012, 11:49am

Well, maybe I was wrong about class rank. My high school specifically selected for math/science ability and interest. Although in general people were strong across the board, there may have been some people who were stronger at math/science that didn’t care about english (but the standards go up for those people if they have weaknesses in the humanities.

QuantMech · December 1, 2012, 11:55am

I think that to argue against the auto-admit argument, you have to say either that there are significantly more than 18 in this category who are not being admitted already, or you have to say that there are (1740 - # of USAMO-scorers) who are more suited for admission to MIT than “my” 18.

There are more than 100 seniors who qualify for USAMO, in a typical year. Only about 300 now qualify all together. That leaves about 200. Now, of the 200, many are younger than 11th grade. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to assume that none of those younger than 11th grade qualify again. You can pick your own % of those who qualify in 10th grade or below and do not re-qualify. (The qualification standards for those who qualify through AMC10 + AIME have been raised to prevent this from happening at all, though it happened occasionally in the past.)

Then if you take 100 + (your percent of those who qualified in 10th grade or below but did not requalify) times 100, you will have an estimate of the entire set of possible applicants in a year who could potentially meet my auto-admit standard.

Next, do you assume that it’s only the seniors who score 0 on the USAMO? If not, you need to reduce the number a bit, depending on the point threshold for USAMO (1 point, 4 points, or higher). What fraction of the students do you think apply to MIT? Even if it were a sure thing, I don’t think all of the students would apply.

Next, what % do you think are admitted already? MIT does take some of the USAMO-qualified students. I would guess that it takes more than half. How many do you want to rule out for having disqualifying features? How many are you left with? If you do come up with a much larger number, I am interested in your intermediate steps; it seems improbable, but if it were a very large number, I would reconsider.

I would doubt that there are more than 200 students in the country (counting even those who have never heard of the AMC tests) who are intellectually stronger for a math-intensive field than the USAMO-qualified group. Even if you stretch this to 1000 students who are more qualified, when you consider the total number that MIT admits, I can’t see how the 18 don’t get in.

It’s not a linear arrangement by a score on a particular test, Pizzagirl; it’s just that I would be so strongly impressed by a high-schooler who did well on these questions that I wouldn’t have any doubt he/she should be in the 1740 +/- MIT admits.

Similarly, I don’t have any doubt that McKayla Maroney is one of the top 1740 athletes of her birth-year-cohort, despite the expense of gymnastics training, limited opportunities for some to participate, large number of athletes in other fields, the fact that she’s not an all-round competitor in women’s gymnastics, etc.

Angry over the college admissions process

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