<p>Great post, poetgrl!</p>
<p>poetgrl - there should be some kind of mandatory class with all these things for everyone before they go to college, MIT or not! I do think my kids are pretty good at most of those things but you forgot a couple critical ones - ride the T/subway, transfer planes at a busy airport (weâll see come Dec 21 if younger son can actually accomplish this one), and keep in touch with mom and dad at least occasionally! (He is NOT excelling in this area). ;)</p>
<p>pg - well, he hadnât played golf since middle school so it wasnât on his application - I blame MIT for getting him addicted to it again! But maybe Iâm trying to help some lurkers see that you donât have to be a USAMO winner to get in. Or maybe it was just a âquirky adcomâ. Guess weâll never know. But again, I would have been very discouraged to read all of this when they were applying!</p>
<p>Two days ago or so on this thread, I think the number of USAMO finalists who did not get into MIT stood at two (who almost surely went to other top schools). Have more been established or do the stakes here still revolve around these two students?</p>
<p>Bay, itâs a college app, not a hs essay or a kidâs letter to the editor. </p>
<p>The question is meant to glean something about how the kids think, what their perspective is. âShow, not tell.â It isnât about âI was moved.â Itâs what came of it. Not ten years down the road, but now. Or, how that experience fits a pattern of your involvements and engagements that represents qualities top colleges seek in kids.</p>
<p>Itâs not the most important question, but can be very revealing. This is not writing for the hs teacher. You donât get into a fiercely competitive college based on feelings. Actions count as loud as words. The proof is in the pudding. Show, not tell.</p>
<p>There is serious advice above. Donât take the app questions at face value only.</p>
<p>"pg - well, he hadnât played golf since middle school so it wasnât on his application "</p>
<p>I meant he is there and not pursuing Math to the fullest extent which makes him sound non-academic needing remedial classes next semester!</p>
<p>I understand what you are looking for in the app essay question, lookingforward. I think it would be only fair to the kids applying to be more specific about what you are looking for, rather than tricking them into answering the wrong way with an open-ended question.</p>
<p>pg - well, he doesnât sound like heâs doing earthshattering research but he wonât be in remedial classes next semester. He was just complaining this week that he got the first test back (physics) in which he hadnât scored at least a full standard deviation above the average (so it might be an A- instead of an A). Yet, I generally hear nothing about classes - itâs all about his latest music composition, his Rubikâs cube time, videos he watched, or golf. To the point that his oldest brother asked him shortly before Thanksgiving âDo you even DO school there?â 
His reply? âNot really. Maybe Iâm just better at it than you.â </p>
<p>But this semester is mostly review. I donât think he goes to a lot of his classes either - he talks about watching the lectures on double speed instead and how it gives the professor a funny, high-pitched voice but makes it slightly more interesting!</p>
<p>You quoted me incorrectly in post #1374, collegealum314. I thought scientists were taught to be precise. My point wasnât about the difficulty of understanding college admission decisions. My point was that people with limited insight into the whole field of applicants canât necessarily explain all decisions or, more important, predict the results for a cohort of applicants with pinpoint accuracy.</p>
<p>I donât understand the point of lookingforwardâs complaints that my statements are not based on dataâthe MIT admissions office has the data, and theyâre not releasing them. Nor should they. I am not submitting my posts on this thread to a journal, not even the Journal of Irreproducible Results.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I can provide a clear upper bound on the possible number of people who meet my qualification standard and are not admitted already. I have provided an algorithm so that anyone who disagrees with my final number can use his/her own assumptions to challenge it. Iâve even said that I would change my viewpoint if the final number were significantly different.</p>
<p>I donât know how many USAMO scorers arenât admitted to MIT. Again, I donât have those data. On the other hand, the figure of âtwoâ is just based on specific people I recall from the MIT results threads, in one year. Only a very small fraction of students post their outcomes on those threads. If I had qualified for USAMO (I didnât and wouldnât have, had it existed when I was in high school) and not been admitted to MIT (I was), then I would probably have been so mortified about the whole thing that I would not have posted. I would have concluded that there was something deeply wrong with my personality or that some of my teachers secretly hated me. </p>
<p>In the world of counter-factuals: You can argue the first (!), but I am pretty sure that the second is not trueâthey were all extraordinarily nice to me.</p>
<p>@lake42ks,
</p>
<p>I hope this is a tongue-in-cheek comment?</p>
<p>Thereâs a deeper issue behind these thousands of comments. Do children have any right to a childhood? For every one prodigy who really wants to spend every waking hour studying math, or doing community service, or improving his chip shot, there are hundreds or thousands of other children forced to spend time on activities they donât enjoy, building resumes for college admissions. It does seem to start in middle school, but thatâs no doubt because the book on how to position your kindergarten student for admission to Harvard hasnât been written yet.</p>
<p>QM, you cited a study from MIT about math performance being anti-correlated at the very top of the income scale. I think I found the paper, but it doesnât lead me to think the study authors believe math ability is anti-correlated with income. Rather, it comes down to which college admissions strategy the students (parents?) choose to follow:</p>
<p>
âHeterogeneity in High Math Achievement Across Schools: Evidence from the American Mathematics Competitionsâ Glenn Ellison, Ashley Swanson, MIT (preliminary and incomplete)</p>
<p>How about if I use the term âdeveloped ability?â I think that effort to learn mathematics and solve problems translates into greater ability in math, because the students are better prepared (than they themselves would have been otherwise) to take on the challenges at the next higher level.</p>
<p>In any event, performance on the tests seems to be anti-correlated with income at the highest levels, whether for the reason the authors guess or for other reasons.</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Not everyone who takes or self-studies college-level classes qualifies for USAMO.</p></li>
<li><p>Not everyone who qualifies for USAMO qualifies for MOP. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are certainly examples of USAMO-qualifiers who did not make it to MOP, but did well on the Intel contests with a math project that wasnât modeling, or âcomputer-sciency.â I can think of at least one example of someone who did well in the Intel contests who did not qualify for USAMO, though I am not sure if this person participated in math contests at all.</p>
<p>This thread is very surprising to me because most people seem to stop glorifying USAMO qualifiers and math contests in general by the time they graduate high school.</p>
<p>
When this is a public high school graduation requirement it is a form of involuntary servitude, which I oppose.</p>
<p>^ But isnât it moot, since many colleges require community service? In that sense it doesnât matter what we think, unless we all en masse revolt, which we wonât.</p>
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</p>
<p>[MIT</a> moves away from an aid policy in which low-income students donât need to borrow
Inside Higher Ed
August 20, 2012
By Scott Jaschik](<a href=âhttp://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/20/mit-moves-away-aid-policy-which-low-income-students-dont-need-borrow]MITâ>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/20/mit-moves-away-aid-policy-which-low-income-students-dont-need-borrow)
In 2008, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was among the elite colleges and universities announcing that it was eliminating the need for low-income students to take out student loans. Now, a little more quietly, MIT has become the latest elite institution to scale back its aid plan.</p>
<hr>
<p>From the story it appears that the necessary loan amount should not exceed $6,000 annually for low-income students.</p>
<p>^I agree with Beliavsky (for once:)) on the subject of community service. Not so much from the servitude standpoint, but because having the time to commit to volunteering is a luxury for some kids. In some families it is necessary for children to work a substantial number of hours after school and on weekends. For others, a serious commitment to an outside activity (for instance, in my daughterâs case, with dance) means a student just doesnât have much free time. My daughter dances 3-plus hours all but one night during the week as well as most of the day Saturday and some Sundays. She also has a part-time job on the âoffâ weeknight and several weekend shifts to help pay for her ridiculously expensive passion. And she is trying to get good grades. She does what she can at school, but she also has volunteer commitments for her dance studio. So she is not the kind of kid who could ever devote a significant amount of time to community service during the school year.</p>
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<p>But you donât seem concerned about the (possible) lack of effort to develop anything else. So what challenges are these students prepared to take? In the purest sense (admission depends on math contest score) we only know that they are prepared to solve a math problem. And college admissions are supposed to be so impressed that they require nothing more? Like can the student manage to live without their parents, can the student get along with the people they will be working with, is the student able to deal with failureâŠand most important to meâŠwill the students maintain a basic level of hygiene? </p>
<p>According to you, none of this matters. Itâs all about the ability to solve a math problem. Why would MIT agree to tie their hands in this way? I seriously want to know why you think that is a good strategy for them.</p>
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<p>I think young people should focus on preparing themselves to be productive members of society rather than asking for their parents for a further subsidy to do volunteer work. Ten thousand dollars to do service work abroad may do more good if it is simply donated to an effective philanthropy. Volunteer work in the community should cost parents little if anything and not interrupt academic work. For gifted students, an important form of âcommunity serviceâ could be to take demanding classes in high school, including AP classes, so that they can graduate in college in three years and start working and paying taxes earlier. An extra year of peak earnings may mean an extra $100,000 of community service over oneâs lifetime. One cause of the budget problems in the U.S. and Europe is that people start working later and spend many years in retirement, which results in a smaller fraction of the population working.</p>
<p>Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were focused on getting rich when they were young adults. Once they made their billions they thought about how to give away billions to help others.</p>
<p>âEvery time I think Iâm out, they pull me back in!â</p>
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<p>Well, I stated my philosophy in post #2374. Itâs not all about USAMO. Iâve had people tell me that the top cohort (holistically) at Thomas Jefferson doesnât do very well in MIT admissions. They take plenty of people, just not the people who are the strongest students. This is according to someone on the Caltech board. If youâre at a place like TJ, it would be nice if going from being a good student to an academic star would be a bigger advantage than filling up your schedule with non-academic ECs. Same goes for a regular school, although one would need more outside distinctions to distinguish oneself academically. There arenât many elite schools that work that way. Someone once said that itâs easier to get into an elite school by looking like someone could make a fundraiser for cancer researcher than it is by looking like someone who could find the cure. I think there is some truth to this, and I think it is backwards. Even great students arenât immune from the effects of positive and negative feedback.</p>
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<p>Doing service work is not the point of the trip. I donât know why it is so hard for some to understand. Would you take the same position against spending $10K to travel through Europe, in order to <em>see</em> Europe? These trips are really opportunities for kids to travel on their own (without their parents), see a part of the world outside of their bubble, and do more than sit in a tour bus and fancy hotel. That they did something helpful is a plus, not a minus. If their parents are wealthy, it is highly likely that the family has donated much more than $10K to charities in addition to sending their kid on a trip.</p>