<p>I don’t think society would suffer, alh. Or, more to the point, it’s impossible to know what woulda, coulda happened if genius X had gone to MIT rather than Harvard, or to MIT rather than Carnegie-Mellon or to CalTech rather than the University of Chicago (or any number of “what if” pairings anyone could think of). It might be possible if we were living inside an episode of *Star Trek: The Next Generation<a href=“god,%20how%20I%20love%20a%20good%20alternate%20universe%20story%20line!”>/i</a>.</p>
<p>QuantMech: Riffing on Pizzagirl’s post above, do you believe (or know) that MIT’s infrastructure for science and engineering is meaningfully superior to that of any other top contender?</p>
<p>“Maybe if they go to MIT they decide to solve the energy problem. Maybe if they go to Harvard they do something entirely different - they become a consultant. The individual student is then just fine. She can afford all the energy she desires.”</p>
<p>Of course, that can happen today if our hypothetical genius goes to MIT to solve the energy problem, and decides along the way she wishes to do something else. Changing who MIT admits doesn’t solve that issue. Nor should it – do we really want students at age 17 “beholden” to certain careers? Why shouldn’t brilliant scientists have the same freedom as anyone else to decide what they want to do, and change their minds along the way?</p>
<p>Actually, as it happens, I don’t think that MIT should be the top choice for a young genius who is not an engineer.</p>
<p>Earlier on, I set a level for a student who “ought” to be admitted to a top-flight school: that is, if the student’s logical first choice in his/her field freshman year at any particular institution is a graduate-level course, the student probably ought to be admitted by a school that offers an undergrad course of the appropriate level. There are students whose first course should be at the graduate level at large, public research universities. The students are very few in number. I don’t see why MIT should reject them, if they apply there.</p>
<p>Lets assume these super geniuses are “visible” in college apps – let’s assume we can, indeed, see to eleven.</p>
<p>What prevents MIT today from offering merit scholarships to those kids and saying, we think you are such a genius, and could really make scientific discoveries that are transformational, that we are willing to pay you – as long as you agree to work in XYZ lab on XYZ problem? </p>
<p>But then you’d have the same debate - oh, they offered super-genius money to that kid but not mine, even though my kids’ SATs were higher … So the debate would merely devolve into “why not the free money” rather than “why not the admit letter.”</p>
<p>They should have that freedom. I am not advocating they be locked into any career or lifestyle choice. In my humble opinion they should be nurtured in such a way that it is possible their abilities are maximized whether they decide to use them or not. I think it is possible society benefits if they decide to use those abilities for us. If we can identify, encourage and nurture lots of them maybe one will discover the free energy. Encountering a set back at 17 may change their life course. Encountering lots of negative attitudes towards concentrating on really advanced research, including judging so called “super-geniuses” as uninteresting may encourage them to go an entirely different direction. And maybe they will be much happier in a more mainstream life. They will probably be much better off financially. I won’t. I want that free energy.</p>
<p>I’m interrupting QM’s arguments. I’m just going to listen now.</p>
<p>“Earlier on, I set a level for a student who “ought” to be admitted to a top-flight school: that is, if the student’s logical first choice in his/her field freshman year at any particular institution is a graduate-level course, the student probably ought to be admitted by a school that offers an undergrad course of the appropriate level.”</p>
<p>And you don’t see how that privileges wealthy kids at all? You can’t be a math genius if you attend an inner city or rural school that stops at Algebra II. You can’t do groundbreaking research in a university lab if you’re 100 miles from the nearest college. </p>
<p>For all the talk about how it’s unfair to the geniuses to have to muddle through at Carnegie Mellon when they oughta be in Cambridge, it seems that the unfairness of decreeing kids super geniuses at 17 when it often reflects merely their parents’ money and resources goes unreflected on.</p>
<p>But, QuantMech, even if MIT “should be” the top choice of (and would be the best option for) the young genius who wants to go into engineering, do you really feel a young genius would be so badly served at, say, Carnegie-Mellon or CalTech or Olin or …? What if the young genius is lucky enough to live in a state with a superb state flagship with a strong engineering program? With all due respect, your position seems a bit reductive. (When I say “with all due respect,” please read actual respect in my question! :))</p>
<p>I suppose it’s “unfair” in the same way my son’s not at Georgetown SFS, which (IMO) would be the perfect school for his political desires / ambitions / talents, and has to muddle through at another halfway decent school without the same depth of Wash DC connections.</p>
<p>pg: If you disagree with the idea that students entering college should necessarily have access to appropriate level coursework, do you also disagree with the concept of gifted programs in elementary, middle, high school and AP courses?</p>
<p>sorry - I’m really sitting on my fingers from now till tomorrow morning.</p>
<p>It is so interesting to watch how the comments fall, on one side, about what we as society “owe” the stratospheric brainiacs and serve to gain from nurturing them; on the other, the facts of life- that resiliance is a key life skill and determination matters, that smarts and potential are not easily quantified absolutes. Oversimplified, probably. </p>
<p>I do secretly agree that the stratospherically brilliant (the Stratos) should be able to pursue their educations and training in a highly unilateral context, if that is what they wish- and if they have enough practical smarts and EQ to make the decision and stick to it. I don’t care if that’s 100 kids/year or some wildly moveable number. BUT, college, as it stands today, even MIT and Caltech, includes a broader persepctive in defining education and contributions to the college community, the experiences for the group as a whole. “College” starts with a look at the four years- not what may come down the road after 10 or 30 years of dogged specialization. </p>
<p>Even MITChris talks of wanting kids who will engage, try new things and make great friends and roommates. At this point, that’s pretty much written into our culture-</p>
<p>Right. And I am sure no one wants to rehash the conversation from another thread about who is more qualified–someone of limited resources who can only afford to take the SAT or ACT once without any tutoring or test prep, but gets a high-enough but not perfect score, or someone who is coached and prodded (at significant financial cost) and takes and retakes the test until he or she achieves the desired outcome of a perfect score.</p>
<p>Alh -??? How am I “disagreeing” that students should have access to appropriate level coursework? I’m not saying that at all. Nor do I have a problem with gifted, talent searches, etc. </p>
<p>My point is a different one. If we decree that the super geniuses are identifiable at age 17 – well, privileged ones may very well be. But diamonds in the rough super geniuses from non privileged backgrounds won’t be. And that’s part of what adcoms do. They try to suss out diamonds in the rough who can be polished, not those who are already polished at 17 with shiny portfolios of research-lab success. They want some of each category, not none of the first and all of the second.</p>
<p>And I find it a failure of the human spirit to be soooo concerned that the super genius who “deserved” MIT has to muddle through at Carnegie Mellon (the poor dear! How he suffers!) but not realize that that there are kids of high potential everywhere who don’t even get the chance to raise their hands to be noticed by MIT in the first place since their primary concern at school is not getting shot, and they don’t HAVE access to calculus, much less research labs.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon is a wonderful choice for computer science. It is strong in other fields as well, but I am not very familiar with its offerings outside of computer science.</p>
<p>Re Pizzagirl 1392: Earlier on, I said that I did not think it made sense currently to devote resources to spreading the number of institutions that could provide outstanding educations in science, because there are other more pressing societal needs that require those resources. Significantly improving public schools in a number of U.S. cities is very difficult. MIT could change its admissions policy trivially.</p>
<p>I agree that we ought to pursue top-quality education for diamonds in the rough. If they are really “in the rough,” they may not be ready for MIT, actually. The service academies have a high level of uniformity in their curricula. When they identify diamonds in the rough, they offer a year-long prep course (MAPS, NAPS, etc.) to bring the students up to speed for the regular curriculum. I have suggested that Yale could have YAPS and Stanford SAPS, for the same purpose.</p>
<p>I think it was fairly evident that Feynman was a “super genius” when he was 17. Ditto for Gauss, Galois, and also Tao and Bhargava to name recent examples. The level of genius I am talking about does tend to be evident early, at least in math.</p>
<p>MITChris toes the MIT party line, and shouldn’t be advanced as independent support of it.</p>
<p>In your specific field, where is the bright line drawn between “worthy of super genius” and “they’re wasting their time”? One school? Five schools? Ten? Twenty?</p>
<p>Shouldn’t part of the responsibility for being rejected be placed upon the genius himself? If 85-90% of the geniuses managed to forge a life path that enabled them to assume their rightful places at MIT, doesn’t this possibly reflect on something lacking in the 10% of the geniuses who couldn’t do it?</p>
<p>Let us keep in mind that the overall slef-selecting quality of applicants to MIT is so high, that the school could very likely throw all the names in a hat and still achieve a close to 90% success ratio. That could change, however, if the school’s reputation begins to suffer.</p>
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<p>This is one reason I think my son is happier at Brown than he would have been at MIT and why, in the end, he might well have picked Brown over MIT anyway (he did not even seriously consider applying to CalTech because he found the school’s focus as too techy – although Feynman’s continued presence would have changed his mind).</p>
<p>Right. But how many of those institutions do you think there are in the first place? That’s a non-trivial question. If your answer is “MIT or bust,” that’s a far different starting place than “in any given STEM field, there are about a dozen really groundbreaking institutions, and maybe another dozen or so others that while not tippy-top, should be able to keep our genius happily occupied and stimulated.”</p>