<p>I think the trouble with the essays are that some people get help, hire outside people to package them and some do not. So all the outcry about test prep and how income correlates with test performance etc, can be extended to any component of the application package as well. The students who has the resources get help from the beginning to any aspect of college application. </p>
<p>And thinking that all mathematically/scientifically inclined students will be able to make their essay creative/interesting is high expectation.</p>
But how, exactly, are you going to use his death ray, or giant killer robot, or devastating computer virus, for good in the world? I’m joking, kind of.</p>
There should definitely be parental approval before a child’s DNA is studied, but the project seems worthwhile to me. People with high-enough (pre-recentering) SAT scores or other qualifications can participate in the [Gene-Trait</a> Association Study of intelligence](<a href=“https://www.cog-genomics.org/volunteer]Gene-Trait”>https://www.cog-genomics.org/volunteer) .</p>
<p>My best data point is my son, who I mentioned before, was rejected RD at MIT. It may have been for yield protection - he is a legacy another highly selective school (not attending). I wonder if QM or any other posters have data about EA/RD, because I suspect that very well qualified students (with a certain profile*) who do not apply EA may suffer as a result. Doing so, though, requires that admissions read the minds of 17/18 year olds, and try to project what they’ll do come May 1. Because my son did not have the choice, I’ll never know for sure, but my suspicion is that he would have chosen MIT.</p>
<p>*students with tippy top stats, who don’t fit the super-techy profile. Despite his high level math accomplishments, my son played sports and had a strong EC in the classics. It may have appeared that he wasn’t a great fit, even though he was and he would have loved MIT. I think that he may find a different path at Harvard than he would have at MIT because he’ll have even more options - not sure yet if this is good or bad.</p>
<p>BTW, an 800 in SAT math for students like him is a cake walk - the level of math some have mentioned is far above and requires accomplishments AMC/AIME and regional or national math contests.</p>
<p>I agree with Beliavsky. Assuming it’s a legitimate research project, what’s the objection? Don’t participate if you’re uncomfortable, but really, what are they going to do with the DNA that’s going to bother you so?</p>
<p>Don’t the ray, the robot also have potential to help people? computer virus - I don’t know;)</p>
<p>Electricity can kill people. </p>
<p>Do you think we’d be better off without atomic energy? </p>
<p>I could see that maybe. In truth, I’m pretty much okay with the idea of going back to life before the industrial revolution. With the exception of some medical advances. oops. kind of difficult to choose.
…
I would never allow a research project access to my children’s DNA unless the research had the potential to cure some disease they had. As minors I never allowed my children to be part of any research project or interviewed or featured in sort of media. As adults they can make that decision for themselves.</p>
<p>Beliasky - the road to he&* is paved with good intentions and of course it was parents they were sending letters to submit a saliva sample. Once people have a database, nextthing we know, the homeland security has access to it and as Ron Stone the comedian says, you are permanently known as tater salad somewhere for future reference.</p>
<p>Gourmetmom - did any other kids get admitted from your son’s school?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - I don’t believe parents have the right to distribute their kid’s DNA samples.</p>
<p>All this navelgazing just seems so … nonproductive. Several years ago, my nephew applied EA to MIT. He had “the right” academic scores at an elite private school, is a URM, and was also an athlete and the MIT coaches in his sport had expressed interest. To his shock – after being just a little too confident, in my personal opinion, and not fully getting the lottery nature of these schools – he was deferred. So he regrouped, wound up being accepted by MIT in the regular round but wound up being admitted by Williams, Princeton, and Claremont McKenna, and is now at Princeton. Why would he spend one minute trying to figure out “why” he wasn’t accepted EA MIT? What’s the point? Do you also spend time worrying about why you didn’t get the hot date you wanted? There wasn’t enough room at the inn. Move on.</p>
<p>Understand that application packages should, overall, somehow, present a kid as able, interesting, grounded, etc. A good choice for that college. There are kids who have the stuff and then veer off into specifics that sometimes eerily suggest they will be better served elsewhere. Sometimes, it’s personal; other times it’s about the academic interests and match.</p>
<p>You are right, JHS, my posts are getting “long in the tooth,” as am I. I keep posting the same things, hoping that I can qualify the statements enough and make them narrow enough to get buy-in.</p>
<p>As long as you are posting statements like the one labeled 1 in #1519, I am likely to keep posting the same (old) arguments. Yes, MIT specifically tracks “superstars.” No, I do not buy the idea that those rejected have “something actually negative and strong enough to reverse a presumption of admission.” If this were so, it seems improbable to me that the same student would be accepted by Harvard. I advert you to the posts by piccolojr and hopelesslydevote on the MIT outcomes thread, circa high school class of 2008.</p>
<p>There is a very strong presumption on CC and elsewhere, that if such a student is declined, the student must have done something awful. I think one student poster on the MIT forum suggested that the student might have kicked cats, or worse.</p>
<p>Sadly, the students often do think that the rejection says something about them, if their objective qualifications are in the top 5% or so of the MIT admits. I remember one asking on CC “Is something wrong with me?”</p>
<p>One of the people affected by the MIT policy (wailisted, then in) is a family friend, and has been doing brilliantly subsequently. So it’s not as if I have no dog whatever in this fight. However, none of the people are my little Johnny. I feel empathetic toward a lot of people. My empathy for the highly promising young scientists MIT declines does not detract from my empathy for students in many of the struggling Chicago public schools.</p>
<p>Also, I am old-fashioned enough to have said in the “auto-admit” post that there could not be any significant character flaws. </p>
<p>I must say that I have seen fewer of the real head-scratchers in terms of MIT decisions beginning with the high school class of 2009.</p>
<p>Also, just wanted to say, re texaspg #1516: I can’t imagine what Institutional Review Board for research ethics would approve a study that involved sampling a child’s DNA in those circumstances. Are you sure that the request came from Duke itself, texaspg? Or did their list of high scorers leak out somehow?</p>
<p>The presumption, when a top performing kid is rejected by MIT, should simply be: for MIT’s purposes and needs, this fall and over the next four years, MIT chose otherwise.
Yes, some kids blow it.<br>
Any other college is welcome to decide yea or nay on that kid. Harvard has its own institutional needs and tolerances.</p>
<p>“There is a very strong presumption on CC and elsewhere, that if such a student is declined, the student must have done something awful. I think one student poster on the MIT forum suggested that the student might have kicked cats, or worse.”</p>
<p>I go with the too many people too few seats argument. My kid’s school had 25 people apply who were probably equally good on paper, some of them madly obsessed with MIT since childhood and did all the things that are considered Techy (as mentioned, there were 5 perfect single sitting scores from the school). They admitted one student last year and one this year and neither went. Based on the track record, if MIT admits no one for 2013, is it the fault of current 20+ applicants or should we assume MIT found someone that they liked better in some other school who might actually show up?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - it’s not “naval gazing” - I have a younger son who has yet to apply to college, so I want to understand the process a little better. </p>
<p>texas - there has not been an MIT admit at my son’s hs in about 15 years.</p>
<p>QM,
Sorry if I missed it somewhere in this thread, but what is your theory for why those two particular students were rejected? Did either one of them follow up with MIT either personally or through their GC to find out why? I know I would have done that if the apparent injustice was particularly glaring. There is nothing to lose by asking.</p>
<p>My D told me of a H friend who applied to two H graduate programs, and was admitted to the more competitive one and rejected by the less competitive one. This applicant did follow up on the rejection, and was told that his application essays and recs were not specific enough to the program. Perhaps the MIT applicants in question came across as likely to pursue interests in areas of the non-STEM world in which MIT does not excel (?)</p>
<p>^Texas- that’s where you have to take a longer view. Maybe a kid from another local hs deserved that chance, this time. Maybe there’s a little TJ fatigue. Maybe, in the context of the grand pool, what those local kids did isn’t compelling, this year. Maybe, in another region, there’s some new academic twist or strength (or a prior underrepresentation from another area) and they take a few seats away from, say NVa, and push them to Texas. Maybe they already have umpteen students who program apps and will graduate a chunk of the school orchestra.<br>
You can say, but these kids are so clearly superior (to me,) but the decisions are made by the institution. Win some, lose some. It’s not always about the kid and what he deserves. Again, it’s about the institution. That’s a first thing kids should know.</p>
<p>Bay, easier to follow up on grad than UG. Grad has so much to do with whether those particular profs can work with that kid- and want to.</p>
<p>I feel empathy for any kid who is rejected by a school that he really, really liked, just as I feel empathy for any case of unrequited love. But while I feel some empathy for the kid who has to go to Michigan instead of MIT, or Tufts instead of Harvard, I don’t feel pity for that kid. In the grand scheme, it’s hardly a disaster, for that kid or for society.</p>
<p>The “argument” seems to be devolving into a question of whether some extremely high stats students are rejected for sound or capricious reasons. I think both are true, and it’s often difficult to decide from the outside which is the case.</p>
<p>That said, it seems evident that Jones’ tenure produced more seemingly capricious decisions.</p>
<p>The second question about how much these rejections damage young scientists is “it depends.” We may argue that they should have the emotional stamina to deflect this disappointment, and I’m sure most do.</p>
<p>This is not just the case with MIT.</p>
<p>The great psychologist, Martin Seligman (who attended Yale) wrote that the sting of Harvard’s rejection did not abate until years later when he turned down an appointment on their faculty.</p>