<p>QM: 18 students is a rounding error based on the class size; easy to fit in. Why do you suppose this handful is not being accepted at present? Too few community service hours? Poor essay writing skills, perhaps due to overconfidence? A couple of C’s in non-geeky classes? (I seem to recall Feynman had horrible scores in something, maybe history, that he absolutely had no interest in.)</p>
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<p>I would guess that these colleges mostly wish to heavily subsidize those that they can triple-count in their statistics: URM, first-generation college, Pell-Grant recipient: It makes their overall stats look better while minimizing the cost. If they can get an athlete out of this group, too, then all the better.</p>
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<p>Here:
[Economic</a> Diversity | Rankings | Top National Universities | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity]Economic”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity)</p>
<p>Compare to the “elite” schools:
[Economic</a> Diversity Among the Top 25 Ranked Schools | Rankings | Top National Universities | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools]Economic”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools)</p>
<p>Why the expectation that “all the middle class kids on financial aid” would be hanging out on whatever sports team your D is on? Or various sports teams?<br>
It’s not enough to suggest colleges are fudging, when so much info is available and scrutinized, including by the Fafsa folks, in their reviews.</p>
<p>Of course, many sports at the high school and college level do appear to be associated with wealth, since they tend not to be as present in middle and lower income areas as high school sports or common extracurricular youth sports.</p>
<p>Quant, the flaw I see in your reasoning is that you think MIT SHOULD value the USMAO ( or whatever the names of these contests…sorry, the overwhelming majority of the population has never even heard of them) more than it does. </p>
<p>You want to change something they clearly state is not a golden ticket. I would assume they have a good reason for it. You’re frustrated because you can’t figure out what it is. Why does everything have to be so black and white?</p>
<p>“I understand that there is an extreme geographic concentration of USAMO qualifiers (even down to the high school level), so these students do come from educationally advantaged backgrounds–though they may not be especially economically advantaged.”</p>
<p>Of the top 12 scorers on the 2011 USAMO five came from a single school, Exeter. 3 others came from other private schools (Andover, Cary Academy, Georgetown Day), one came from a public exam school (Thomas Jefferson), and one came from an evening math program based out of Berkeley. Only two come from what would be considered standard high schools and of those one, Acton-Boxboro, is in a town which has a median family income of $156,300.</p>
<p><a href=“American Mathematics Competitions | Mathematical Association of America”>American Mathematics Competitions | Mathematical Association of America;
<p>I now see you guess 60% applied, my oversight. But, still interested in how these assumptions were selected. Is the goal to simply admit any USAMO top kid, regardless of fit? Regardless of some idea he or she would be the right match- but simply because the kid reached that level of tests and did well?</p>
<p>There are so many considerations. Despite the rep and that “institute” is in the name, the place functions as a college, goes so far as to offer depth and breath in a few non-STEM areas. And a freaking football team, complete wth cheerleaders. I am all for merit, but define it much more broadly. This feels almost arbitrary.</p>
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<p>Don’t know much about the other private schools, but the students from Exeter are likely all scholarship kids. Exeter has had a very active recruiting campaign for top math kids for many years. Its top math teacher is the coach of US IMO team.</p>
<p>And it doesn’t cost much to join the Berkeley Math Circle.</p>
<p>For sure, none of these kids is likely from a very poor family. But money won’t you a top place at USAMO.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to expect there might be more middle class kids on an HYPS track team than on the golf team, polo team, or crew team. While public schools offer lacrosse, the better lax teams are still also found among the prep schools. Also, one defense of athletic preference in admissions is that it contributes to diversity. As some on this board are so angry to point out, there are kids on the Ivy football teams that would never have gotten in with the sport.</p>
<p>My post simply stated that the data on elite schools indicates there are kids like mine on campus. I also just wanted to point out that my kids weren’t/aren’t meeting them. (They weren’t/aren’t deliberately trying to or not trying to, of course. Do I care? Well, people don’t send their children to elite schools expecting them to have the same composition as the local community college, so no in that sense. At the same time, when it comes to dating, it has been a bit awkward!)</p>
<p>^* without the sport</p>
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<p>I too am very interested in knowing who these kids are. Are they poor kids, “textureless math grinds” or whatever? We can count them on our hands, so just the raw data minus ID, no % this or that.</p>
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<p>Statistics is confusing, why not de-IDed raw data? I remember years back people wanted scientists’ lab notes when they publish their results. Did they have their way? If so, we can have the raw application data from colleges.</p>
<p>Here is an article that is hot off the press, and touches this discussion on so many places and levels that I just have to post it. A warning, however, is in order: It is very long.</p>
<p>I will refrain from any comment as not to sidetrack the discussion.</p>
<p>[The</a> Myth of American Meritocracy | The American Conservative](<a href=“http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/]The”>http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/)</p>
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<p>The Intenet may be an equalizer for academically motivated people in remote areas (especially as online courses grow), but some groups are more willing and able to use the Internet to inform themselves, as discussed in an NYT article.</p>
<p>[New</a> ‘Digital Divide’ Seen in Wasting Time Online - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/new-digital-divide-seen-in-wasting-time-online.html]New”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/new-digital-divide-seen-in-wasting-time-online.html)
As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.</p>
<p>This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it.</p>
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<p>Yeah, if choosing students via the USAMO results in admitting some Asians, we had better kick out some other Asians, or MIT might look like Berkeley. Your racial bean-counting disturbs me.</p>
<p>^^Beliavsky: either I am misreading your post or QM’s? </p>
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<p>frtian- Thank you for that information! It looks to me like about 18,000 applied applied to MIT last year. This sort of puts it all in perspective for me. In that context AMC seems a pretty big contest to me.</p>
<p>QM -</p>
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<p>I agree they belong.</p>
<p>Since your plan only negatively impacts those we might reasonably expect to have had the same opportunities to participate in AME as the USAMO scorers, I don’t see how most on this board could object. What if you limited it to replacing applicants with family incomes greater than $100,000 and SAT M below 760? Unless they had already invented free energy in the garage after school? Then can everyone get on board with the idea?</p>
<p>Whoa, wait a minute here. Just to play devil’s advocate here …
Aren’t half the threads on CC about what a problem it is when a high-stats Asian kid gets turned aside (supposedly) to make room for a lower-stats URM? Now it’s a problem if a high-stats Asian kid gets turned aside to make room for an even HIGHER stats (as measured by USAMO) Asian kid?</p>
<p>And, in conclusion, following my spate of posts last night, I think you can see why I have a soft spot for the boring science types.</p>
<p>The numbers that 25% of those who qualified in 10th grade or below do not re-qualify in 11th grade, 60% of those I would auto-admit apply to MIT, 2/3 of those who qualify as auto-admits are admitted already, and only about 3 of the remainder fit JHS’s “red flag” category are pure guesswork on my part. I have no connection with the contests at all. (My spouse is a member of the American Mathematical Society and qualifies as a mathematician on a sort of technicality based on publications, but that is not the primary field.)</p>
<p>Please feel free to adjust these numbers as you think reasonable. I am pretty sure that many students who qualify in 10th grade and below re-qualify in 11th grade, the students scoring 0 on the USAMO are not entirely 12th graders, not all of the students in my auto-admit group apply to MIT, MIT does accept some of them, and the number of “red flags” is probably single digit.</p>
<p>Since the names of the qualifiers are publicly available from 2011 and going back about a decade, it would be possible to comb the records to obtain a better estimate of the number of who qualify in some year before 11th grade, but do not qualify in 11th grade, but I will leave that to another interested party (if there is one!).</p>
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<p>Why is that? I’m not sure what exactly is so special about qualifying for USAMO that it deserves an auto-admit.</p>
<p>QM - Thank you for doing all that work. really!</p>