<p>JHS #1892: My point lately has been quite limited. Several posters, including blossom, absweetmarie and probably others, have suggested–if I have read their posts correctly–that a prospective academic physicist who is rejected by MIT and lets that change his/her hopes/plans for a career in physics research at a university probably doesn’t have the “grit” to deal with the rejections and set-backs that generally accompany such a career.</p>
<p>collegealum314 a few years ago wrote on another thread that he knew students who really took MIT rejections to heart. My point was simply that these people were making a rational decision based on the information known to them at the time. I don’t think it’s the only rational approach, but I don’t think it indicates that they lacked resilience.</p>
<p>If a high school football player doesn’t get an NCAA Div. I scholarship, and changes his mind about planning for a pro football career, would you think, “Well, he obviously just doesn’t have the ability to take the hits that one has to take as a pro player”? Or would you think he had made a rational decision, given the facts available to him?</p>
<p>As a high school student, I hoped to become a university researcher. I have been tremendously fortunate (!!!) that it worked out. There were many points where things might have gone differently. I might not have been looking up the numbers on academic positions available annually when I was in high school, but I was certainly aware of that by the time I was a junior in college. Quite a number of college students read Physics Today and are well aware of the career odds.</p>
<p>Scientific research is a wonderful career, and I absolutely wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from pursuing it, despite the odds. But I also think it’s important to know the odds.</p>
<p>One of my colleagues told me that when he was looking for an academic position, in the U.S., there were a total of 7 openings in his field at research-intensive universities (with field defined to cover about 20% of a typical department). I take “research-intensive” to cover about the top 150 universities in the U.S. in terms of annual research funding. As bad as it currently is, the job market is better now.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion. If I were granted auto-admit power at MIT, I’d use it to admit someone like Clara Fannjiang of Davis, California, who, last year, won 8th place in the Intel Science Talent Search AND won national gold medals for her poetry in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Apparently she’s going to Stanford. (Have no idea if she applied to MIT).</p>
<p>Quant- and you think it’s better for a new PhD coming out of a Classics department or Renaissance Studies or Art History? Or American History- and you are a young scholar of the Civil War? best of luck to you.</p>
<p>The redeeming quality of a PhD in the sciences is that there are other career opportunities (and employers) who would be thrilled to have you. The fungibility of our Civil War scholar’s skills? Not so obvious.</p>
<p>The difference between your football analogy and science is that there are what- 100 times more jobs in the aggregate in a particular scientific field than in pro football? So yes, I’m saying that a kid who takes that rejection FROM ONLY ONE SCHOOL as a sign to shift courses needs adult intervention. A pro football career lasts 10 years? ending in severe neurological injury? There are working scientists into their 90’s- still publishing, still collaborating, still running research teams.</p>
<p>I don’t think the two careers are at all similar. </p>
<p>Show me a kid with the ballpark “inline” stats who applied and was rejected from MIT, CMU, Chicago, Berkeley, UIUC, JHU, Cornell and Michigan who has a serious interest in an academic career in the sciences. I don’t believe there is even one in the last 10 years in the US. I don’t mean a kid with an 800 math, 450 verbal and a B+ average (in my town there are PLENTY of parents who think their kid is a shoe-in at MIT since “everyone knows” MIT only cares about math.) That kid will happily go off to Michigan or Cornell or wherever-- unless the adults in his or her life has communicated a twisted set of priorities.</p>
<p>People who are very intelligent, knowledgeable, and self-aware are capable of evaluating themselves and their children using more complete criteria than their peers may use. The downside is that they are in danger of becoming a bit too critical of themselves due to their superior awareness of the degree of talent out there beyond their high school or region. This is especially true if they have perfectionist tendencies and want to do only what they can do very well. </p>
<p>Math was a weak area for my son, but even so he took Calc BC in junior year and scored a 5. Given that only 15-18 kids in his high school made it into that class as juniors, that meant he could have believed himself to be an excellent math student. However, there were several students in his own class who grasped the material much easier than he did. Therefore S assumed that a large number of other students in the US and world were also far superior to him in math ability. Consequently, he concluded that he was weak in math and would not pursue a career in engineering. A friend’s son a year younger who was on the same math track, came to an identical conclusion. One day my friend asked me how it was that her son and mine both thought they weren’t good at math and shouldn’t study engineering, yet there were plenty of kids in the math levels below theirs who planned to study engineering. If they could do it, she said our boys could too. And I’m sure they could have. My S doesn’t lack for self confidence and neither does hers, yet they decided their talents were better suited to other fields. So the idea that a student who was rejected from the most well-known math school might change his ideas about his career path isn’t far-fetched to me, especially if the student personally knew other students who were accepted and believed them to be superior based on other data.</p>
<p>One can do a lot of things with a physics education, whether one stops at the B.A./B.S. level, Ph.D. level, or after a post-doc. It’s interesting and intrinsically worth pursuing.</p>
<p>Only a few of my students/post-docs are in academic positions. One went to work for Lehman (and probably was not responsible for bringing it down), one is in international banking with Wells Fargo, one ran an import/export firm, one worked for Cray (computer) and for a software firm well known in the research community, one changed gears and went into electrical engineering, one went to law school and became a patent lawyer, . . . I suspect all of them make/made more than I did, and I am sure they enjoy their work.</p>
<p>One could certainly take the “I’ll show them!” viewpoint, or the “Well, it might work out if I give it a try,” viewpoint, or the “MIT is irrelevant.” Those are all fine, too. </p>
<p>People are aware of how difficult it is to make a career in professional sports, as an orchestra member, as an actor/singer in musical theatre, as an opera star, or TV personality, and I don’t think less of someone who revises goals in light of reality. Given all of the “we need more people in STEM fields” rhetoric, people not in those fields may not know how tough the academic job market is.</p>
<p>I think many here understand how difficult the academic job market is. Have 2 tenured professors in the family at a top 20 school (not in STEM) who have provided glimpses into academia over many a holiday get together. The thing is, especially these days, it’s tough all over.</p>
<p>Many kids that aspire to D1 sports do adjust their expectations if the “big programs” pass on them. Have a family member now at an Ivy. Would have loved to be at a marquis program but was passed over. This did not deter this kid from still wanting to play and find another program. Not sure why an MIT rejection would deter a kid in sciences who really wanted to pursue sciences. Many programs out there.</p>
<p>“If a high school football player doesn’t get an NCAA Div. I scholarship, and changes his mind about planning for a pro football career, would you think, “Well, he obviously just doesn’t have the ability to take the hits that one has to take as a pro player”? Or would you think he had made a rational decision, given the facts available to him?”</p>
<p>The problem I’m having with this entire conversation is the assumption that MIT is the only place a student can do the academic equivalent of playing Division I football.</p>
<p>It’s not the comparison of pro football and academic physics as careers that’s relevant to my argument, it’s the number of openings per age cohort.</p>
<p>It’s not MIT per se that’s important, it’s what one might logically deduce from the total number of people headed in the same general direction, who seem preferable. </p>
<p>I think TheGFG has made a significant observation the possibility that weaker students may over-estimate their odds, while stronger students under-estimate theirs, because they are using different comparison groups.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know a lot about Div I football, actually–but MIT admits 1700+ students, mainly intent on STEM fields at the time they apply (exceptions noted).</p>
<p>How many Div I football scholarships are there in the US?</p>
<p>Well, looked it up and learned something: In Div I-A, the serious football division, there are (by my count) 122 universities. This includes teams that the frequent bowl participants routinely walk all over, when they play them during the regular season. Each Div I-A team can have a total of 85 players on scholarship at a time. So, allowing for injuries, suppose each team recruits 25 new players a year, on scholarship. That’s 3050 in the country, in Div I-A.</p>
<p>I thought the Div I-AA schools were in some other division-sorry.</p>
<p>In any event, the number of football scholarships is about 75% more than the number of MIT admits. So there are more, but not by orders of magnitude.</p>
<p>I would be able to go with your analogy if:</p>
<p>Newborn babies get a onesy that says, “USAMO rocks”. When they are old enough they watch math contests on tv and if they’re really lucky they could actually see one live. There are stores at the mall dedicated to nothing but math contests. Every video game system has several versions of math contests. There are even preppy k math teams with parent volunteers. On and on…</p>
<p>Only a very small portion of the population participates or even knows about USAMO. I’m not saying that those students aren’t brilliant. I’m just saying you can’t say they are the “best of the best” with no reservations. MIT has clearly stated that they don’t find high school the finish line and admission the prize ( or something like that). Just because someone has had the opportunity to participate in this one particular EC doesn’t give them the right to claim “I won” everyone else in the country is subpar when it comes to math.</p>
<p>I believe the original point was that MIT should use USAMO as an entrance qualifier </p>
<p>After a careful study of the education and scientific accomplishments of Einstein one would conclude that using a single test as an entrance qualifier to an institution would not necessarily select students who will make significant scientific discoveries. I believe many people in the administration, faculty, and admissions at MIT understand this.</p>
LOL. I think that’s true in our household too, except that it’s quite clear that mathson is exactly where he wanted to be. All we lost was some extra driving and what we gained was learning what a nice city Pittsburgh is.</p>
<p>Re #1841, living in the NYC area, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, but I was rather taken aback that all the alumni who showed up at an MIT event were in investment banking. So yes, perhaps MIT could be looking for real scientists!</p>
<p>
Actually are experience is just the opposite - Harvard seemed to like pointy applicants better than MIT.</p>
<p>Are their USAMO finalists that MIT has turned down for reasons other than red flags (ie major school misconduct). Even if some were denied admission, it seems likely after years of proving how good they are in math competitions that any of them would suddenly decide to major in english at Kenyon as opposed to STEM at Cal Tech, Mudd, G. Tech, CMU, Stanford, Harvard, or Pricneton, among other fine schools. </p>
<p>Isn’t the real issue that if MIT rejects such talent in sufficient numbers it will water down its own reputation. Some would argue this has already happened with Cal Tech, but probably not yet (at least in NOVA) as admission at MIT is still one of the three head turners (along with H and Y).</p>
I’m completely confused QM. I thought you made the point in another post that MIT wasn’t even necessarily the best choice for physics. That is was better for engineering. I think few of the recent physics Nobels were awarded to MIT grads.</p>
<p>And with respect to the superior, USAMO type student, even in 2002, giving up entirely on math and science - wouldn’t a kid like that have access to mentors? You really believe someone will drop their passion because they fail to gain entrance to one school? I really find that extremely hard to believe, and it sort of defies logic. </p>
<p>Suppose you have consistently been regaled as a superior math/sci student (I guarantee this was the experience for the type of child you describe, even in 2002), For some reason you fail to gain entry to MIT. For some bizarre reason you interpret that to mean that everything you thought, everything you loved, was untrue. What is the logical course of action now that you have abandoned science? You will ultimately have to choose something else to dedicate your life to. What talents do you actually have if you are in actuality talentless in math? Or is it better just to reconsider higher education entirely? All of these reactions seem extremely implausible to me. </p>
<p>My experience (limited, granted) with kids who really love science, or math, or computers is that they actually really love science or math or computers. I assume that’s what they convey in their essays, and I take them at their word. I don’t see them chucking it all on a whim, especially when there really is no logical reason. I understand you feel differently.</p>
<p>poetgrl #1916 and bovertine #1917, the issue I am focusing on at the moment is purely numbers-related. Of course there are other excellent schools, and MIT is not the best in some fields. </p>
<p>I am trying to look at this from the perspective of an applicant, who sees 1740 or so students who are preferred by MIT and works the numbers on undergrad spots vs. academic career spots. People have suggested that it’s irrational (or worse) for such a student to think that maybe an academic physics career isn’t so realistic after all.</p>
<p>I don’t see this as “chucking it on a whim.” The time when there really are too few spots for all of the exceptional applicants is at the beginning Assistant Professor hiring stage. If a person took MIT’s rejection as based on scientific potential, perhaps it would be more sensible to prepare for a different career that might be equally pleasing, rather than trying to go into particle physics. The person could minor in physics, or major in physics with a back-up field, or assume Harvard/Stanford/Caltech knows better than MIT and MIT is not so hot in particle physics anyway. If believing that MIT is right about the instantaneous state of the STEM “crop”, the person could assume that he/she can overtake the approximately 1740 people who appear better to MIT. The student is just not neurotic/whiny/easily discouraged if their choice is not on that list.</p>
<p>I am not now discussing individual students MIT ought to admit, or other sides of the argument.</p>
<p>I thought this discussion would have ended pages ago, when Sue posted the quote below. What do math geniuses do when they get rejected by MIT? They teach at MIT, of course!</p>
<p>collegealum314, I assume that you persuaded the students you knew (who took MIT’s rejection hard) that they should ignore it and continue as planned?</p>
<p>It does take mentoring, probably. Not everyone has a handy MIT-connected mentor who can tell him/her what’s what in a believable way.</p>
<p>Also, cross-posting with Bay: I have no reason to believe that any member of the MIT math faculty was rejected by MIT, if he/she applied there as an undergrad.</p>