<p>If you can suggest a better title, jym626, I can put up a second thread (or maybe change the title of the one already up).</p>
<p>You asked THIS: “Out of the entire group of students who are admitted to Yale, what per cent do you think also applied to Harvard?” so you might want to change the title to reflect that, unless that isnt what you are asking.</p>
<p>Again, please PLEASE lets NOT hijack this already convoluted thread. Nuff said about probabilistic analyses here. No mas, please.</p>
<p>Sorry for interrupting the conversation with a belated reply to an issue raised by another poster, re using an above-threshold USAMO score as an auto-admit indicator at MIT. Also, apologies that this post is MIT-specific. The one that follows is not, although it’s still about the auto-admit suggestion.</p>
<p>I understand that not all talented math students are interested in contest math, or have the opportunity to participate in the contests that lead to the USAMO. I estimate that my auto-admit group would be about 1% of MIT’s total group of admitted students. </p>
<p>So suppose that 10% of the hyper-talented young mathematicians in the U.S. participate in the USAMO and 90% of the hyper-talented young mathematicians in the U.S. do not participate in the USAMO. The group of hyper-talented young mathematicians is 10 times larger than the group qualified for auto-admit by USAMO score. </p>
<p>I don’t see a problem with that. <em>All</em> of the hyper-talented mathematicians could be admitted, and it’s still only 10% of the entire set of admitted students. And they are not all likely to become math majors, in any event. And many will elect to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Kind of a long title, jym626.</p>
<p>Quite a while back, a poster objected that if a score threshold on the USAMO guaranteed admission to MIT, then many students would become miserable while trying to attain the auto-admit threshold. (Sorry, I could not locate the specific post.)</p>
<p>If the other poster is correct, then I would actually withdraw the auto-admit suggestion, because I do understand the issue of unintended consequences.</p>
<p>I am not sure whether the other poster is correct or not, though, and I am interested in your opinions. If USAMO points above some threshold guaranteed admission to some top school, would that cause students to focus–or be forced to focus–with a high level of pressure, on the USAMO?</p>
<p>Enough with the auto-admit, please! Someone could score highly on the USAMO and be a complete nutcase or have other weaknesses that would make him/her unsuitable for admission. Haven’t we been over this enough for one thread?</p>
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<p>Indeed! He/she could be a Goth, Hun, or Vandal like the group of freshmen below performing a reverse hazing on a couple of upperclassmen:</p>
<p>[Horrible</a> Histories - The Fall of Rome - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--rb9UyfIfw]Horrible”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--rb9UyfIfw)</p>
<p>Or they could perform the same reverse hazing to upperclassmen as Vikings:</p>
<p>[Horrible</a> Histories - Literally: The Viking Song - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qSkaAwKMD4]Horrible”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qSkaAwKMD4)</p>
<p>:D 
:D</p>
<p>LF- I agree most studies are about cross admits, not where they chose to apply.</p>
<p>I also suspect the preferences have changed since then as the rankings and FA packages have changed. The admit rates were in double digits for most of these schools back in 2006. Now more schools have become lotto schools across board. Almost all schools in top 10 are into single digits for admission and more will likely get there.</p>
<p>“even though their SAT scores were lower” - I don’t believe this is true anymore if it was ever. I know several girls who got in last year who had perfect or almost perfect scores (2400, 36, 2380, 2350 - the list goes on). One was rejected last year with a perfect ACT score. Most of those who got in who I knew had admissions to more than one top 10 school. </p>
<p>I see a lot of comments about high admit rates but no one seems to talk about the low yield rate for females. This is because those admitted are good enough to have lot more choices.</p>
<p>I picked the USAMO rather than the AIME or some other contest/test, because it appears to be fairly difficult to score points on it.</p>
<p>It seems to me that a student who is quite bright and is an Olympic swimmer can be fairly sure of admission to Stanford, if the student wants to go there. But I don’t think that large numbers of parents are making their children miserable in the quest to produce an Olympic swimmer/Stanford student. (There may well be pressure on talented young swimmers, but doubt that it has much of a Stanford link.)</p>
<p>Similarly, I think that a student who became a finalist in the Van Cliburn competition, and who was also very bright, would be welcomed by most universities.</p>
<p>It also seems to me that if a family is extremely wealthy, so that they could give a building to a “top” university, their sons and daughters are very likely to be admitted, if the sons and daughers are bright. But I doubt that many of us are putting pressure on ourselves to accumulate a fortune of “one multiplujillion, nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents” (in the words used by Carl Banks about the fortune of Scrooge McDuck), in order to get our children in.</p>
<p>In each of these cases, I think the odds of success are sufficiently remote as to make pressure unlikely. But maybe I am wrong . . .</p>
<p>I hatched the auto-admit idea before I learned about “tiger moms.” It seems possible to me that the type of parent who would force a young child to play “Little White Donkey” (or something similar) for hours on end, without dinner, and without a bathroom break, or threaten to burn the child’s stuffed animals, or visit Athens with the children in tow, but skip a visit to the Parthenon so that the children could continue to practice the piano for four hours a day–well, that type of parent might create absurd pressure on a child to try to score USAMO points.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I don’t really think that Olympic swimming, becoming a finalist in the Van Cliburn competition, nor scoring above threshold on the USAMO would yield to forced practice by the time the child is 16 or 17. Nor could a parent accumulate even one “obsquatumatillion” dollars, by the time S or D is ready for college.</p>
<p>sally305, #2227, my auto-admit suggestion always has had an exemption on grounds of character, just not on grounds of personality. (I don’t mention that every time.)</p>
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I wasnt proposing it as a title, QM. Was just pointing out that what you were asking there differs from what the already long winded title asks</p>
<p>Cobrat,
you already posted that stuff (in 2228) pages and pages ago. To be honest, it still doesnt make any sense. No need to explain. REALLY.</p>
<p>This thread is just going in circles. …</p>
<p>QM, even so–what if one year there is a huge increase in the number of students who meet your “threshold”? Who doesn’t get in then? And why would MIT, or any institution, commit to such a a policy and lose the freedom to make individual decisions about each applicant?</p>
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<p>The Western Roman Empire was an attractive exclusive club of sorts with wealth, power, and prestige which attracted many outsiders to trade, raid, or even attempt to conquer it in some ways. </p>
<p>Barbarian groups like the Goths, Huns, and Vandals all wanted to get into and be a part of that empire as autonomous groups to be associated with Rome’s grandeur. On the flipside, the Romans…especially the ruling elite were loath to admit them and did their best to keep them out until they no longer had the power to do so. </p>
<p>In a sense, the Roman elite were right about one thing…when they ended up being forced to admit those groups, it inevitably changed the very fabric of what was the Roman Empire despite the fact the barbarian groups did so with the goal of being associated with all the grandeur that was Rome’s. In fact, that very fabric was changed so much there was no Western Roman empire after a certain point. </p>
<p>By analogy, adcoms of various private colleges have as one of their goals the desire to manage their respective institution’s campus cultures so it’s not altered without prior specific intent and beneficial endgoal in mind. Understandable considering the possible law of unintended consequences as was the case with the barbarian groups and the Western Roman Empire. :D</p>
<p>QuantMech said “UIUC is another good choice. They have a long hallway lined with portraits of their Nobel Laureates and (as I recall) also members of the National Academies (Science and Engineering, at least). Again, not so economical for out-of-state students.”</p>
<p>I live in Illinois and we would pay about $5K more for DD to attend UIUC than UC or WUSTL. Sad…</p>
<p>jym626, I have posted another thread with the title “Numerical estimates about cross-applicants to HYP?”</p>
<p>It’s still long, but any more attempts and I will start to feel as if I belong in the story about the Brementown musicians.</p>
<p>sally305, the number of students who qualify to take the USAMO is capped, so I think a huge increase is impossible.</p>
<p>Wow, that is awful, Kennedy2010–I didn’t know that. I imagine it’s considerably worse out-of-state. The fall-off in state funding for flagship universities is a significant problem in a lot of states.</p>
<p>Oh never mind. It’s futile.</p>
<p>Yes - Illinois has some financial problems.</p>
<p>But on the other hand - this is just one specific example for my DD. There are sure to be some kids who faired much better at UIUC.</p>
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<p>It’s already well established in some circles that doing well on math and science contests greatly improves your chances of getting accepted to MIT. Maybe “textureless math grinds” refers to those who only participate in math and science contests out of parental pressure and have no real interest in math or science.</p>
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<p>There is not enough room at MIT to admit 10% more students. If there was, MIT would do so. I also don’t see why math is more important than other subjects.</p>
<p>
That was me.</p>
<p>I’ll take the example of an Olympic swimmer, because I’m not really familiar with the other two. The main difference that I see between USAMO and Olympic swimming as auto-admit tools is that swimming is not in line with an academic career. If we operate under the assumption that kids want to go to XYZ top school (I’ll use MIT) to pursue academic interests, swimming is a “useless” skill. It is a huge gamble for parents to push their kids towards Harvard via athletics, because they’re liable to end up with a just-missed-the-Olympics quality athlete in 18 years when they wanted a scholar.</p>