<p>10-15 students is not 10% of the freshman class at MIT. If I have ever seemed to say so, it was a typo. </p>
<p>Edit: Oh–I think I see. I suggested that the 10-15 USAMO auto-admits could be complemented by an additional 90% of the hyper-talented math students who are not identified through USAMO scores. The hyper-talented math students (who might not be math majors) would make up 10% of the MIT class, taken all together. However, this would only result in a 10% increase in the class size if MIT currently takes <em>no</em> hyper-talented math students. That is clearly not the case. I don’t know what fraction of the hyper-talented math-student applicants they do take. </p>
<p>I did mean that the 10-15 students I am suggesting could replace 10-15 other students at the admissions stage–sorry that wasn’t clear. Once a student has been admitted, then I think a university qua institution needs to act responsibly–dismissing a student after one semester or even one year (generally speaking) does not fit that description, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Beliavsky makes good points in #2346, which I am happy to endorse (though not all of Beliavsky’s posts). I probably did not contextualize my remark well enough. If I have seemed to approve of pointless work, it is perhaps because my definition of “grind” differs from the more commonly accepted one. If a student gets the material immediately and doesn’t need to work, the student doesn’t need to work–though perhaps the student might have chosen a more challenging course.</p>
<p>By the “non-working group,” I meant to refer to the students mentioned by shravas, who are adequately prepared for the first-year physics or math courses at MIT, but who fail them because they did not work enough, and who did not work because the grades don’t go on their transcripts.</p>
<p>I’d like to imagine MIT admitting students who are so wrapped up in engineering, science or math that they can’t wait to learn new things. Being grade-motivated doesn’t really fit in the picture, for me. </p>
<p>(I don’t oppose people having some fun, too. I think jym626 asked about my hobbies earlier on. I enjoy many fascinating hobbies. Perhaps the most time-consuming one is hunting for my car keys.)</p>
<p>It seems very possible to me that MIT is already effectively auto admitting all USAMO qualifiers. There are, what, almost 300? And QM estimates 10-15 are rejected from MIT each year? How do we know that the very small portion of kids didn’t fall under “character flaw” rejects, and MIT is simply not advertising that USAMO is an auto-admit because of the disproportional amount of attention it would draw to math?</p>
<p>A dumb question - it appears that a healthy majority of the USAMO team members attend/ed Harvard, not MIT. Is it because they prefer Harvard, and if so, why? Or, are they part of those discussed ad nauseum who were declined at MIT?</p>
<p>Interesting look at how kids can do more.
<a href=“The Most Impressive MIT Students”>www.businessinsider.com/the-most-impressive-mit-students-2013-1?op=1</a></p>
<p>MIT is NOT the math Mecca, at least not the only one, as people may have perceived from these discussions. As a matter of fact, in the latest National Research Council doctoral program ranking, Harvard has 1-4 S-ranking and 2-5 R-ranking, while MIT has 4-11 S-ranking and 5-11 R-ranking. Princeton and NYU are better ranked. </p>
For me, excessive motivation by grades/external validation is another quality of someone I’d call a “grind”. IME, highly grade-motivated students don’t tend to be the ones with the “fun” personalities.</p>
<p>That is interesting, molliebatmit (#2450). The students I have encountered who appear to be heavily grade-motivated may work hard, but they almost never work very hard. As a result, they may be more “fun” than the intrinsically motivated students who work very hard.</p>
<p>Perhaps I am just seeing a different subset of the population. Perhaps “hard” work suffices for an A at some universities, whereas one would have to work “very hard” for an A at MIT?</p>
<p>(Edited to add: This is not intended to be a sharp question–I am just curious about the source of the difference in viewpoints.)</p>
<p>Back to the original question, my friend is a perfect example. She thought she had no chance of getting into RPI (she was even told that on here apparently) but she did get in. She’s thrilled and she even got into the program she wanted! I’m still waiting on my last three colleges (Fordham, BC, and NYU) and I am hoping to at least get accepted to Fordham. Anyway, point is, you should not be surprised if someone you thought would not get into a particular college does.</p>
<p>"A dumb question - it appears that a healthy majority of the USAMO team members attend/ed Harvard, not MIT. Is it because they prefer Harvard, and if so, why? Or, are they part of those discussed ad nauseum who were declined at MIT? "</p>
<p>I am not very sure why QM is very specific about MIT. I don’t see Math kids wanting to DO Math actually being all that keen on MIT unless they want to apply it. If one wants to study Pure Math, most schools should have enough interesting professors.</p>
<p>OTOH, reliving Hunt’s prestigiosity thread, Harvard 1000 milliharvards on the prestigiosity scale! People to RSI to hone their tech credentials only to go to Harvard in the end after attending one of the most prestigious programs at MIT. What does it tell us?</p>
<p>Thanks for the link to the “hard problems” video! I really enjoyed it. I love these kids, maybe because I’ve been around these types of personalities since early age and always admired how their brains work.
I’m going to watch “beautiful young minds” tomorrow.</p>
<p>And then you might see what some of the great young minds do and produce on the left coast. Some of those guys and gals might even be quite good at math. I am pretty sure that Dean Shaw is thrilled that he let them …get in.</p>
<p>When it comes to internationals, it’s all about MONEY</p>
<p>Just explain</p>
<p>Girl 2210 SAT 740 Bio E, 710 World History, 800 M1. IB-38. AP Calculus 5. 4.0 GPA gets denied when a
Boy (from the same school) 1790 SAT no SAT subjects. IB-32. No AP. 3.6 GPA gets in.
(Boy has no particular talent or ECs or not even great recommendations, just the salary check of his father)</p>
<p>Girl’s family contribution $10,000
Boy didn’t even apply for financial aid </p>
<p>Colleges, even top LAC s are so business oriented these days. Especially when admitting internationals. They always do admit couple of students from a country but they look for ones who can finance themselves. </p>
<p>If I could pay I’d be in Smith now, or Macalester or Swarthmore maybe.</p>
Well, extreme grade-motivation, combined with the very long studying hours necessitated by memorization, are two of the symptoms often associated with being pre-med. So when I am thinking about very grade-motivated students, I am thinking about the second tier of premeds – not the very smartest premeds, who can get excellent grades while taking and learning from interesting, difficult courses, but those who earn high grades by selecting easier courses, etc.</p>
<p>It’s true that I’m coming at this question from a college atmosphere where virtually everyone is working very hard – the typical courseload is 4 classes/48 “units”, where one unit is supposed to be equivalent to one hour of work per week, but the right tail of the distribution goes up to about 100 units. And anything above 48 units is basically voluntary academic masochism. But it’s not normal in that atmosphere to be terribly wrapped up in whether or not you’ll get an A, while it is normal to take weekend nights off to hang out with your friends.</p>
<p>I’m hopping in really late here, and I’m a current high school student.
My school is fairly cut-throat in ranking and grades, so it’s the students doing the “Why ddid A get in to X and I didn’t?” and sometimes teachers (oh, the things you find out through after school choir).
Anyway, we publicly post everyone who made any of our three honor rolls, so you know who got a 4.0, 3.5 or 3.0 if you really feel like looking. Senior AP scores are also posted outside guidance shortly before they start doing transcripts so they can make sure everything is correct. People share test scores all the time, even badger you into saying what you got (I managed to keep my SATs a secret for four months because no one knew I took them in October instead of January of junior year, and people didn’t find out my APs unless they were the creepy kind who stare at the list outside guidance). The only thing that is a relative secret is your class rank, which you have to ask for and honestly isn’t a very good judge of ability at my school since the difference between myself (135 uw, 115 w) and #15 uw/11 w is .2 is the unweighted and .6 weighted (this is a friend, and she’s the sharing type).
So, I’ve concluded that, really, I and my classmates will never know why, nor do I care, and that we all need to stop talking about it. I’ve also determined I should never have told anyone I applied to JHU, since I’ll never hear the end of people saying, “Oh, you’ll never get it”/“Of course you’ll get in” (depending on if they generally perform better or worse) before decisions for RD come out and ultimately “I knew you would get in” (said bitterly) or “Why did you even apply?” after decisions. Then again, I figured I would only get into one college (low self-esteem+cut-throat school=really bad combination), but have gotten into four so far (two more to hear from so I know all six).</p>
<p>texaspg, I wouldn’t be surprised if the students who plan to become mathematicians prefer Harvard or Princeton or other universities with great math programs over MIT, although there are also some exceptionally gifted mathematicians who do choose MIT.</p>
<p>The reason for my focus on MIT is that I wouldn’t expect to get much traction from an argument that Harvard should accept more hyper-talented math students. I don’t think that a hyper-talented math student is particularly likely to wind up on the Supreme Court, nor as a Senator, nor as a leading publisher, nor as a [whatever career it is where one makes a “squatumatillion” dollars (please see earlier citation to Donald Duck comics)]. There are some exceptions–e.g., Bill Gates. But I think that overall, Harvard’s admissions goals are somewhat different from MIT’s.</p>
<p>Ehh, I’m not getting much traction on the argument about MIT either, except with a few people who probably already held that opinion.</p>
<p>Plausible, but how are admissions officers supposed to assess the motivations of applicants?
Even judging one’s own motives is problematic. You can come up with a story to explain your actions, but research has found that people’s self-assessment are unrealistically positive. Large majorities of people think they are above average in intelligence, driving skills, etc.</p>