<p>Alh, I have lots of responses to the question. The net is I don’t know if his privacy was violated, whether he’s one of several or what his relationship is/was with MIT that they felt it was okay to say “who built a nuclear reactor in his garage.” Clearly, he and his parents did not start a hubbub. That does affect my thoughts. </p>
<p>In general, yes, we should respect another’s private details that we may just happen to know (or have found,) take our lead from what they themselves have made public and respect the context in which they did so. Seek not to embarass, even unintentionally. I don’t know that that applies in this case. </p>
<p>That’s all I think I need to say. Except: Chris’s comments about passion, imo, were misleading.</p>
<p>With apologies in advance for the “spatterdockery” of my posts–I do have to get back to grinding:</p>
<p>In #1674, I believe, lookingforward commented
</p>
<p>No quarrel with that. In fact, I have the impression that many of the top colleges admit fewer than half of their applicants with 2400 SATs. No quarrel with that. (The data are almost always broken out by CR, M, and W, with no data on CR+M+W, so it’s a bit hard to tell.)</p>
<p>It will probably take about 10% of the time that it takes to read my posts on this thread, to read all 5 of the blog entries that are highlighted on that page (and have been unchanged for a while).</p>
<p>If you are interested enough to look at them, and you have not read them before, please do. Much that is in the blog posts is sound. However, as far as I can tell, MIT is the only university that does not admit all of the students 2400/2400/4.0 UW GPA/lots of APs (fine, no problem), but mocks them into the bargain (not fine).</p>
<p>Seems to me this is about as transparent as it gets. Apparently MIT doesn’t think each decision is “perfect,” and apparently MIT thinks people who go elsewhere can do amazing things. Apparently MIT is a lot more conceptual than some of its boosters.</p>
<p>I referred far upthread to the Laffer curve of benefits from instruction: In math/physical science/engineering/foreign languages/economics (and perhaps other areas), if a course is far too easy for a student, the student will learn nothing. If a course is far too hard for a student, the student might learn something, but not as much as he/she would from a somewhat easier course.</p>
<p>If I walked into an Italian literature course, taught in Italian, with all of the readings in Italian, I wouldn’t get much out of it, I am sure.</p>
<p>History is different, I think. I suspect that anyone could learn quite a lot from a graduate-level history course, even if the person did not have the background knowledge needed to place the events/trends/culture in perspective.</p>
<p>Literature courses are perhaps somewhere in the middle. Some works of literature take time and/or experience to understand. Two personal examples: When I was in high school, I read William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life (on my own, not for a class). I didn’t understand it, disliked it and the characters, and found it depressing. I read it again when I was in college. By then I found it hysterically funny, and in a way inspirational. I read Robert Frost’s poem Directive in college. Absolutely could not make “hide nor hair” of it. Returned to it many years later–now I understand.</p>
<p>To relate this back to science and math: If a student who has just completed pre-calculus enrolls in a graduate-level course in general relativity, it’s unlikely to go well. I know this pretty much never happens. I offer it as an “existence proof” that there exist courses in science/math for which students with certain backgrounds may be unprepared.</p>
<p>Huh. Think MIT is impressed with parents and adults who whine that their special snowflakes and / or snowflakes they know didn’t get in? “What’s wrong with me,” indeed.</p>
<p>QM, if your objective in linking to those pages was to draw our attention to things about MIT admissions that we should feel bad about or object to, it didn’t work. Overall, those blog posts are reasonable, balanced, and enhance what I think of the school’s admissions policies.</p>
<p>Bouncing back to MIT admissions, if MIT wants to encourage students with 1900 SAT I totals combined with relentless curiosity and unusual creativity to apply and not to be discouraged by the statistical data, great! I hope they admit students in that group! But why not just say so? Is it really necessary to say that often the 2400/2400 etc. student only knows how to grind?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, that might be why she applied to Harvey Mudd instead. It is right next to Scripps… But honestly, I think she felt like she would not need to “hang onto a tool” to get a chance to work on things at Mudd. Where she did have that impression of MIT…</p>
<p>“I am not sure whether I seem crazier on this thread”</p>
<p>I am saying we are suffering and need help getting out of this funk. Jym is refusing to be a part of this thread.</p>
<p>On a side note, I am still amazed by the person who shared the chemistry Nobel last year with an undergrad from University of Minnesota, Duluth, or the person who shared physics prize with an undergrad from Berkeley. With those undergrad schools, they had zero chance of making a difference in STEM right? :D</p>
<p>I support affirmative action, and I think that we as a society owe better to students whose K-12 educations have been sub-par. I’d like to see many of those students thriving at MIT, or at other top schools. I am doubtful that even the most motivated student can make up for 13 years of sub-par education in 4 years. It is my hope that some programs will be developed to address this.</p>
<p>I have no particular brief for the military academies, but they do try to address this issue with their post-high prep schools, so that students once in the academy can take many of the same courses. Even their political science, languages, or history majors have to take a lot of engineering.</p>
<p>Well, I for one will miss jym626’s humor. But since Pizzagirl is still around, I would like to ask about “robotic clones.” What do you understand by that phrase, PG or others? Do you know anyone who is a “robotic clone,” to the extent of having had a 15-minute conversation with the person?</p>
<p>(I don’t count, and this thread doesn’t count–I mean, in person.)</p>
<p>I will not be able to respond right away, but will try to come back later.</p>
<p>Sorry, apologies that I am still here. Promise, I am leaving soon!</p>
<p>Just wanted to comment on alh’s concern about the privacy of the high-school nuclear engineer, and lookingforward’s comment that his family doesn’t seem to mind.</p>
<p>If I were the parents, I might not mind having the post stay up. I might weigh the privacy cost vs. what the post illustrates: It is illuminating of a mode of thought that it is ok to come mighty close to identifying a specific applicant, and then chortle about his rejection.</p>
<p>“Bouncing back to MIT admissions, if MIT wants to encourage students with 1900 SAT I totals combined with relentless curiosity and unusual creativity to apply and not to be discouraged by the statistical data, great! I hope they admit students in that group! But why not just say so? Is it really necessary to say that often the 2400/2400 etc. student only knows how to grind?”</p>
<p>Sure. What’s wrong with saying it the way they did? If the shoe doesn’t fit for any given 2400-er, then no need to wear it. You seem often to be very defensive and protective towards poor-misunderstood-2400-ers, believing them to be in need of special protection or sympathy. The point would be the same if they had substituted 2300, you know. It’s a CONCEPTUAL point about how scores aren’t everything.</p>
<p>Re robotic clones - yes, there were quite a few I knew in college, including in my program (I was in an honors math program which had about 15 students per year). They were nondescript and unmemorable. I’m sure they thought I was flighty and unserious because I wore clothes that were fashionable, wore makeup, had a boyfriend and pursued other ECs / interests in addition to my academics. Oh well! What more is there to say? They all seemed to have encountered soap as best as I can recall. And they often weren’t as brilliant as they thought they were.</p>
<p>Since very little on this planet earth, it’s foolish to expect college admissions to be. There will always some who think they should be more numbers driven, some who think they should be less.</p>
<p>We can avoid castigated students who are numbers stars or “holistic” stars. Each group has its claims, and both have something to bring to every college community, though I understand both QM’s points and pg’s points.</p>
No, they would suffer both from the lack of background knowledge you mention and also insufficient reading comprehension skills. Reading comprehension depends on IQ, and people of mediocre (I will not avoid this useful word) intelligence will get little from textbooks that are written at the college level, much less the graduate school level. Charles Murray develops this argument in the book “Real Education”.</p>
<p>Comprehending history at a higher level would take some effort in the sense that reading background material would allow the more difficult material to be understood. The scope of difficulty is not unusually broad, in my opinion, although a reader reading with a better knowledge of the subtle differences in reference to historical context will get a different, more accurate view than someone without the same background. But it may only be a matter of a few days or weeks of extra work to get most of the gist. That is, one can at least comprehend the symbology to access the content. </p>
<p>Compare this kind of scope to topics at the STEM schools, or higher level music schools, where the material is impenetrable to most people on account of the conceptual structures which require years to comprehend and implement.</p>
<p>I remember the first time I picked up a book on nonlinear dynamics, because I needed to get some background on a calibration method for limb movement in three dimensions. The book started off with two paragraphs in normal english and then became a stream of symbol logic. Every now and then it would state that “obviously, this leads to the conclusion that”, and show symbols that I had never seen before. I showed this material to my wife and she told me to go away with that stuff. I showed it to my niece over Skype feed and she said something like: “It’s just saying you take this group of independent vectors that are bound at this origin, you magnify them by a factor of 2 or so and then rotate them counterclockwise 45 degrees relative to this reference frame, but you have to go this path and not the reverse path along the edge because the expression states the condition is anticommutative” and so forth. </p>
<p>So obvious. Then she drew me this diagram with this crayola magic marker from a set I gave her in her 5th grade which convinced me engineers really deserve the money they make.</p>
<p>Oldfort is correct. Those who continue to climb up the salary ladder are those who become project managers, enter the business side of the field. This takes excellent communication and social skills in addition to years of relevant engineering experience…but let’s not go there, OK?</p>
But honestly, I think she felt like she would not need to “hang onto a tool” to get a chance to work on things at Mudd. Where she did have that impression of MIT…</p>