<p>I think that society owes my kid, out of human decency, a little respect and not make him the subject of mocking. It would never be acceptable to make disparaging remarks about a URM, someone with a handicap, etc. However, it seems perfectly fine to belittle these gifted kids.</p>
<p>If we are talking specifically about MIT, it is not a truly “private” institution. They accept millions of dollars in federal funding, so they are essentially a “public” good. In light of this, they should accept the best and the brightest to advance society.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl did a nice job of explaining that its the sense of entitlement that is being chided, not the gifted kids… No one is owed anything, or deserves anything. Its that attitude that is being brought on the chopping block. There are plenty of places and ways for even the brightest of the bright to be challenged and intellectually stimulated. To imply that the kids in the 96th percentile are holding back the kids in the 99.9th percentile, and that the work is being dumbed down for them is, frankly, offensive.</p>
<p>Are there actually hard numbers on this somewhere? I suspect that MIT actually is the most common (though not necessarily majority) PhD institution of MIT faculty – the engineering programs vigorously inbreed.</p>
<p>And MIT is certainly the most common undergraduate origin of MIT grad students, for the same reason.</p>
<p>My comment was a lesson on politeness. There’s no need to be rude. And I never said MIT was the only place for gifted students. </p>
<p>In Oregon, gifted students are considered Special Needs students right along with those children who have 90 IQs. And Jym, many of them do have disabilities, learning and otherwise.</p>
<p>If I said that mentally disabled students and those who are severely autistic could do amazing things as long as they have the necessary support, no one would make a comment. And if I said that as a society we owe it to this population to support them so they can reach their goals, would you object? </p>
<p>It takes training, dedication and a desire to work with the above population. The same holds true for the gifted.</p>
<p>Bogibogi, my alma mater is a top 20 research university that also gets millions in federal funding. Does that obligate them to admit your kid? </p>
<p>And “best and the brightest” is not measured just by academic ability in isolation (measured by IQ, SAT, or winning all these too-many-to-count contests). Communication, collaboration, creativity and teamwork skills play into that too. Here’s a concept. Your kid at MIT is EQUAL to the other kids at MIT. He has some strengths, and he has some weaknesses, as we all do. The kid who is a bit less academic than your son but still MIT-worthy isn’t any less the best and the brightest. He has other strengths.</p>
<p>But there are places other than MIT that can stimulate these students, such that not getting into MIT isn’t some sort of national travesty. They are not being hung out to dry at CMU or UIUC or Harvey Mudd or wherever. Good grief. These analogies are really silly when there are quite a few excellent schools where these kids can use their talents.</p>
<p>This thread has become disturbing on so many levels. As the mother of a kid at MIT, and also a kid with learning disabilities, I’ve been immersed in opposite spectrums of education. Both gifted and LD kids have needs, in very different ways. But there’s so much anger directed towards kids who excel academically and worked extremely hard. We should be trying to find the best ways for ALL of our kids across the spectrum to reach their potential, and that usually requires different types of schools and education. One size doesn’t fit all. Let’s support, not degrade.</p>
<p>But you are conflating a benefit with a disability. Yes there are gifted kids with disabilities, but it is the disability that is protected, not the giftedness. Sure its wonderful if the truly gifted kids have additional resources available to them to let them blossom and maximize their skills, but this isn’t a guaranteed , protected class the way a disability is. </p>
<p>And again, it is not the gifted student that is being called into question. It is the attidude that some posters are expressing (dont think it was you) that these kids are owed the maximal resources or they are somehow being penalized.</p>
<p>I am all for the gifted having resources available to them to feed their gift. But at the post secondary level, it simply isnt a guarantee.</p>
<p>IDEA is a federal law mandating equitable education for those with disabilities.
Are you saying agentninetynine that Oregon qualifies gifted students for IDEA?</p>
<p>99, it’s the idea all math competition winners at a certain level should be auto admits for their own good and mankind’s. No one is qualifying the level of disability in the same way and saying there should be auto admits.</p>
<p>MIT decisions came out tonight, so I would like to show support for those whose children were declined and congrats for those accepted Just remember, admissions is not about accepting the best of the best, it’s about composing a class and your child will find a place to grow and thrive.</p>
<p>Though you mean this to be hyperbole, “gifted” kids probably have already been asked to do this for years. That is, if they are ready for algebra they’ll be forced to learn 1+1=2 for five years. Yes, I recognize that the situation is not as extreme when you are talking about the educational disparity between colleges. But there is still a difference.</p>
<p>What is irritating is that this same operating philosophy that the smartest kids will do ok regardless of how much they learn is apparently alive and well in higher education. It’s not just that their progress will be slowed down “only” a year or two (if you can even quantify it that way) by rejection from the school(s) of their choice, it’s that you are tacking that onto what already happened before. </p>
<p>At the very least, when you have been denied such learning opportunities throughout most of your life, you are more likely to be conscious of the differences in learning opportunities going forward (e.g., colleges). Tell people who grew up in the Depression to be more carefree about their finances. It’s the same principle. Yet you mock them repeatedly, and say they should be denied because they care too much about it, as if university system is supposed to be a country club where you have to feign indifference to show you are not a “striver.”</p>
<p>By the way, someone who needs to solve a 100-year-old math problem to get tenure probably needs to get more out of undergrad than someone who is just cares about maintaining a decent GPA to get a job unrelated to their major. No one can say how “much” a future academic would need to learn to achieve their goals; but it’s probably more than the person who thinks the point of college is to empty beer bongs (as someone upthread said) or whose classes are filler in between fraternity parties.</p>
<p>IMO, there is a difference betwen a public school which is government controlled and funded directly by taxpayers merely for existing and educating students, and an institution that accepts government research money to produce a product (such as a study result). Is Raytheon a private company or a public agency? What about Lockheed Martin? THe RAND corporation? I guarantee they rely heavily on government money. There are thousands of private companies that receive money from the government, including private think tanks, hospitals and labs that receive government funding for studies, not to mention private military and civil contractors. Just because it is called a “grant” as opposed to a “payment” doesn’t make it diffierent, at least not to me.</p>
<p>I personally prefer private fuding of research, because there often seems to be some nonsense funded by the government. But as I understand it, the hope is that the government will fund all sorts of institutions,including “private” instituitions in order to obtain a valuable product which can be utilitzed by the public without regards to a profit motive. </p>
<p>If it were up to me, the only requirements would be a fair bidding process by qualified companies (or universities) for a well specified product - be it a rocket engine or a study on termite obesity.</p>
<p>No, Emerald. The Oregon law mandating identification and education of gifted and disabled students falls under what the legislature deems as special needs students.</p>
<p>If a gifted child has a disability then that child is protected by IDEA.</p>
<p>First, if there are any kids who were not accepted at MIT accidentally reading this thread, tonight, I’m sure you will end up somewhere else that is great! If you were accepted, congratulations. Also, to any parents of those kids. </p>
<p>I have a gifted dyslexic daughter. This is actually rather common among true dyslexics. A lot of disabilities get lumped into the dyslexic category, just because it is the one people “know.” But, a true dyslexic, who has the letters come up off the page while reading and the letters reverse is commonly also gifted. Eventually many of them learn to read and write. Mine did, anyway, with considerable effort.</p>
<p>Still, being a dyslexic confers many great gifts that normal people do not have. she automatically three dimensionally models in her head. She understood math conceptually very early and easily and was very fast with math that took ages for others to learn.</p>
<p>All that said, there is not a school in the world that could have given her what she “needed” growing up. She had to figure a lot of it out for herself and I don’t care what the laws are, there is no one size fits all solution for a gifted kid or a dyslexic kid.</p>
<p>College is when you let that go. If you have a gifted kid or a dyslexic kid, you just let it go and they have to figure it out. They have to find the way to be at ease with these things, how to use their skills, how to talk about things and get what they need and want. Kids who go to colleges with LDs do not get the same accomodations they receive at the high school level, and gifted kids may finally find some intellectual equals among some of their professors, if their professors aren’t too far along and still care about their students enough to engage with them. (This is not always the case, not even at places like MIT)</p>
<p>Also, I have a gifted kid who does not have dyslexia. Life has been an absolute walk in the part for her. Easy as easy as easy. Anyone who wants to compare dyslexia to giftedness is just being obnoxious, imho.</p>
Just remember, admissions is not about accepting the best of the best, it’s about composing a class and your child will find a place to grow and thrive.</p>