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<p>So by your logic corporations are not truly “private” either, since they receive millions of dollars in government handouts and enjoy the support of public infrastructure. Should we treat them as a public good too, and expect a say in how they operate and serve our needs?</p>
<p>CAlum, as I understand it, how “gifted” is defined and what is made available in k-12, is by state. In MA, eg, huge advocacy growing for these kids, while funds were allocated to No Child Left Behind.</p>
<p>In partial response (as I think we all know here,) many hs open up DE opps.</p>
<p>FWIW, the gifted LD students are sometimes referred to as “twice exceptional” students. I was going to write more, but its probably redundant.</p>
<p>Most gifted children are auto-didacts. Put them in a room by themselves and they will still manage to excel, MIT or no MIT.</p>
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Well this probably sounds silly, but IMHO it takes training, dedication and a desire to work with ANY of the various populations of students, at every level. I welcome you to spend a period in front of one of my current classes to evaluate that idea for yourself.</p>
<p>I too find this thread quite disturbing and can only take many of the comments made by pizzagirl as quite offensive. That said, I feel like there are many arguments being made in parallel, so I will chime in with what I believe to be true.</p>
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<li><p>I have not read anyone write in this forum that they have the right to send their gifted kid to MIT… only that it would be nice for gifted children to learn at a place with others who share common interests and abilities. Again, I do not believe anyone holds this “right to be admitted into MIT” belief as Pizzagirl suggests.</p></li>
<li><p>That said, I do believe that the very top performing HS students often do have the opportunity to study with like minded students. If your child excels at the very highest levels - handful of kids who qualify for the “olympiads” for example - I do believe that his/her chances of being admitted into one of the elite schools known for whatever interests them are quite high. A quick look at the bios of college bound kids who qualify for USAPhO, IMO, IOI, and NACLO and the other olympiads makes it abundantly clear that the vast majority of these kids are going to the very elite schools. For math and science for instance, I see that MIT, Harvard and Princeton are very common destinations. For these kids performing at the very highest level, I do believe that they would indeed suffer at even a very good school. These kids would not be challenged at the typical state schools and most likely would not be challenged by any of the courses offered there. In fact, I would say that there is a fairly good chance that these kids would know more math, physics, computer logic, linguistics than many\most of the professors whose job it is to teach them along with the 200 others in the auditorium. </p></li>
<li><p>For the kids who fall outside the top handful but might be top few hundred in math or science - I believe USAMO qualifiers were mentioned in a prior post, which represent the top 250 kids who compete in a series of very difficult math competitions - I suspect the chances of being admitted to the very elite schools are far greater than the general pool of applicants (i.e., much greater than the 5-10%). If I had to guess, I suspect that >50% of the kids who qualify for the USAMO would be admitted into the very elite school recognized for math (MIT, Harvard, Princeton). The fact that is is somewhat surprising that a USAMO qualifier is rejected at a particular school leads me to believe that it is more likely than not for such students to be admitted. To put this in persepctive, if the distribution of USAMO qualifiers were even for all the states in the union, these kids would represent the top 5 “mathlete” for any given state (i.e., very difficult to be a USAMO qualifier).</p></li>
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<p>I think the debate is somewhat muddled by the fact that some here on this board are referring to very smart kids (perhaps the smartest kid in your H.S.), while others are referring to the very, very best (entirely different set of students imo). At the sake of sounding redundant, qualifying for the USAMO places you as one of the very best - top handful - in your respective state.</p>
<p>comeonpeeps, in what way are any of Pizzagirl’s comments offensive? You must have missed the many posts on “auto-admits,” which as far as I can tell are the same as “the right to be admitted.”</p>
<p>It’s nice for you to weigh in on USAMO, MIT, and so forth, but the whole point of this thread was never to debate the tiny variances among absurdly gifted students at one niche university. I wouldn’t expect you to have read all 132 pages of this interminable discussion, but by page 13 or so it was taken over by a small group who seem to stomping their feet over the tragic consequences of their “very special snowflakes” having to settle for Berkeley or CMU or Illinois because they were denied admission to MIT in favor of kids who didn’t “deserve” to get in. And these people know more than the admissions people at MIT, just FYI.</p>
<p>This discussion will continue to go round and round. Many kids have zero interest in math and science contests at that level. The ones that do probably have a natural affinity for it or practice, teach themselves, are tutored or coached,etc. It all works out in the end. Kids hopefully will figure out their strenghts in college-research,academia, consulting, teaching, business, engineering,science,etc.</p>
<p>Yes, you missed the history here. Not the “right,” but that MIT should be expected to admit the most brilliant STEMs out there. Measures have been suggested. The concept of whether holistic- and MIT’s right to choose the kids it feels will fit and thrive, meet various institutional needs…oh, wait, I’m repeating.</p>
<p>With apologies for the late response to jym’s question in #1907 and #1912, about my native language: It occurred to me after I first responded that my “scientific blackboard English” might be disconcerting to read. “Scientific blackboard English” is a condensed version of normal English, suitable for actually writing on the blackboard in the midst of a lecture. The condensation often involves the omission of pronouns, most forms of the verb “to be,” and virtually all articles (the/an/a). So it’s not that my native language lacks those forms! Probably I have been more likely to write in “scientific blackboard English” shortly after lectures.</p>
<p>(When I started to read student theses, I realized that “blackboard English” was not helping the foreign students to acquire a command of written English–particularly with regard to the/an/a, so I started to distribute lecture notes with complete English sentence interspersed among the equations.)</p>
<p>I will try to keep my future posts in standard English. Sorry for the digression–I just wanted to acknowledge this possible issue.</p>
<p>I wonder if this thread might be split into two, or possibly three? (Is that ok to ask?) I think that with admissions coming out or due soon, there may be many people who would like to post directly on the topic indicated by the title, “How Did HE Get In?” sally305 has been indicating that wish. </p>
<p>This question has not occurred to me, with regard to any local students I know. My questions have been more along the line “How Did He <em>Not</em> Get In?” I know the standard answers, which are easy to find on this thread.</p>
<p>So perhaps another thread might be devoted to the topic of where a “top” student might find a comparable education to that on offer at HYPSM+C+others in that league, if the student is not accepted to schools in that group.</p>
<p>QM, Write in the way that feels best for you. We’ll follow along.
I think what you’re now saying is what has been an issue for many of us. The whole MIT focus has gotten far afield of the original intent of the thread.</p>
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<p>This notion is similar to ones held by many activist educators and politicians I remembered in the '80s/90’s as justification to eliminate publicly supported gifted programs/magnet schools, encourage LCD teaching/pacing in most US public K-12 schools, and even be dismissive parental complaints about violently disruptive kids turning classrooms/schools into chaotic battlefields…sometimes with real knives/guns. </p>
<p>On the last point, this seems to still be the case as I assisted a client in finding legal assistance to help his granddaughter’s parents fight their suburban Midwest local schoolboard’s efforts to bring her violent stalker back into the general student population even after he was given a felony conviction and prohibited from coming back to the school because of the danger he posed. </p>
<p>That idiotic schoolboard was still at it after that conviction was upheld by the higher court.</p>
<p>Easy. I don’t like USNews, but they sure do break down a nice list of top engineering schools and I’m sure anyone can find that list or dig through the web to find what the sub-groups of STEM feel are the best programs. I believe the original question was directed to try to understand what you (and others close to STEM) felt were acceptable alternatives. What I called #11-49. Expanding those mentioned here by another poster or two, Stanford, CMU, VT, UIUC, UCB, GT, and so on. Schools with the facilities, levels of teaching, peer intelligence/accomplishment, research opps, etc. Not where a kid is held back by peers or lowered teaching levels or whatever. Glass half full. ALternatives for the very bright kid.</p>
<p>Sally, in what ways? Too numerous to list, but I believe that others have already adequately covered this with specific examples they find either disturbing\mocking\belittling… no need to beat a dead horse here.</p>
<p>Also, I think you might be confused with positions being taken by the 2 opposing sides here. Much like a state school stating “if you’re GPA exceeds X, we will most likely admit you” or Harvard saying “if you become a Putnam fellow, we will most likely admit you and pay for all your tuition”, I believe that there are folks here - right or wrong - who are suggesting that kids who qualify for the USAMO deserve to be admitted. They are stating their opinion that they be given this opportunity based on some predictive measure of college success (much like GPA)… again, no one I’ve read is claiming that these kids are born with some inalienable right to attend as you and Pizzagirl suggest.</p>
<p>As for the whole point of the thread, there are numerous points being made here by many, so I find it difficult to take at face value that there exists some sort of singularity with respect to “the point” of a 132+ page thread.</p>
<p>I had started some thoughts about selecting schools that were appropriate for a “super-top” student who did not get into his/her top choices of universities. If the thread splits, I will continue with that, or via PM’s. The most important point is one that I have already mentioned: The identification of the alternatives really needs to be done on a field-by-field (or major-by-major) basis, not based on an overall quality ranking of the institution–nor even on rankings in “engineering.” I am not certain, but I would guess that the National Research Council ratings of any particular university show variations from sub-discipline to sub-discipline, within engineering. They certainly show variations in science fields.</p>
<p>For that matter, when I had an MIT interview ages ago (with a very gracious interviewer), after we had talked for a while, he suggested that I was more interested in pure science than in engineering (true), and then suggested that Harvard was a better school for pure science. This news had not reached my part of the country yet!</p>
<p>With regard to finding talented faculty other places: One of my colleagues remarked that when he applied for a faculty position, there were only 7 openings in the country in his field (one of five or six branches of our department). I heard from a colleague in Psychology a few years ago that his daughter got one of 3 faculty positions that were open in her sub-field of psychology, in the U.S. + Canada.</p>
<p>So because of limits on hiring, good people can be found in many places. Nevertheless, collectively, the faculty at my university would not be interchangeable with the faculty at Harvard, Caltech, Berkely, or Stanford. (Someone would notice the difference–lack of Nobel Laureates being one indicator.)</p>
<p>Seriously, peeps, you miss the whole thing about holistic and wanting more than stats achievement, and why. And we’ve been through the “predictive” bit many times over many threads- one side saying stats predict “college success” and another saying it predicts “college gpa.” And some others saying it all predicts zip if the kid can’t use that talent outside the classroom structure. Etc.</p>
<p>But, since you bring it up. I do feel the brightest kids should be able to pursue their brightness in the right environment- I do cringe each time some poster on some thread suggests all colleges are essentially alike or that some super bright kids (this goes well beyond STEM) should just head off to cc or State. And more.</p>
<p>But, the point here has been whether there are only one or two that can serve certain kids, whether those few schools should recognize their responsibility to those few kids and place it above the institution’s self-interests as an entity. Serve more than its own interests, maybe serve society. (“Potentially” serve society, since we’re dealing with 17 year olds, not grad students with some record.) Whether it’s a small number of special kids we’re talking about, how easy it would be to slide them in- or whether something “more” is expected, even needed, from those kids.</p>
<p>Quant, I agree subfields have to be looked at. But, my sense on CC is that not many (maybe I mean not enough) take this examination to a deeper level. Sometimes (and I see this in apps,) because the kid is not absolutely certain (how could he be?) what subset of STEM he will ultimately chose. We get kids who think they want engineering or bio or biochem or biochemical engineering. I said before, kids who want all sorts of immensely challenging fields before they have dipped their toes in. They can’t know for sure til they get into it.</p>
<p>QM, You really do seem to still be focused on whatever MIT dreams you seem to have had . It just keeps coming up. My husband went to CMU back in the 70’s , when it was well respected but not “hot” like it seems to be more recently. He also had acceptances to Yale and Brown but did not want to go that far away. He’s been over where he should have/could have gone since he made his decision of where to go to college. I really hope that kids getting results in the coming days can do the same.</p>
<p>sevmom - If you husband just had access to CC back in those days to make the right choice! Hopefully he chose engineering at CMU?</p>