<p>What I find particularly ironic is the two-pronged push going on for low SES kids and high EC kids. The two objectives are, to a very large extent, mutually exclusive. The kids who take private violin lessons for years and years, the kids with private math tutors for the AIME and Olympiad competitions, the kid who has a parent who just happens to run a university lab and voila! the kid is an intel finalist, even many sports kids with tennis lessons, performance camps, sports psychologists – most of these ECs require $$$ to achieve national rankings. So the result is that middle class kids who are power scorers and get superb grades but don’t have those national level achievements are getting rejected. I think it really stinks. And I think it’s just another permutation of the haves in this country passing their privledged positions on to their “learning disabled” or “test anxious” kids. Eventually, these elite schools who engage in this nonsense may suffer consequences when society begins to realize that many of their graduates really aren’t that special. As the mom of power scorers and grade hounds and yes nerds, I’m seriously questioning whether I want my kids striving to get into such schools.</p>
<p>Mammal: I understand your point in general, but AIME qualifiers and INTEL finalists tend to be extremely high scorers. You can decry that there is an <em>added</em> boost by having these activities, but there is no test anxiety in this group. Certainly these kids most often get 800 on the math or extremely close. Compared to the AMC/AIME tests, the math SAT is a joke.</p>
<p>And if your parent runs a university lab, due to genetics as well as their value system chances are you are going to be excellent at school.</p>
<p>BTW, there aren’t a lot of private math tutors that would be qualified to tutor for the AMC.</p>
<p>Collegealum is exactly right. Most exceptional high scorers, particularly in math, can run circles around typical math tutors, including those at most commercial test prep companies. </p>
<p>I have said on other threads, but it is pretty tough to “tutor” to a single sitting 800, and I know several kids who have done exactly this (with no tutoring or prep at all). </p>
<p>And these are not boring grind kids either, contrary to the efforts to paint them as such.</p>
<p>^^I’ll add that most of the people who score well at these olympiads tend to be people from public schools. Places like Exeter and Andover don’t do that well.</p>
<p>Assuming your well off enough that you don’t have to work in your spare time, I don’t think being a member of the upper class is really an advantage when it comes to these academic competitions.</p>
<p>Private math tutors for the AIME? You can get free advice from the Artofproblemsolving.com. Olympiad preparation? Students are selected from highly qualified applicants to attend a free Olympiad camp.<br>
Are high results on the AIME or at Olympiads tainted because the students got some preparation? Do violin virtuosi have unmerited fame because they had violin lessons? Should children who learned the 3Rs because they were taught how to have their accomplishments dismissed because they did not learn on their own? Does education happen only in school? Why so much contempt for students who achieve far beyond 800 on a 10th- grade math score?</p>
<p>Your points are well taken. I really don’t know a thing about the math and science competitions except that when we asked daughter’s ninth grade science teacher about the olympiad he was really taken aback and though we meant special olympics.</p>
<p>"“And which colleges are those that select primarily based on test scores and put little weight on EC’s or other intangibles? I’m sure there are a lot of parents of very high scoring students who would like to know which schools they are… since everyone seems so eager to complain about the difficulty of predicting admissions to the Ivy League.”</p>
<p>Most public universities are like this, particularly for in-state applicants. Being an excellent football player, however (or being very good another sport that’s important to the college), can count heavily.</p>
<p>A big reason for the emphasis on numbers is that the colleges are largely funded by taxpayers of their state, and want to have admissions criteria that seem fair to the taxpayers and legislators.</p>
<p>To tokenadult’s post #339: A thorough reading of each college website can usually yield more useful information that ad com reps. It is not too difficult to slant supplemental essays to the “flavor” of each particular school. Recent admits from local high school or surrounding area can also give insight into the criteria of each school.</p>
<p>To marite’s most recent post: Only those students with native ability and personal interest would spend time in these tutoring camps, so I agree that these self-selected students have already demonstrated interest and ability. The more intnese the preparation, the greater level of commitment. Violin lessons or all day at Juilliard pre-college? These are the elements that turn e.c.'s into the more substantial achievements epiphany wrote of. Both my children who had captained their team in high school were actively invited into mock trial and debate teams. A factor in ad. decisions? I guess wed’ll never know, but schools do want to win.</p>
<p>Re post #347: I think we could compile a list of colleges at which numbers are more important and a list of those at which numbers are less so.</p>
<p>For instance: Dartmouth more numbers driven; Brown less so, etc.</p>
<p>mammall:</p>
<p>9th grade teachers would not expect questions about the various Olympiads.<br>
My son was nominated to take part in the regional qualifying competition for Chemistry when he was in 9th grade. BUT he was in AP-Chem and had already done AP-Calculus C and AP-Physics C the previous year. It was very much to his surprise because chemistry was not really his thing.<br>
As far as preparation was concerned, his teacher merely sent him and two other students to the regional competition without any prep whatsoever, and not even a discussion of the format of the competition. Other schools take grooming their academic teams far more seriously. One school has a special class devoted to Academic Decathlon; our school had before classes half hour prep once a week and it was not mandatory. Some colleges have Putnam competition classes for credit. Others let the students prepare on their own without any guidance or credit.
Anyway, between being nominated for the regional competition and qualifying for the national team is a huge step. A mere 5 on the AP Chemistry test won’t cut it. Nor is a 5 on the AP tests of 800 on SATIIs anywhere comparable to scoring high on AIME, making USAMO, USABO, and any of the national competitions let alone getting a gold medal at the international competitions.</p>
<p>Mythmom:</p>
<p>My S had a mini reunion of his chums from his summer math camp. It was great to see them reminiscing nostalgically about spending all their time doing problem sets. Not everybody’s idea of a great summer, but to them it was bliss.
My hunch is that for students going into the social sciences, mock trial is a great EC. Several of S’s friends were captains of their school’s debate team or Mock Trial team.
Other friends who were captains of the school’s science team have ended up at MIT, Yale and Harvard. The one kid he knew who did not get into MIT was known not to pay enough attention to his classes. Only one of these was a val or sal.</p>
<p>Marite –</p>
<p>The science and math competitions depend a lot on the kid having the opportunity to accelerate far beyond the mainstream early. In your son’s case, it sounds as if by at least middle school he was engaged in a curriculum that was far more advanced than the typical honors track. My kids’ middle school offered no math beyond algebra I. My daughter went through all three years of middle school without missing a single problem on a math test in her “honors” math classes. That was the only way she found to challenge herself in that context. Science at this school was mostly worksheets and ecology projects involving posters. Thank goodness for the SAT. It was really the only challenge in middle school my kids encountered. And yes they got 800s all over the place and now a 36 on the ACT from daughter in ninth. But they are sadly unequipped to ever take part in math or science competitions. Their high school’s only academic competition is quizz bowl and no one gets an opportunity to do debate or mock trial until junior year. Your son is obviously a rare mind who should and no doubt will attend the college of his choosing. But not all kids with ability had an opportunity to complete calculus prior to high school. Yes, we were sent brochures from the talent search to do math courses online. And I guess if my kids were truly brilliant they would have jumped at the chance. But they didn’t. Instead they read a lot, played soccer (not too well) and built tents in the basement.</p>
<p>mammall:</p>
<p>He was advanced, yes, but totally on his own. At that stage, he had no enrichment. Even the preparation for the AP-Calc exam was mostly on his own, under his dad’s supervision. I’m not saying this to boast, but to correct the impression that those who have achieved beyond what you term “power scoring” have been groomed to a fare thee well by very affluent parents.
You’d be surprised how many kids there are out there just like my S or even more accomplished.<br>
</p>
<p>And that’s a great way to spend one’s childhood. But it is not a good reason to belittle the accomplishment of students who chose to spend their free time doing math problems for the fun of it. And it puts the decisions that adcoms must make in some perspective.</p>
<p>Actually, calculus has nothing to do with math contests…You can qualify for the AIME purely off of math curriculum, but beyond you need to know a lot of math tricks (unless you are Gauss and can do them from scratch.) Most often these tricks have their basis in probability or number theory (prime numbers, divisibility). Geometry is also a topic seen on there, but it is one of the more straightforward topics. If your kid gets one of those books from the artofproblemsolving.com for the AMC, then that might help. In the old days, they didn’t have these kind of things.</p>
<p>The international science olympiads are basically harder versions of the AP/SATII’s so your kids could prepare for one of these if they want. Pretty much everything you need to know would be in a first year college textbook (which is often the same as the book for AP chem + physics.) </p>
<p>Schools like MIT and Caltech know that not everyone has access to these contests, so it won’t hurt that much to not take them.</p>
<p>Marite, I do love hearing about your son. He just sounds completely amazing. Oddly, I feel better knowing about him. He sounds far beyond my own kids and that makes me happy. Isn’t that strange? I really never did think my kids are geniuses. Really, really smart but not geniuses. It’s just really fun to hear about one. And yes this does help me understand the position the adcoms find themselves in.</p>
<p>mammal,
My S went to a HS that didn’t have a math club. I doubt anyone ever did a project for Intel. Math teachers gave him books to study, until a friend’s father volunteered to take the boys to a college 50 minutes away for math classes at night. We never learned about advanced math camps.</p>
<p>The boys were able to form a math club, and once they began competitions, moved up to state levels. My S left HS after junior year, and his younger friend did the same the following year. Caltech & MIT recognized the interest even without outside advantages.</p>
<p>I hope this is helpful to you.</p>
<p>Collegealum:</p>
<p>You are right about the levels of AIME and the science Olympiads. I note, though, that the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament has a calculus section, though not all contestants tackle it.
Bookworm is right, too. Adcoms recognize that not students have access to research and to high level competitions. What they would like to see is some evidence that the high scores are supported by real interest in the subjects. A student who has high scores (though not necessarily perfect scores) and no outside achievement can still show passion and commitment.</p>
<p>But one of the lessons you can learn on CC is that not all kids allow themselves to be limited by the limitations at their schools. There are lots of things a kid can do to reach beyond what’s there in the classroom, and to connect with other kids and other people elsewhere with similar interests, to learn from them, and to get them to push him or her. It doesn’t have to be all-consuming, but it’s no excuse to say “no one here taught me anything.”</p>
<p>mammall:</p>
<p>Your D’s 36 on the ACT is 9th grade is wonderful and is sure to be noted by Adcoms. Hold on to that thought.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is that many absolutely wonderful schools are undervalued solely on account of their location, usually somewhere a bit isolated in the Midwest. If one were to relocate them on either coast, their ranking in terms of prestige and popularity would shoot up. Finally, some schools are prestigious because they excel across the board. But for a student intending to major in biology or physics, the depth and breadth of , say, Harvard’s offerings in East Asian studies or Chicago’s strength in South Asian studies may be really besides the point. </p>
<p>So I’d concentrate a lot more on fit than on prestige. S1 did not apply to HYPS but got into top LACs with stats lower than your kids’.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s one of the best things that young people still in high school can learn from CC. There is a bigger world outside of high school, and some people plunge into that world while they are still teens.</p>