Or they don’t realize how competitive of a student they are, or they don’t fit their own mental stereotype of the “sort of person who applies to MIT,” so they didn’t think it would be worth it to apply. My understanding is that these are some of the factors that contribute to fewer girls applying.
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Agree, but I rank MIT and Harvard 1 and 2.
My acronym would probably be HSMPY.
at least we agree on the big 5!
MHSPY
I’m baffled by how many don’t know the “M” stands for Michigan. 
Our son had the stats for MIT, but it was not going to happen given the competition from his boarding school his senior year, so he was advised not to waste an application. Instead, his CC steered him toward other “prestigious” engineering programs that he was admitted to, but he chose a service academy.
TLDR: The service academies are an entirely different animal that cannot be compared to civilian colleges. Military “prestige” is not based on brains or academic acumen.
They do recruit, but all must pass the (relatively low) academic bar, athletes included. USM/NA both have prep schools (USM/NAPS) for candidates the academies are interested in but who need more academic preparation (often prior enlisted as well as athletes). Those who successfully complete the prep year join the next year’s incoming academy class and are held to the same standards as direct appointees. 200-300 of every incoming class will separate before commissioning for various reasons, academic deficiency among them but certainly not confined to athletes.
As I have posted on this board dozens of times, the military academies are an entirely different animal and do not value academics the way civilian colleges do, so they cannot be compared on that basis:
They are war colleges whose mission is to produce capable officers for each branch of our armed services. It takes a certain kind of kid to go this route, and those kids don’t always look like the applicants to the usual civilian suspects. The SAs value a combination of brains, brawn, and leadership somewhat equally–as they must. Our son’s department head at West Point explained that the academy selects only about 1/3rd of any incoming class for academic prowess; the other 2/3rds are chosen for other equally shiny traits. All are academically capable, all pass the academic bar, but only that third is what you might label “scholarly.” The corps needs a balance of all of them in a way civilian colleges do not as they have vastly different missions. This is also why the academies do not shine as brightly, by average GPA and test scores, as the civilian colleges many consider their peers. So, it should come as no surprise that the racking and stacking of the academy admissions process does not align well with the civilian colleges these applicants may also be applying to, and there should be no expectation that what civilian colleges value aligns with what the U.S. military needs. So let academic comparisons go. That’s not the way to think about this process.
The “prestige” conferred by the service academies is more a function of what’s required to finally obtain that commission, as @cquin85 said, “how hard it is to get out of those places.” Perhaps what I posted on the SA forum a few days after our son commissioned better illustrates what an academy parent might find boast worthy:
We watched him graduate and commission on Saturday (my mom and I hooked on his new shoulder boards), the end of a long, hard 47-months. I’m no happier with the military than I was four years ago, and I still think he had better college options, but I’m coming to terms with the Army. He’s gotten much of value from his time at the academy. The education he received there transcends his degree. He’s lived a regimented, inspected, drilled, sober, uniformed life 24 x 7 for four years, never able to rest, never able to juggle every academic, physical, and military obligation perfectly, never quite able to measure up to the models of leadership in bronze and stone on those plains and in those halls. He chose a very tough way to get through college. But he has gotten through it with deep friendships and an education rich for its broadness and emphasis on character, integrity, duty, honor, and country. He has consumed all of it with determination, humility, and honors. He has reached his goal and, for that, we are proud of him.
I have nothing more to add to any discussion of “prestige.” I got enough of that on the prep forum to last me a lifetime. Carry on.
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Nay – PHYSM
It sounds cooler – fizz’m
But the real acronym fun begins if we consider Columbia, Penn, Caltech, and Chicago to comprise a group:
CCCP
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All these schools are wonderful of course but I feel MIT and Caltech are not quite the same as the others (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Duke, etc.) since nearly all of their undergrads have STEM as their ‘primary’ major. https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/majors-count
To me, STEM is supremely important to our society, but an “…. institute of technology” is quite specialized, as is Julliard, Curtis, etc. They stand apart.
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If we’re talking about a second tier, I’d actually put Cornell in place of Caltech. For me, Caltech is too narrowly focused.
Is this what you mean by “CCCP”?
“CССР (in the Latin alphabet: SSSR) is the abbreviation of the Russian-language cognate of USSR, as written in Cyrillic letters. The soviets used this abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning”
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Let’s move on from “Sheldon Cooper’s Fun with Acronyms” unless someone wants to start a playtime thread in the cafe
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You’re right; they don’t admit people based on money, athletic ability, fame or whether an applicant’s parent’s attended. The other schools you listed do.
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Perhaps its time to again share my favorite college ranking system. Be sure to keep refreshing it.
College Ranking Service, A Peerless Evaluation of Colleges, rankyourcollege.com College Ranking Service, A Peerless Evaluation of Colleges, rankyourcollege.com
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I like it!
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I don’t happen to agree. They are both terrific colleges, but are very unique in terms of the types of students that will thrive there.
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You’re right! They are very unique in that all of the “types” of students who have been admitted have demonstrated their ability to thrive there based on demonstrated academic abilities at the highest levels. Nobody got a pass, as far as I’m aware, because of something else.
That’s what makes the schools unique: the quality and depth of their pool of talent. Nobody else has it.
Again - you show me a kid from Duke, and he could anybody. You show me a kid from MIT or Cal Tech, and there are basic assumptions I can make about their intellectual abilities and I know I’ll be correct.
If that’s not cause for prestige, then I don’t know what is.
Reminder that this isn’t the Parent Forum or Cafe and debate is not permitted. If you’ve already made your point once, it’s time to move on. TIA.
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Or they don’t feel MIT is a fit for them! My daughter has stats that would have made her a potential admit for MIT (though who the heck knows if that would’ve happened, such a crapshoot). But no matter how much I tried, she refused to even shoot her shot there. She wanted a bigger school and a school with a horse riding program. MIT is smaller than she wanted and not even a club for riding.
There are lots of reasons a student might choose [insert school] over MIT.
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Fit is not prestige. Different point.
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I think Choate is more prestigious than PE. Let’s discuss!
Seriously, it’s the first barding school I’d ever heard of. It’s mentioned in a children’s book about JFK (the “All About ______” series).
So at about the age of 8, this little Cuban boy knew of Choate, though I lived a world away from it (literally and figuratively). Now that’s prestige!
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STEM is not prestige either.
MIT’s reunions were last week. Trust me, eveyone’s not a genius. Many are regular smart folks doing regular smart folk things not so different than everybody else. It’s not that deep.
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