So yes? Super smart kids are being dragged down by less deserving or qualified classmates.
I donât want to get into parsing the âdragged downâ language (it sounds charged), but most classes are taught to the middle.
If the classroom is less academically homogenous than it could have been, most studentsâ individual academic needs will be less efficiently met.
Thatâs the whole premise of differentiated instruction and ability grouping, and not all that controversial.
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True, because thatâs not what those institutions are optimizing/prioritizing forâŠand most schools are transparent about that if one reads their mission statements and listen to what they say. The upward grade trend at many of these schools also suggests they arenât optimizing for classroom rigorâŠI expect thatâs for a number of reasons.
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I get why you donât want to use charged language, but the effect and the meaning are the same.
If the middle is less than what you perceive the top students find optimal or challenging, it is because the other students in the class are creating a wider range of ability within that grouping.
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Well⊠yes.
For those who tout international university systems, I wonder how many people have attended college within those systems? Disregarding the late bloomer/bad testing day issue (both of which are significant), it is a completely different vibe than the one sought by the majority of families who post on these boards. For all intents and purposes, the vast majority of those schools are commuter colleges, even the very highly regarded ones. Students might live near the university or they may live 10 or 20 (or more) minutes away. They may have other university students who live near them, but not necessarily. There arenât the same types of clubs and extracurricular activities designed for the university community. So yes, students may continue to play in a community orchestra or in a local volleyball league, but theyâre interacting with the society at large, not a bunch of people near their own age who are figuring out how to adult.
For some people, they are fine with that. But for all the people who are enamored of international collegesâ admission systems, they donât seem to be all that enamored of commuter colleges in the U.S., even ones filled with high-performing students like the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY.
I strongly suspect that this is the type of âfull rideâ that some families and articles mention when they talk about a kid getting a full ride to Harvard or similar. It means that theyâre attending a school that meets need and the family has an EFC of $0 or thereabouts. Itâs a reflection of the familyâs need and not of the studentâs merit.
Iâm not entirely opposed to ability grouping and differentiated instruction. But super bright kid goes to State Flaship. The kid wonât be taking Math 101. Theyâll be taking the appropriate level of math (or science, or English, etc). Additionally, super bright kid has probably qualified for the honors college, so the cohort surrounding super bright kid is also at a higher level. Thus, this argument isnât particularly compelling for me when weâre talking about university campuses.
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Iâm just struggling to believe that MIT has that wide of a range. Do you have data outcomes to back that up?
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And thatâs why we have grades. Is it really a big deal that in someoneâs super genius math class there existed a few kids who got a C?
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Itâs all relative, of course, and the floor at MIT is arguably one of the highest anywhere, but so is the ceiling, and there are plenty of personal stories on MIT Admissions blogs of kids failing intro classes while others in their cohort take graduate courses and graduate their junior year.
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Yes. But the homework will still be aimed at the middle of the class.
Acceleration makes a deeper learning not.
A blog is completely anecdotal. Not that thereâs no value in relaying personal experiences, but it needs to be taken at its limits. Itâs a small sample and itâs based on perception.
Iâm not sure where this thread is goingâŠare you saying the college admissions process (that we are focused on in this thread) should be designed for the outlier students (the ones who can graduate in 2 or 3 years from MIT)? Is that where we are?
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In my opinion, the selection process at the most academically elite institutions should be designed to produce the most academically elite class.
But Iâm just a guy with an opinion. 
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In the school with which I am most familiar, two MIT acceptances in recent years were kids who were average for the class in GPA and/or SAT, while many who were near the top in both were rejected.
Others may have already heard this story, so I apologize in advance. But when I went to college, computer science was one of the majors I was considering. So I took Intro to Computer Science for Majors, Honors (because thatâs what one does if oneâs in the honors college, duhâŠ).
There were people in that class who were much more advanced and others who had never done much beyond using regular software ( 
). We had homework and quizzes and such and I was at every.single.office hour. More than half the class dropped and only 2 females remained in the class the whole time. I worked my butt off and was never so happy to earn a âCâ (and actually received a âBââŠas Iâm sure they knew that it was my last CS class and I would not be continuing on). So super bright kids still got the work they neededâŠtheir peer group just got smaller (and Iâm sure the peer group continued to get smaller as the classes advanced). The work wasnât watered down for the kids bringing down the classâs intellectual average.
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I teach at a fairly good public school. In my honors level class, there is a wide range of ability mostly because itâs a binary choice - regular or honors.
I have students that work exactly to the rubric. They make solid points and back it up with text evidence. Their writing more or less follows the rules of English grammar and conventions (hello grammerly!)
Then I have students who go so far beyond the requirements of the assignment. They are insightful, have a compelling writerâs voice, and genuinely engage with the literature. They do not care that they got an A and the kid who followed the âto the middleâ criteria also got an A.
For these really gifted kids, it becomes more about their own intellectual curiosity and drive. Most of them do not need external validation because they are self-driven.
I have a hard time believing kids who got into the very select group that make it to MIT will only learn to the extent that the teacher sets an assignment.
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Do you have any guess as to a reason why this happened?
Ahhh, elitism. If MITâs admissions process doesnât meet your needs, then I donât know what else to say. Many of these college grads from whatever school will go on to work in predominantly un-meritocratic companies where they will be competing for jobs (with opaque hiring processes) and promotions (with opaque processes).
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The presence of opacity elsewhere, like the presence of racism, doesnât excuse it also occuring in college admissions.
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I can see the stats but not any identifying characteristics of the actual people. But I donât believe it was about athletics or legacy.