NYTimes: Intel Competition - Where Science Rules

tachobg
Sat, 10 Mar 2007 10:34:44 +0000

There are a lot of bright people in stuy, but only some of them are willing to do research. It’s really a huge commitment when you consider that the average stuy student is very overworked and doesn’t get much sleep. I almost didn’t do a research project for that reason even though I thought it would be a cool experience. So I signed up for the class that requires you to enter Intel in order to pass, because I wanted to make it a priority for myself and somehow fit it into the vast amounts of other work that I had.

Well, fast forward about a year – I made Intel Semifinalist and got into MIT.

Yet there are students much brighter than me that didn’t enter Intel. It’s true that initiative is very important and that some people are not into research. But I wonder if the pressure in Stuy to get the highest average possible along with the feeling of “There’s no way I could make semifinalist” makes the commitment of Intel research unattractive to many talented students.

Compare this situation to an extremely bright and motivated student who is not challenged in their average high school and is hungry to go and do research.

I don’t doubt that if the best math/science students were required to do research (even starting as late as second term junior year, which is when most people in stuy start) stuy could double or triple its semifinalists and even have a number of finalists. I’m not advocating this per se, but I think some schools do that.

I see a lot of talent go to waste just over concerns regarding the commitment to research and the potential drop in gpa. I get the feeling that a lot of kids in these types of schools almost came up with a new method of machine vision, or almost found some new method of a particular cancer treatment, etc, but thought the cost in doing research outweighed the benefit.