Odds of getting into MIT differ based on gender

cognizance
Fri, 19 Apr 2019 07:24:41 +0000

@Sleepy_willow While I agree with most you said, I will point that there are not 500 USAMO kids. 500 total is combined total for UASJMO and USAMO. Moreover, not everyone in applying as they are not in senior year yet. On top of that, almost a half of students qualify for USAMO in senior year, after applications and results are over. Given this, it will be hard to find 100 USAMO kids in one application cycle.

Moreover, a lot of these top math kids are also publishing papers, competing at top levels in physics/computing/chemistry olympiads and winning, doing community service and volunteering, and making robots. There is a reason National Physics Team is often composed of USA(J)MO winners.

Apart from that, there are not that many IOI/ICho/IPhO. I mean, team is composed of 4-6 members out of whole damn country. You think they are not qualified to study at MIT? There are not that many academic stars as you think. A 4.0 GPA and 800 in SAT is nowhere comparable to USAMO/IOI/ or such achievement. For qualifying for USAMO, a student will have to learn 10 times more math than is taught at high school, and then some. They will have to spend 1000s of hours on top of everything else. It is not same as starting a club at school and having weekly meaningless meetings.

Regeneron STS results are not even out at application time so they don’t count. Siemens Competition produced 100 winners but it is not there any more, so it is out. Intel ISEF does not compare to Regeneron/Davidson/Siemens as its judging process is too awkward. A lot of splendid projects do not cross school level judging, as they are not judged by professionals but by clueless parents. Davidson has hardly 10-20 awards each year, not all of them are applying. So pool is too tiny.