<p>Clarabelle was on Howdy Doody. Clarabelle was played by Bob Keeshan, who later was Captain Kangaroo. (I cheated to find that out.)</p>
<p>Clarabelle was on Howdy Doody as Buffalo Bob’s sidekick. But do you remember who was Howdy Doody?</p>
<p>Fractured Fairy Tales - my dad and I always watched together. Lancelot Link was a college favorite.<br>
But the all-time best-ever never miss it was <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(animated_series)[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(animated_series)</a>. </p>
<p>Wasn’t Clarabelle a Disney cow?</p>
<p>To the OP: MIT, like all engineering schools, needs students who are willing to and capable of doing the very difficult work. And students who won’t be devasted by failure. Those qualities have to come across in the application.</p>
<p>Did I hear someone say “Romper Room?” And I agree that Sherman and Mr. Peabody were the best. Fratcured Fairytales. Anyone remember the sanitation guy who always came along at the end sweeping up?</p>
<p>Now, truly, what’s not to like about Howdy Doody :p? I am here to say that Princess SummerFallWinterSpring was my personal hero. And Phineas T. Bluster kind of intimidated me. I never quite understood how it was that I never go to be in the Peanut Gallery.</p>
<p>midmo, thanks for clarifying the Clarabelle/Captain Kangaroo relationship. I have a very bad memory.</p>
<p>I loved Romper Room! The “do-bees” and the “don’t bees.”</p>
<p>I can’t say what’s good or bad about Howdy Doodie, because though I think I am a little older than m&sdad, I was still too young for HD. In fact, I refuse to be part of the Baby Boom generation, because inevitably they get defined as HD watchers. I did love Romper Room!</p>
<p>I do remember Howdy Doody. And Romper Room. And the Mickey Mouse Club with Annette! and CUBBY! Half of me is about 25.</p>
<p>Anyway . . . </p>
<p>I think one of the earliest posters really got it right. At schools like MIT, Cal Tech, and Stanford, even someone who’s “perfect” isn’t a shoe-in (except maybe for someone who’s not only perfect but also female and an underrepresented minority). However, someone who is perfect has a better chance at admission than someone who is noticeably imperfect. Luckily, there really aren’t that many perfect kids out there, so a whole bunch of imperfect kids get admitted, but they are chosen from a pretty broad pool of imperfect kids. It’s extremely hard, ex ante, to say either “This kid has no chance” or “This kid has a great chance,” and the things that make the difference don’t show up in summaries – the kinds of passion that the essays and recommendations communicate. </p>
<p>I take admitted-student narratives, like molliebatmit’s or Anthony’s, with a grain of salt. Not that I think they are lying at all – of course not – but because I think that there are rejected students out there who could say exactly the same things, who in fact might be indistinguishable from students who got admitted. Maybe there was a smidgen of difference in the actual applications, or maybe it was just a question of luck (or geography, or diversity, or whatever). I don’t think there is any fail-safe formula for success.</p>
<p>So, all you can do is to support your son, encourage him to do the best application he can, one that really communicates the best part of who he is, and make certain that he has other options that will work for him (which seems to be the case), and that he doesn’t have too much of his ego invested in any one or two applications.</p>
<p>“Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function”…</p>
<p>Ring any bells with anybody?</p>
<p>“However, someone who is perfect has a better chance at admission than someone who is noticeably imperfect”</p>
<p>2400 SAT scores have no meaning beyond test taking ability and vague predictors of first year grades - and one must always accept the official position</p>
<p>I’m the middle child, so sometimes I can’t remember what I watched for my own pleasure or what was on in the background being watched by my brothers. But I remember School House Rock & actually bought the DVD for my son. He’s been called the “Grammar God” at school & sings in the school chorale, so I thought he’d get a kick out of it. It’s quite clever.</p>
<p>I remember my older brother watching Combat & afterwards I would watch McHale’s Navy. Lost In Space was huge, too. (“Oh Will!!”) We always felt like outcasts because Laugh-In was banned at our house because it was considered vulgar by my parents’ standards. That’s all the kids at school talked about the next day.</p>
<p>Anyone else remember “Winky Dink,” and the bizarre notion of drawing on a sheet of plastic stuck on your television TV screen? Even as a kid I thought it was weird, and wondered how many American televisions were smeared with crayons by children who didn’t quite get the idea.</p>
<p>My kids are kind of stunned that I remember getting our family’s first color television when I was about 11. I’ve been a Boy Scout leader for the last seven years. One of the great advantages of this is that I get to see modern boys acting pretty much just like we did in the Pleistocene, once you pry them away from their electronic toys. It’s really kind of cool watching a group of so-sophisticated 13-year-olds spend an afternoon poking sticks into a fire.</p>
<p>11? My family didn’t get a color TV until after I left for college (1976)! I’m still surprised when I see reruns or pictures of old shows, and realize they were in color.</p>
<p>(when we watched Wizard of Oz, my folks would explain to us when Dorothy comes out of the house that everything is supposed to be in color at that point…)</p>
<p>One of the things I don’t see emphasized in this thread is that the tough, high reach Tech schools have very strenuous minimum requirements. So you also have to ask whether your child would fit in at a place where the reward for working really hard in a class might be a B-.</p>
<p>I can tell you that the reason that Caltech looks for high scores is because they want to make sure that students can hack the Core courses which are difficult indeed. When they admit someone with lower scores it’s usually because there’s OTHER evidence of high academic achievement in math/science (such as being on the US math team). Ben G can speak to this, but I think it’s unlikely that Caltech would accept someone with say, a Math II of 700 and an SAT Math of 680 just because he’s an award-winning novelist and champion swimmer.</p>
<p>At most non-Tech elite schools, a kid who finds himself overwhelmed by physics or engineering can switch to another major which is more grade-inflated and do ok. At Caltech, you can’t escape calc, advanced physics, chem and bio by switching to English lit or business because these majors still require those courses. I knew students with nearly perfect test scores who failed multiple subjects. At these schools there is always the risk that you do poorly and want to transfer out but don’t have the grades to go to another good school.</p>
<p>Having said that, there are probably many students every year who would be perfectly happy at MIT/Caltech who just can’t be admitted for lack of places.</p>
<p>Your kid should see whether he fits and take the chance and apply.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have to disagree with this statement. I think there can be just as much grade inflation at tech schools and in tech courses as in any school or major. Sometimes the curve in math & engineering courses is tremendous, with a 50% earning a B, for example. I think it’s a matter of aptitude. Some humanities courses would completely baffle many science/math focused kids, just as high level math would overwhelm many humanities types.</p>
<p>
RickT, I’m beginning to wonder if we were separated at birth ;)? I absolutely remember. I also remember that my family would NOT spring for the magic plastic sheet, so I tried it with whatever version of plastic wrap was available at the time. It did not work :(.</p>
<p>Winky Dink, and you
Winky Dink, and me
Always have a lot of fun together
Winky Dink, and You
Winky Dink, and me
We’ll be pals in fair or stormy weather.</p>
<p>All the kids who heard
Winky’s magic words
Make a wish and then they all shout Winko</p>
<p>What a big surprise
Right before their eyes
Wishes do come true from saying Winko</p>
<p>Presto, Chango that’s a thing of the past
Winko, Winko works twice as fast</p>
<p>Winky Dink, and you
Winky Dink, and me
Always have a lot of fun together
Winky Dink, and You
Winky Dink, and me
We’ll be pals in fair or stormy weather </p>
<p>Doesn’t everyone in our age range remember a kid or two who drew on the TV without the “hi-tech” magic Winky Dink screen?</p>
<p>garland: Our family’s first color TV was won in the church raffle. I think around 1976 as well. I’ve had that same experience, seeing old TV shows & being surprised to see them in color.</p>
<p>I find it kind of funny that this thread is bouncing back & forth between MIT and Winky Dink</p>
<p>Lol…lol…</p>
<p>Well SS, there are always exceptions to the rule. But I’ve never seen a study of grades at any university where a random selection of 5 tech/engineering areas would have higher average grades than 5 hum/ss non-technical majors. Moreover, every discussion I’ve had with Deans/profs at my own school and at other schools about grade inflation makes clear that grade compression (the accurate term) is more severe in the humanities.</p>
<p>Moreover there are very few examples (are there any?) of top research universities where ALL students have to take a required humanities class that is so difficult that many engineers fail and lots of students switch from said program to an easier one. As far as I know, most liberal arts universities have fairly broad distribution requirements with a lot of choice in course selection. There just aren’t any elites where most high-SAT humanities majors have grades lower than those for Berkeley EE or Cornell engineering.</p>