<p>I feel that my position on another thread is being caricatured inaccurately in posts #7, #12, and #13.
a) It’s not “my kid,” who had no interest in MIT (nor Caltech, nor Harvard).
b) It’s hardly the case that the only other option is to "flip burgers,"or “do something horrifying.” I am sure that the people I think should be auto-admits take the best available option.
c) On the other hand, before CC gave people an excellent read of MIT admissions practices, I think that MIT rejections did engender some unnecessary self-doubt in some very promising scientists/engineers. I will leave it for collegealum314 to comment on this, because I read of this through his posts.</p>
<p>I have been making an extremely narrow argument, with essentially two components:</p>
<p>1) If a student would logically take a graduate-level course in mathematics as an incoming college freshman at a particular school, that is probably not the right school for that student. I know personally two students, one who went to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and one who went to the University of Michigan, to whom this situation applies. There is a considerable gulf between an incoming freshman and the typical student in a graduate math class. In my opinion, both students might have been better served by a university that had undergraduate courses of the appropriate level (because a few of the top places offer classes labeled as undergrad classes, which are the right level for a student of that mathematical capability).
2) I still say that a student who scores points on the USAMO above some cut-off (1, 2, 4, 7, ?) should be an auto-admit to MIT and Caltech (only–no other “top” places), barring disqualifying personal characteristics.</p>
<p>To the extent that this does not happen, I am not claiming that it is a “national tragedy,” merely that it is sub-optimal–that is, that the situation can be made better at essentially zero cost. For example, take an MIT admit of the majority demographic who fails first semester calculus and physics. Why would it not be better to substitute one of my “auto-admits” for that student, and have that student attend a state flagship. It’s probably better for the student who failed to instead be taking courses closer to his own level. It’s better for the student that MIT can now take, too, because that student has access to more classes at an appropriate level of challenge, not populated by 23+ year olds, when the student is 17 or 18.</p>