<p>Mikalye- thanks again for your thoughtful comments. The 1989 study is outdated and not very relevant to today’s environment. Steve Pinker is talking about today’s conditions in the admissions process. If MIT is an evidence-based institution, then it should provide an evidence for its decisions on candidate’s application. Even a one-liner is sufficient. It can even be made part of the application form, where one can check mark whether the applicant wants to receive feedback or not. A leader does not wait for others, but takes a lead in implementing the right policies and making its process transparent. Plenty of places provide this evidence- when you submit a paper for publication, when you submit a proposal for funding etc. Just because other universities don’t do it, is not a sufficient justification- like I said, a leader takes the lead.</p>
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And yet none of these provide what you have asked for, which is the REASON that the paper/grant proposal/job application did not get through. They may, but not always, provide feedback (usually largely positive) designed to assist the applicant in future paper submissions, grant submissions or job applications. The objective of the exercise is basically absent in a university admissions context.</p>
<p>They enable an understanding of the reasons where one fell short and assist in justifying the rejection (or non-acceptance). They will be highly helpful in somewhat rationalizing a seemingly irrational process that exists today. It will ensure that the adcom did indeed read the application and it will bring an openness to the selection process.</p>
<p>Seriously, an applicant was actually described in a letter of recommendation as a “brown-nosing toad”? I would really appreciate it if this question were not side-stepped.</p>
<p>@DanEdS897 - The default is to not get admitted. You should assume you are not admitted until you get admitted. Admittance requires justification. You are not entitled to admittance. </p>
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I think it can safely be assumed that this was hyperbole, and hypothetical hyperbole at that.</p>
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I’m just curious – what is it, exactly, that you would expect these notes to say? I would expect something along the lines of feedback for a grant: “This is a strong application from a promising young investigator…” But I don’t think it would help most people understand why they weren’t admitted, because I think most feedback would be generally (if sometimes only faintly) positive. Most applicants are really just fine, and there’s nothing wrong with them, and I think written comments would reflect that tepidity. Any feedback is most emphatically not going to be, “If this applicant had ten points more on the SAT, he/she would have been admitted.”</p>
<p>Every year, we get people on CC who ask how they can appeal their admissions decision. I think providing feedback would increase the determination of those types of individuals, and I don’t think that kind of entitlement is something that should be encouraged by MIT or by other institutions.</p>
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If this is really a concern people have, then please allow me to point out that every application to MIT is read by multiple readers over a reading period of several weeks, then discussed in the admissions committee. Every application is deeply read and seriously considered. </p>
<p>I can easily understand how people who are connected with admissions eventually get frustrated with applicants who seem to fall into certain categories, which they find annoying. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, don’t you think that converting what a recommender might have written into “brown-nosing toad” is indicative of a certain level of ill-will toward at least one of the applicants (even if that specific example was hypothetical)? Even if it is completely satirical? If I reached that level of cynicism about people I was assessing for anything, I’d rethink whether I should be assessing them, or doing something different instead–just my personal opinion, of course.</p>
<p>I don’t like machine-category descriptions of applicants, and I don’t like reptilian-category descriptions, either. I realize I probably seem humorless. I just don’t like humor at the expense of someone in a weaker position than the person making the joke.</p>
<p>Also, I do not like insect-category descriptions. Vegetable-category descriptions are completely out, in my opinion. (I exempt Ents.) Skunks or weasels? Rodents in general are poor category choices, in my view. Scavenger-category: nope.</p>
<p>Predator-category: Now that would be hitting my personal bete noire in personality type. But I’d still rather not encounter it in a metaphor about a person.</p>
<p>PiperXP- you are not getting the point and that is OK.
Molliebat- I do not believe every application is read carefully. Decisions are made arbitrarily.</p>
<p>Mollie- also, I read your argument on what the feedback should be. It should be what the committee felt after reading the application.</p>
<p>@DanEdS897 - What is the basis for your belief that every application is not read carefully?</p>
<p>Again, you seem to present no argument at all.</p>
<p>As stated many many posts ago, it is based on the sampling of admitted students at my and nearby schools over last three years (anectodal evidence since I am not privy to the adcom). Other links I provided corroborate the arbitrary nature of the process. </p>
<p>Why do you think every application is read carefully and all decisions made are sound? What is the evidence that the admission decision would be the same if a random 10% of the applications (5% each of admitted and 5% of the non-admitted were presented to the adcom from 2-3 ago so that there past memories are a bit diminished)? 10% to reduce load and the desired class composition could be included into it.</p>
<p>By the way, I am done here and won’t be posting on this board. I am totally disenchanted with the rigidness that comes across from MIT- not based on CC here, although that does confirm it, but by talking to a few of them. I have decided to apply EA elsewhere, which is single choice.</p>
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So if you were searching for an outlandish hypothetical way to say “the most awful recommendation you could imagine”, what would you pretend the erstwhile recommender had said?</p>
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<p>Caltech is the only other top school which can be said to practice meritorious admissions. Dan Golden had originally based his model of ideal meritocratic admissions on MIT before deciding Caltech’s was better. Granted, MIT admissions has changed since then, but it’s still more meritocratic than the ivies and Stanford. </p>
<p>The difference is that MIT’s admissions is more transparent than these other schools, so you are latching onto some of the vaguer or apparently irrational statements that they have made. At the ivies, they keep their irrationalities behind the curtain. </p>
<p>By the way, I’m the one who posted Pinker’s article on the parent’s forum, so I am, in fact, receptive to changes. I am for more transparency, but I don’t think informing individual candidates of their shortcomings is the way to go. Most people don’t want to be told how dumb they are, and there would be a big backlash. I would prefer for them to describe more precisely how they judge qualities such as ability to work in a team in candidates, and perhaps by giving examples of what would be preferred. In my view, if you are measuring true qualities in a valid way, they can’t be gamed. </p>
<p>You should note that there are only two top schools which even ask for AMC scores on the application–Caltech and MIT. They don’t rank candidates by them always, but it shows that it does count for the regular candidate (whereas at Harvard it almost doesn’t matter at all if you didn’t make the math olympics training camp MOSP). The AMC is the closest thing to the standardized exam that would distinguish top candidates to which Pinker was referring. </p>
<p>While no one will publicly admit this, I do think MIT has shifted back somewhat to the criterion it had before the recent changes. This is based on some of the rhetoric from the Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill.</p>
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<p>And as I stated many many posts ago, you’re going to need to be more specific. You can’t just say “I see unfair biased” and expect us to believe you without explanation.</p>
<p>Not only are you not privy to adcom, you are not privy to other students’ lives. You may think you are, but you have no idea what surprises are in their backgrounds. </p>
<p>Best of luck with your path. I’m sure somewhere down the road, life will teach you what people owe you (and, more precisely, what they don’t).</p>
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<p>I think there’s always a balance that MIT is striving for between getting people who pursue opportunities available vs. people who have the sufficient background to succeed here. I’m sure Caltech does the same, but Caltech seems to lean more into the “sufficient background” direction. This is a spectrum, and it doesn’t seem to have a clear line right now.</p>
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<p>@collegealum314 - I’m curious if my impressions match yours. Could you expand on this? (And if you have it off the top of your head, what rhetoric from Stu Schmill?)</p>
<p>What evidence have you provided that the admission process is rational?</p>
<p>molliebatmit, I guess I have never personally seen a letter of recommendation for anyone that was actually bad. I have seen letters that offer only faint praise, which will not get the applicant very far. I have seen a fair number of letters that commend students on their attendance in college classes–in most cases, clearly meaning that their attendance is praiseworthy, and not suggesting that it’s their best (or only) qualification. But I do not actually recall seeing a genuinely negative letter. I have never written one, either. I may be living in a kinder, gentler region of the country (near where you grew up, broadly speaking).</p>
<p>In the context of a college admissions forum, it doesn’t seem especially helpful to me to start people down the track of thinking, “What if Mr. X secretly hates me, and I never detected that?”</p>
<p>I think that if an MIT applicant gets “the most awful letter you could imagine,” something went wrong that MIT had nothing to do with. I would also imagine that this is exceedingly rare. Discussing it seems to me sort of like giving advice to a student on what to do if his/her entire hutch of rabbits contracts tularemia the night before the SAT. It probably happens on rare occasions, but it’s not exactly going to be an FAQ.</p>
<p>@vivian2m - Rational or honest? This discussion has primarily focused on whether or not admissions is lying/biased, not whether the process is rational. I’d be happy to start on a different track of why their stated policy is rational, but I want to make sure that’s what you actually intend to ask about.</p>
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<p>Off the top of my head, I remember a blog post by Stu about how you don’t need to play a kazoo or something weird to stand out in the admissions pool. There was a de-emphasis of the value of the colorful or zany personality. I also remember him mentioning something like it looks bad if MIT takes one candidate from a high school and rejects another that was clearly smarter, and that they try not to do that. Even where he ostensibly shares the same philosophy of Marilee Jones against the academic arms race, the way he interprets it and elaborates on it is just completely different. Like for instance, he mentioned that for MIT it makes sense to be taking the advanced (AP) science and calculus classes your high school offers, but taking every single AP including AP art and AP whatever should not be done unless you happened to be interested in that. He also said it made him sad that apparently people were afraid to participate in FIRST robotics because it wasn’t an AP and so their AP tally would be weaker. In contrast, Marilee Jones would say stuff like “we are not defined by our test scores,” which is sort of true but misses the point that the point of them isn’t to define a person’s identity but to say something about their academic abilities.</p>
<p>I also have met him before, and he just strikes me as a completely different person than his predecessor. He just seems more down-to-earth, more traditional. </p>
<p>The one other thing I’ve noticed about the Schmill era is that it seems like athletics are valued even more. </p>
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<p>Off the top of my head, I remember a blog post by Stu about how you don’t need to play a kazoo or something weird to stand out in the admissions pool. There was a de-emphasis of the value of the colorful or zany personality. I also remember him mentioning something like it looks bad if MIT takes one candidate from a high school and rejects another that was clearly smarter, and that they try not to do that. Even where he ostensibly shares the same philosophy of Marilee Jones against the academic arms race, the way he interprets it and elaborates on it is just completely different. Like for instance, he mentioned that for MIT it makes sense to be taking the advanced (AP) science and calculus classes your high school offers, but taking every single AP including AP art and AP whatever should not be done unless you happened to be interested in that. He also said it made him sad that apparently people were afraid to participate in FIRST robotics because it wasn’t an AP and so their AP tally would be weaker. In contrast, Marilee Jones would say stuff like “we are not defined by our test scores,” which is sort of true but misses the point that the point of them isn’t to define a person’s identity but to say something about their academic abilities.</p>
<p>I also have met him before, and he just strikes me as a completely different person than his predecessor. He just seems more down-to-earth, more traditional. </p>