<p>It does mean conspicuously bad. I just thought that “egregious” had a slightly different connotation… morally tinged, perhaps, or with an emphasis on “bad” to the point of “horrible.”</p>
<p>Dictionary.com says “Conspicuously bad or offensive,” but also “conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible; “a crying shame”; “an egregious lie”; “flagrant violation of human rights”; “a glaring error”; “gross ineptitude”; “gross injustice”; “rank treachery” [syn: crying(a), flagrant, glaring, gross, rank].” I guess I’ve just always associated it with a bit of the flavor of “reprehensible” instead of just bad… the phrase “egregious wrongs,” for instance, conjures up images of really awful abuses in addition to simply obvious ones, imo. But the literal Latin root doesn’t mean anything but “outstanding,” so maybe that’s just some longstanding misinterpretation of mine.</p>
<p>…and this is bordering on obsessed, so I’ll shut up :)</p>
<p>gather up enough nerds together and a discussion about how to report an AMC score turns into a debate over the proper usage of the word “egregious.” I love MIT.</p>
<p>wow, I’m surprised that there are people who qualified for USAMO without any preparation! </p>
<p>Although I don’t have any credible authority to say this, I think the ability to do well on AMC/AIME(Q1-5) depends largely on one’s familiarity to the problem. </p>
<p>But anyways, I received a 105.5 in AMC12B recently, and I wonder if its worth mentioning since it is quite clear if you look thru my activity list that math is my passion. It is very embarrassing to admit that even after 1 year since joining the AoPS community that I haven’t improved my scores at all. (*I’m currently a junior) </p>
<p>and I also wish I developed style of reasoning/ridiculing like those of some posters on this thread English being my 2nd language doesn’t help me that much…</p>
<p>The MIT application specifically asks for your AMC and AIME scores if you have them, or at least it used to.</p>
<p>As for qualifying for the USAMO, it is quite impressive if you have qualified as a junior. In the last two years only 59 - 60 juniors qualified each year, and this includes Canadian students. I got this number by counting the number of 11th graders on the lists so this is not conjecture. </p>
<p>RSI is quite impressive as well as this program takes only about 70 students per year. However, RSI caps the number of students it will take from any one state. Therefore it is extremely difficult for students from some states to qualify.</p>
<p>Umm…because I’ve asked a lot of people? I went to RSI last year. I asked Matt McGann at ISEF (he sits on the reading board for RSI), and he said there’s no way they would do that. Same thing when I asked this year’s director and Maite Ballestero.</p>
<p>Think about it: why would they cap? RSI is the most prestigious summer program in the world. If they placed arbitrary restrictions on the Rickoid pool like that (and yes, state boundaries ARE arbitrary), then they wouldn’t be getting the best students. RSI has a really big interest in getting the BEST students, otherwise it’s quality will, of course, go down, and it won’t be a program that everyone wants to get into.</p>
<p>By the same logic, the most prestigious universities would never set effective limits on some kinds of students (by race/gender/state) and privilege those from rarer backgrounds, because then who would want to go to those universities?</p>
<p>lol but that’s a little different. You live at a university for a significant portion of your life, so it should be representative of the real world. RSI is just 6 weeks. I’m going to do a chi-squared test tomorrow morning to see if there is a correlation.</p>
<p>Umm, other Rickoids have said many times on CC that there are regional restrictions. Some have also said that if there weren’t regional restrictions, as you claim there aren’t, then RSI would have much greater representation from California and New York. Also, of course the people you spoke to are gonna say that RSI admissions is completely egalitarian. It’s kind of like how if you ask MIT adcoms whether women are favored in the admissions process, they’ll give some roundabout answer like “we look at each applicant in his or her given context” even though the statistics blatantly show that women are 2.5 times more likely to get into MIT than men.</p>
<p>“I’m going to do a chi-squared test tomorrow morning to see if there is a correlation.”
lol!</p>
<p>Yeah, how many people from CA/NY/TX attended RSI last year? From what I gather (not that I stalk anybody ) there were only 2 or 3 from CA. I bet more than 2 or 3 people applied that had near perfect stats and maybe even research experience ffrom these states.</p>
And the statistics also show that this sort of statement is 2.5 times more likely to start an argument on this board than pretty much anything else that can be said. Don’t be a clod.</p>
There were actually 4… that said, I think there is some form of “geographical affirmative action,” but that it’s not nearly as precise or as arbitrary as some people apparently think it is.</p>
<p>By the way, of those 4 from CA, 2 were obvious admits with international olympiad gold medals and stellar qualifications and 2 were more “normal” high-caliber students.</p>
<p>Yeah, so take AZ (a dumb state) and compare it to CA. CA has about 10 times the population, and it get’s 5 times the number of Rickoids. That’s not really too far off.</p>
<p>zogoto, ur assuming that the applicant pools from CA and AZ are of about the same competitive level. I would venture to say that the CA applicant pool is much more competitive than the AZ applicant pool, and thus there should be a higher proportion of Rickoids from CA compared to AZ. To put it in simpler terms, let’s say the population of CA is 100, and AZ 10. What I’m saying is that if 2 applicants are selected from the 10 AZ applicants, then 15-25 should be selected from the CA applicants.</p>
<p>Overall, the applicant pool in CA may be stronger, but RSI is not about overall applicant pool. It’s about the very, very top. At that level, there are very few from any given state. There may be a greater proportion of strong applicants from CA than from AZ, but that won’t affect the number of truly qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Besides, RSI is a very small group of people. They only take 50 per year from the states, I believe. So applying strict proportions and saying that “if 2 are taken from AZ, then 15-25 should be taken from CA” makes no sense. </p>
<p>I hope I got my point across. I’m having a hard time putting it into words.</p>
English being my 2nd language doesn’t help me that much…</p>
) there were only 2 or 3 from CA. I bet more than 2 or 3 people applied that had near perfect stats and maybe even research experience ffrom these states.</p>