<p>There are a lot of ways through a university like MIT. For example, there are make-up courses for those who fail the first semester of freshman physics; students are not compelled to study mathematics to any high level. The degree per se doesn’t mean as much as the courses on the transcript–and the undergraduate research experience. I don’t think that MIT is making lots of mistakes, but I think they make a few that are doozies.</p>
<p>quantmech - did nt MIT go through the phase “we are a liberal arts school” until the person in charge had to quit due to faking her resume?</p>
<p>I think that MIT admissions has improved since Marilee Jones left. But there have continued to be some real head-scratchers of decisions, at least if the CC postings are to be believed.</p>
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<p>Realize that when the application packets are being read by admissions committees, the picture that the application packets paint of the applicants may be different from what you actually know about the applicants. You may know that A has higher ability and intellectual curiosity than B, but B’s better sales skills may have made a more convincing essay and interview for selective school X, resulting in B’s admission and A’s rejection.</p>
<p>In school, I knew some really sharp students who would have done well at any school in the country. But they would not have made a good impression at an interview at a super-selective school that used interviews in its admissions process.</p>
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<p>It is worth noting that MIT graduates are assured to have a much more well rounded liberal arts education, due to the [General</a> Institute Requirements](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/firstyear/2015/subjects/girs.html]General”>http://web.mit.edu/firstyear/2015/subjects/girs.html), than graduates of most liberal arts colleges (especially those with minimal or no breadth requirements, like Amherst, Brown, and Grinnell).</p>
<p>I am only pointing out that during Marilee Jones era, people were admitted that had questionable qualifications in sciences since she was trying to change MIT student profile. It has nothing to do with GIRs but can explain the quantmech’s statement about quality of some of the students that the professors were mystified by in terms of how they were ever admitted.</p>
<p>Despite adcoms assertions, MIT still is more predictable about who has the best chance of an admission, unlike an ivy. No legcies, no sports, and so only three variables - merit, URM and sex.</p>
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<p>Does diversity (not limited to the check-box diversity of URM/gender) matter? For example, if 10,000 piano players and 1 ukulele player apply, would the uniqueness of the ukulele player be to his/her advantage over the piano players, if they were all equally competent at their instruments?</p>
<p>I dont think MIT cares about which instrument any of them plays.</p>
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<p>…or perhaps they’re drop-dead brilliant and that’s why they were accepted to HYP.</p>
<p>Someone else already said “here we go again.” Unfortunately, apparently, it needs to be repeated.</p>
<p>Do you seriously think that admissions officers are fools? They’re perhaps less intelligent than those of you who are so full of self-congratulation? What gives any of you any authority to assume that you know the full range of comparative qualifications of those admitted to elite schools? Other than the minor detail that none of you who are not admissions officers have seen a single complete file of any applicant, even of your own relative, unless you have engaged a high school teacher to conspire with said student to reveal the contents of all letters of recommendation, the SSR, and other confidential material… in which case, if any of you have engaged in such dishonesty, how dare you ask any of us to respect a single thing you say?</p>
<p>Clearly there two things that continue to operate on threads such as these:
(1) All of those who make such false assumptions about the academic qualifications of unhooked applicants have never actually spent time on the campus of an elite U and been rendered speechless at the array of talent;
(2) The learning curve on this subject, on CC, is the longest one I have ever observed, despite having intersected with many different intellectual-ability groups in my life.</p>
<p>The Urban Legends about the highly-marketed empty-headed, unhooked Ivy-admit is just that: legend. It rarely happens. In fact, quite the opposite happens much more often: the quietly brilliant student gets admitted, but since his or her community has no clue about the strengths of such a low-profile student, his or her envious, doubting detractors assume that such a supposed nonentity must be “well-marketed.” :rolleyes: (After all, “you,” whoever you are, being such a brilliant person, would “just know” about the ability of any student worth admitting; if they’re not on your radar, hey, they couldn’t be brilliant.)</p>
<p>Listen to yourselves. Some of you seriously need to get a life.</p>
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<p>“pretty much” doesn’t cut it. It is not The File. The file includes teacher comments, the SSR, the student’s own statements/application content. It also includes the essay, evaluated not as CC parents evaluate essays, but as admissions officers evaluate an essay: for personal insight, and insight relative to the broad needs of the college (academic & personal variety within the incoming class) and the deep needs (intellectual potential) . Officers look at the whole file, comprehensively, comparing not only Student A to Students B, C, D… at the same school, but they compare broadly as well: Are Students B, C, D… of the same level of quality as the likely admits from the other 49 states that have also been reviewed? </p>
<p>Consider two doctors, equally trained in the same field. They are both provided summaries of the medical history of Patient X, but only one of those 2 doctors has The Chart in front of him/her. which provides not only considerably more detail, but the picture of this patient as a whole. It is only in considering the medical variables provided by such written information in composite form (i.e., The Chart) that any credible doctor would make a stab at a diagnosis, let alone a prognosis. Doing anything else is behaving as an amateur.</p>
<p>“With many students spending 12 years at the same school, lots of information are shared as a matter of routine.”</p>
<p>But that’s not what the adcom sees. They see an interview report, essay(s), teacher recommendations, and supplemental submissions. That’s how they judge curiosity, motivation, intellectual creativity, research potential, etc.</p>
<p>Maybe if they spent 12 years watching kids grow up in a private school in Dallas, they’d come to the same conclusions as the parents. But they are basing their judgment on a small and finite set of documents. If you didn’t see those documents, you can’t tell who looked better on paper than someone else. You certainly can’t tell who would have gotten in without a legacy/diversity tip.</p>
<p>Somewhat on a tangent, in my job, I read hundreds of letters of recommendation every year. When you can see those, otherwise mysterious application results start to make perfect sense. There are still surprises, but the rare letters that drip with love for the student lead to much better outcomes for students than their grades and activities would predict. They matter.</p>
<p>You never know what’s under the surface with people. I went to a small, exclusive private school too (72 in a graduating class) with a huge emphasis on community and where many kids spent 14 years in the program. I found out a decade later that many of my classmates didn’t know I’d failed to graduate, even though I talked about it openly and listed no college destination. I was supposed to be the class brainiac, so people thought I was making an artistic statement or something – anyway, even in those little circles the conventional wisdom about someone can be way off base.</p>
<p>The adcoms at high-profile schools know MUCH more. They know the financial profile of virtually every zip code from where applicants hail, and pretty much know what is likely to be their financial need. They also have highly developed relationships with GCs at their “feeder schools” - and will sometimes bend over backwards to help a GC, knowing that, in the future, the GC is going to help them. They may call GCs to compare students rather than simply look at the files - but only in cases where they have a developed rapport. Not going to happen to kid from mediocre school in Podunk. If they take “brilliant” student from Podunk, what is it going to gain them tomorrow? Whereas if they reject “brilliant” student from Podunk, they burnish their reputation for taking only “really” brilliant students, rather than just plain ol’ brilliant ones.</p>
<p>In many cases, the files may be close to unnecessary. (And “P-u-l-e-e-z! Not another essay about “overcoming adversity”. This is NOT “Queen for a Day”, and they just make me want to puke.”)</p>
<p>I wish it were possible to play a game of student “futures” with a few admissions offices, somewhat analogous to stock-market futures. There are 3 students from the past 8 years at QMP’s high school that I’d like to invest in. I do know the university-level outcomes for all 3 at this point. It would be interesting to compare my selected “stocks” against a few universities’ “market baskets.” </p>
<p>Within a limited range of subjects (science, math, maybe some edges in engineering), I do actually think that I can recognize brilliance when I see it, even in a 17-year-old. Some of QMP’s classmates I did not really know, and I have no comments about their outcomes. My posts did not complain about anyone local who was admitted anywhere.</p>
<p>Of course, I haven’t seen the admissions packets of anyone, including QMP. However, in the case I’m referring to repeatedly, the interviewer described the student as the best fit for MIT of all the students she had interviewed in the past 15 years. The teachers at the local school couldn’t help showing their enthusiasm for that student, when I met with them to talk about QMP–a little weird out of context, and certainly a FERPA violation.</p>
<p>Do I think that the admissions people are fools? No, of course not. But there was clearly something wrong with MIT admissions when it was headed by Marilee Jones. In case the situation is unfamiliar to other posters: Marilee came to MIT (with her husband, I think) after she graduated from college. She was originally looking for a job as a lab tech. She had graduated from St. Mary’s College, but thought that her odds of getting a job would be better if she had graduated from Rensselaer, in the same city. So, Rensselaer it was. Later, people often referred to her as “Dr. Jones,” although she had never completed a Ph.D. I do not know whether she added a Ph.D. to her resume at some point, or whether this was just a mistake by others, who assumed that the Director of Admissions at MIT would have a Ph.D. </p>
<p>Marilee had a strong say (probably the deciding one) about hiring in admissions, for a long time. I have read the MIT admissions blogs fairly closely, and I felt that there was fairly strong evidence of anti-2400 bias, particularly in the postings by Ben Jones (no relation to Marilee). Ben has moved somewhere else, now, I believe.</p>
<p>I’d like to thank Hanna, epiphany, and ucbalumnus for underscoring so well the fact that observers CAN’T know what the reasons for admissions decisions are, at elite schools and even elsewhere. I’ve read so many assertions over the years, and heard more in coffee shops and restaurants, about why Johnny got in/didn’t get in to MIT or HYP or Amherst. It’s interesting to speculate, but we can’t know.</p>
<p>“vast majority of their applicants are academically qualified ( = able to do the work)”</p>
<p>Sorta like saying anybody who who is capable of driving around the track without crashing is qualified to drive in the Indy 500.</p>
<p>“It’s interesting to speculate, but we can’t know.”</p>
<p>But we do know A LOT about those who attend.</p>
<p>We do, but we can’t extrapolate from that to know why an individual student was or wasn’t accepted. </p>
<p>Even in well-connected communities where people “know” other kids’ stats, they can’t know the extent of certain ECs, personal challenges, or writing abilities. In my community, where you’d almost think SAT scores are broadcast over the hs intercom, the arts kids are invisible to most of the athletes’ parents, and vice versa.</p>
<p>or how much embellishment went on with the application packaging.</p>
<p>But since when has the lack of any factual basis ever stopped the outflowing of nonsensical opinions on CC?</p>
<p>From those who attend, at schools with high percentages of applicants accepting admissions offers, one can know heaps about what the college, in aggregate, “wants”, unless you assume that the admissions offices are doing a poor job of carrying out the institutional mission.</p>
<p>Someone in this thread or another on CC mentioned Harvard tries to measure future success in a candidate. If you go by that measure, they seem to be doing well producing billionaires.</p>
<p>[College</a> Rankings 2011: Future CEOs - The Daily Beast](<a href=“http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/college-rankings/2011/future-ceos.harvard-university.html]College”>http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/college-rankings/2011/future-ceos.harvard-university.html)</p>