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<p>I don’t think she necessarily prefers STEM majors. Stars in STEM fields are much more easily identified by external awards in high school than are their counterparts in the humanities. So in a sense, STEM majors are the canaries in the mineshaft, so to speak. Trends you observe with STEM stars may extend to intellectual stars in humanities pursuits.</p>
<p>I am not very clear on option C. What does not empty mean in your result?</p>
<p>Cornell went pretty far a couple of years ago in the NCAA tournament. In general, though, the very best recruited players out of high school will end up at the bigger D1 scholarship programs. Sometimes, though, very good players will decide to not take a scholarship and instead go Ivy because of the opportunities that they think they will get at the Ivy school.</p>
<p>So, texaspg, Just curious,What are you looking for then in the STEM admissions for MIT/Caltech/Harvey Mudd or Olin?</p>
<p>By “not empty,” I mean that there is at least one person in the category. Some seem to be arguing that category c) is empty–can’t tell for sure, though.</p>
<p>collegealum314 really nailed my point with the comment about STEM majors as “canaries in the mineshaft.”</p>
<p>Ask them to write an essay about what they expect to see as advances in 10, 20, and 30 years in the expected area of their STEM major and how they plan on contributing to those advances.</p>
<p>Have the essays evaluated by faculty to determine the actual viability of those ideas.</p>
<p>Thanks, texaspg, Those kinds of questions and answers I’m sure tell alot about someone. Both of my kids were/are STEM majors. Husband too. I’m the odd person out!</p>
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<p>Ever heard of teamwork? Whoops, that’s right, you don’t like sports. It’s a committee. There’s a collaboration involved. They aren’t a bunch of isolated megalomaniacs (I know: that’s way more colorful and imaginative, but it just isn’t true) tripping out about the power they supposedly hold as isolated individuals. They share their recommendations, dispute one another’s, often argue, solicit each other’s input, demand that some recommendations be justified and defended, negotiate, and in the case of Penn, every member of the committee must be unanimous about each admit; they want no dissent.</p>
<p>epiphany - how many people on the Penn committee?</p>
<p>Caltech says they have at least 6 readers for each application including some student readers.</p>
<p>Stanford at one time wasn’t done by committee. I believe it is two individual reads and there are only 3 adcom staff.</p>
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<p>Ya talking to me? The last time I watched a college basketball game was 1983. I’ve got no clue. I’m spectator-sports-impaired.</p>
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<p>Oh good grief QuantMech, I’m going offer as a hypothesis that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. What part of admissions rates that are < 10% are unclear? What part of the colleges saying again and again and again “we could lose our freshman class and go back and pick 2 or 3 equally as good classes out of the remainder” is unclear? It’s sort of a DUH that many strong students who submitted excellent applications didn’t get in because there simply aren’t enough beds and choices had to be made, no more and no less. I absolutely do not get why you are positing that this set is non-empty as though you’ve made some kind of analytical breakthrough.</p>
<p>“but generally aren’t the Ivies are just totally outclassed in basketball?”</p>
<p>As parent1986 would tell you, in basketball the Ivy schools (despite their aversion to athletic scholarships) are supposed to compete on 100% even terms with every other Division 1 school (like UCLA, North Carolina, Ohio State, etc.). Yes, they generally get their butts kicked when they play big-time schools, but they actually beat the big names upon occasion. Teams from Princeton and Penn have actually done fairly well in the tournament in decades past.</p>
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<p>You’ve just discovered this? This has been obvious for years.</p>
<p>The only problem with the statement is that (not perhaps what you meant) many students (especially) think they can work backwards from such results, to shape a persona and make it appealing to a committee. It doesn’t work that way very effectively, and particularly not in a short period of time. That’s probably obvious to you, but you would be amazed at how many students, and even parents, think that it’s possible to contort a personality and reshape an academic trajectory to conform to someone else’s admissions results. Not really. And one reason is that the student being “copied” may be less of an appealing profile this particular year, when the committee is looking for something else, or when characteristics of recent admits are too abundant in this year’s pool. </p>
<p>Again, it’s just a reminder for those who may be reading this and not have thought of the reality that both priorities change, and the pool itself. (That’s the “random” or “lottery” part.)</p>
<p>Nevertheless, what is helpful about reading results threads + incoming class profiles on the college websites, is that it can help predict. It’s not foolproof, but it can soften the shock to get a preview of whether a particular student is or is not likely to be among this year’s or next year’s admitted class. It can also help reduce or enlarge a college list in the making.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry, texas; I forget the exact number. It’s definitely more than a handful, though.</p>
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<p>Why is that a difficulty? Why don’t you just see that as part of life? If I go interview for a job, I don’t know the personality of the people who are going to interview me. So I just research the job, present my best qualifications, and let the chips fall where they may. The fact that you see it as a “difficulty” says that you think that things that are not pre-programmed and controllable and forecastable are problems, or that processes should always be predictable. Of course you don’t know whether your essay on scoring the winning soccer goal or herding goats or climbing a mountain or picking your socks off the floor will resonate with a given adcom or make them roll their eyes. Oh well.</p>
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<p>Each would make a fine reader. However, the outcome could be quite different. I suspect most real readers are of non-STEM types.</p>
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<p>That’s why finding “fit” means real “fit”. Most people cannot say they fit in each and every Ivy.</p>
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<p>Leaving epiphany’s point about committees aside, again, so what? Assuming for the sake of argument that Bay, eiphany, texaspg, collegealum, QuantMech and I were each readers for a given region and we generally made our own decisions and we trusted one another, the fact that I might find Student A more compelling than B whereas Bay might find B more compelling than A doesn’t mean that the process is unfair or broken. It’s just human.</p>
<p>Perhaps I have been mis-reading epiphany’s posts, but I thought epiphany was making the point that there were reasons why the students were rejected, of the type that the students weren’t truly competitive, the letters of recommendation weren’t excellent, the essays weren’t so good, the applicants were careless, etc.</p>
<p>I understand that committees deal with the applications. You can’t be a faculty member without serving on a lot of committees. But take Princeton as an example. I have no specific qualms about the operation of their admissions committee. But if they are receiving 25,000+ applications a year, it is not physically possible for all of the committe members to read all of the applications. Are there not typically one or two people who take the lead (on any given application, I mean, with different people leading on different applications), and then summarize the application for the rest of the committee?</p>
<p>Have you never served on a committee and gone along with the prevailing view because there just isn’t time or personal persuasiveness to turn things around? I have, and clearly I am as stubborn as all get-out.</p>
<p>epiphany, I don’t think I’ve attacked you. I thought your remark about committees and teamwork was a bit snide, really (in post #848). You don’t have to be in sports to learn teamwork. Going back to what SamuraiLandShark posted about Debi Thomas, she said that she had learned far more team work from her responsibilities in medicine than from sports.</p>
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<p>Well, thank goodness. You want people with a little romance in them, who understand narratives and can think holistically.</p>