<p>PG Thanks for responding. I am not asking you to say anything. I guess I am trying to understand how you “slice the bologna”. You see differences in these 6 schools. I was trying to understand those differences. What are the measurable objective differences? And I guess as importantly, do they matter?</p>
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<p>You are aware that Chicago has the only course in the country that’s similar to the level of Harvard 55, right? (That would be Honors Analysis, invitation only; most students who get invited were also accepted into MIT, Harvard, etc. I know by personal experience.) Chicago is also ranked higher and perceived to be a better school for mathematics than Caltech and Yale. It also was the only American school to be affiliated with the last batch of Fields Prize winners…</p>
<p>Odd that you weren’t aware of it since you seem to be an educated science person. It seems that your unfamiliarity with such basic facts perhaps serves as an obstacle to your credibility on this matter.</p>
<p>The snarking and nastiness in this thread are just unbelievable. </p>
<p>Think I’ll take a break from CC.</p>
<p>Well, phuriku, I’m a scientist, not a mathematician. I am certainly willing to believe that Chicago has a course that is comparable to Math 55. I’ll leave it to the mathematicians to assess whether it’s equal in difficulty or not. It’s possible that Math 55 is being oversold.</p>
<p>Addendum: I have learned from CC that musical theater is extremely competitive, and have no trouble believing that it is also unpredictable.</p>
<p>But with regard to Julliard and classical music, the local people seem to be quite accurate in their predictions about the local students and whether they will be accepted there. As always, YMMV.</p>
<p>When I was in high school debate, in our circuits, it was common to define the word “should” that appeared in the propositions for debate. The definition always used was " ‘Should’ means ‘ought to’ and not necessarily ‘will’ or ‘must.’ " I don’t think the meaning of “ought” is really so unclear.</p>
<p>phuriku, so that I can orient myself: Is Honors Analysis at Chicago Spivak, or post-Spivak?</p>
<p>And taking the larger view: If the students in Honors Analysis at Chicago turned down MIT and/or Harvard (and presumably other places) to go to Chicago, are you saying that they should not have been admitted at MIT and/or Harvard? My main point is that this level of math talent is rare.</p>
<p>The person about whom I have mainly been writing is also a scientist, and not a mathematician. (But you might take a look at hopelesslydevote, piccolorjr, and WaitingforGodot on the MIT forum.)</p>
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<p>Same with me when I applied to PhD programs 30 years ago. I applied to five and got accepted to two,which was fine. But to this day I’m still offended by UCSD, not that they rejected me - I wasn’t expecting to get into every program, but that they rejected me so fast. </p>
<p>Everything was snail mail in those days. I mailed the completed application on Thursday and got the rejection letter on the following Monday. Even Berkeley pretended to consider my app for a few weeks before rejecting me, but not UCSD. It came by return mail.</p>
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lol , coureur. Yup. That sounds equally…efficient.</p>
<p>Regarding their reach schools, we emphasized to our kids that having accomplished enough academically and personally (and the character traits and work ethic inherent therein) to be able to apply to those schools with a straight face was more important in the long run than whether they were accepted there. None of those schools were going to laugh their applications off the table. They might not get accepted, but that is a small price for trying.</p>
<p>I will admit it pained DH (Ivy UG and law) that one turned down MIT and the other Chicago. To his credit, he kept it to himself. DH was well aware that as a first gen, zero EFC kid, that his diplomas opened doors.</p>
<p>Frankly, my kids didn’t care when they were rejected. They both invested their energies in finding schools that would be a good fit, reflected that in their essays, and it showed in their results. Also helped that most of their top choices had EA and each got into at least one in the EA round.</p>
<p>Several years ago a poster Interested Dad (I think) presented what I consider the most compelling explanation for Ivy and top school admit %. I wish I could find his post.</p>
<p>The Ivies and other top schools seek to admit what they determine to be a well balanced class. A students competition is within the group they represent. URMs are competing against other URMs; athletes against other athletes, the rich and famous against other rich and famous If HYPS decide they want 6-8% (80 students) in the class to be URMs and 400 apply - a URM has a 20% chance. Whereas if a kid is one of the 30000+ valedictorians, salutatorians or near-perfect-stats kids that applies for one of the 700 900 slots allotted for these near-perfect-stats kids, the chance drops to 2% - 4%.</p>
<p>If a parent tells their kid be perfect, do everything right and you will be rewarded with an admission to HYPS . realized 30,000+ other kids believe they are perfect and have done everything right too.</p>
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<p>CD, I wholeheartedly agree, and the rest of your post shows similar wisdom, in my view. :)</p>
<p>A couple more comments re Chicago, for phuriku: Didn’t mean to insult math at Chicago! One of my grandfathers got a Ph.D. from Chicago. In math.</p>
<p>And I should add: Wasn’t Stone, one of the greatest American mathematicians so far, a Chicago faculty member?</p>
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<p><em>raises hand</em></p>
<p>expanding on this ^.</p>
<p>However, I don’t consider myself as “giving advice to parents.” I consider my thoughts as simply sharing some musings about some things all of us parents, myself included, would do well to remember in the heat of any competition – be it sports, arts, college admissions. We may know this intellectually, we may do this in calmer moments; sometimes it’s good to recenter ourselves at disappointing moments, including when we’re more disappointed for the sake of, or instead of, our sons & daughters.</p>
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A couple more comments re Chicago, for phuriku: Didn’t mean to insult math at Chicago! One of my grandfathers got a Ph.D. from Chicago. In math.</p>
<p>And I should add: Wasn’t Stone, one of the greatest American mathematicians so far, a Chicago faculty member? [\quote]</p>
<p>Yep, Stone was head of the department back half a century ago. It wasn’t just Stone though. If you look through the Wikipedia profiles of the best American mathematicians of the 20th century, a significant portion of them (I’m talking like 30% of them) came from Chicago.</p>
<p>What really bothers me more than anything is that some people, noticing that Chicago doesn’t have the name brand of Harvard, et al., continue to be convinced that this must be because the graduate division is stronger than the undergraduate division. But that’s not true at all, or even close to being true. When I entered Chicago 5 years ago as an undergraduate, I knew 3 students in the math department class of 2011 who were children of Fields Prize/Nobel Prize winners (and surprisingly, all 3 of their parents were unaffiliated with UChicago beforehand). Do you really think that Chicago is a 2nd tier math school when Fields Prize Winners are sending their kids there without any previous affiliation with the institution? This is in addition, of course, to the many students who choose to come to UChicago’s math department over such institutions as MIT and Caltech, and there are a surprising amount of them.</p>
<p>I have since switched from mathematics and work in diplomacy nowadays, so I’m not as offended as I probably sound. However, as I am positively convinced that Chicago’s undergraduate math department is at least as good as those of HYPSMC (something I cannot positively say about my own area of study, actually!), I do feel the need to come to its defense.</p>
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<p>I myself enjoy the posts and respect the posters. I think this group represents the better members on CC (my definition of “better”, being a parent).</p>
<p>Disappointment of not getting into college X is due in large part to the unrealistic assessment of one’s own merit (the kid’s), I think. In that regard, acceptance rate has little meaning. For some kids, the acceptance rate to HYPMS etc is very high, as once in a while someone gets in each and everyone of them. The tragedy lies in that some parents think their kids are like that when not, not even close.</p>
<p>I think one thing we haven’t discussed here is that kids have different basic personalities. Some of them are easy-going kids who who like working with a group, don’t mind sharing the credit for achievements, and who don’t feel the need to enter every competition. Others are just the opposite–competitive, ambitious, and self-starters who are frustrated by working in any group that holds them back. These kids are going to react differently to disappointments. My two kids are at quite different places along this spectrum, and react differently. We have tried to get each of them to be a little more like the other in this regard–the easy-going one needs to stand up for himself a little more, and the competitive one needs a little more team-oriented attitude.</p>
<p>phuriku, I have to admit that I am even more embarrassed than I was last night about overlooking Chicago. My mathematical education extended far enough to get to at least one theorem by Stone (and Daniell? Daniel? Darnell? it was a very long time ago), and to know that Stone was at Chicago. Didn’t mean to ignore other very strong mathematicians at Chicago. There are a lot of reasons for it to be the university of choice.</p>
<p>But this makes me think back to my interview for MIT. After we had talked about my interests, the interviewer said that it sounded as though I was more interested in pure science than in engineering (true), and then suggested that Harvard would be a better place to study pure science. I hadn’t applied to Harvard. I had never heard of such an idea! Where I came from, MIT was for science and math, and Harvard was for the humanities (and future political leaders). Maybe I was admitted to MIT because the interviewer could tell I hadn’t applied to Harvard, from my startled expression!</p>
<p>In general, MIT doesn’t know where else its applicants have applied, and a lot of high school students do not know the academic terrain well enough to sort out the top places in their own fields. So I have a modest proposal for cutting MIT some slack, with regard to my earlier statements. If MIT has a stellar applicant in mathematics, and they don’t want to take the person solely on the grounds that the application is a <em>yawnerfest,</em> maybe they could arrange with Chicago to take the applicant, up to the limit on students that Chicago can handle in Honors Analysis, without changing the nature of the experience (and mutatis mutandis, in other fields). Then I would drop the “ought” in my previous statements about MIT. </p>
<p>I realize that this can’t happen in practice.</p>
<p>In any event, if I were advising a HS-age mathematician about the choice of schools, I hope I’d think long enough to suggest Chicago. Considering the age I will be when the next generation of my extended family is applying to college, I hope I’ll still be around to think at all.</p>
<p>Count my math major among those who picked Chicago > MIT. S knows several others, too.</p>
<p>Also raises hand for having children who did not get admission at some schools:
S1 – declined @ Harvard, Cornell, w/l Caltech, accepted at Chicago w/merit, MIT, Mudd, full ride UMCP
S2 – declined @ Georgetown SFS, Swat, w/l Bowdoin and Carleton, accepted Chicago, Tufts, Rochester w/merit, UMCP w/merit</p>
<p>Results were pretty much exactly what we expected.</p>
<p>No, my babe is still in the womb, and my husband and I have never experienced moments of stress or disappointment in our lives – ever.</p>
<p>(just kidding, got to have a little fun every now and again)</p>