Shelby Steele on Ivy League Admissions

<p>Re: justdafacts post #1346:</p>

<p>You are right about the stats; I mistakenly assumed St. Mark’s was a high school, so the admission numbers are probably closer to your estimate of 14/80, not 14/211.</p>

<p>Let me add this to the mix. In the year my D graduated from hs, we had:</p>

<p>Stanford - 6
Harvard - 5
Princeton - 5
Cornell - 1</p>

<p>Our senior class would have been about 4 times the size of St. Marks’, but I can say with confidence that like the St. Mark’s HPSC matriculants, all of our matriculants graduated in the top 100 of their class. Some people may not be aware of how competitive the good public high schools are.</p>

<p>I have never had the sense that students at our high school “expect” to get into those schools. The ones who probably feel they have the best chances are the Stanford legacies who are Div 1 athletes, top students and full-pay. We have a fair number of those every year, but they won’t generally know that they have all of those attributes until the end of Junior year, not when they start Kindergarten in the feeder school to our high school.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Well said!</p>

<p>MIT’s mission statement is as follows: (taken from their website)</p>

<p>"The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.</p>

<p>The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. MIT is dedicated to providing its students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with the support and intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community. We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind."</p>

<p>Nowhere does it say that their mission is only to find the very bestest-of-the-best and favor those students over those who are merely excellent. Therefore, it’s hard for me to conclude that MIT “ought” to take the USAMO winner over the semifinalist, or the Intel winner over the semifinalist, or the highest-scorer-in-anything over the second, fifth or tenth highest scorer. </p>

<p>The way you guys talk about the “ought,” it implies that MIT has some sort of obligation to take these super-geniuses. The only people MIT needs to answer to, IMO, are the administrators and trustees that direct MIT’s activities. They don’t have to have a mission statement that all super-geniuses who come their way have to be admitted, just because parents of super-geniuses would like that to happen.</p>

<p>"Just some, who posted on this very thread that they expected that attending the elite high school would guarantee the benefit of being accepted to HYPSM. "</p>

<p>Really??? </p>

<p>My DD attended TJ. It is pretty well known there that only about a third of the graduating class ends up attending the top 20 national U’s. About a quarter attend UVa, and the remainder scatter among VTech, W&M, privates not in the “top 20”, and out of state publics.</p>

<p>Now some of those are kids did or might have gotten into a top 20 but chose a public or other school for financial or other reasons. But NO ONE thinks that admission to an Ivy is automatic. A fortiori to HYPMS (despite a relatively large group going to HYPMS) Thats TJ. Ranked number one by the evil ranking obsessed news magazine. I can’t believe theres any public high school in the country where there would be a greater sense of Ivy entitlement. Maybe a FEW private prep schools.</p>

<p>BTW, I wonder if there are really that many who 100% expect to get into an Ivy (or to HYPMS)</p>

<p>I mean the folks who complain usually say, well my kid has to go crappy old U Chicago, or whatever. I mean they APPLIED to U Chicago or whichever. Unless the kid just enjoys filling out college apps (I admit U Chicago sounded tempting as most do not) why would they do that, UNLESS the kid realized they might not get in?</p>

<p>If we were hearing “my kid was rejected by Yale, and now has to decide between comm college and taking a year off” that would be different. I do think DD said there was a case like that once at TJ. But its pretty rare, there and here. So it seems to me people are more realistic than we give them credit for. They just find CC a place to vent their emotions. Meanwhile they are still gonna write their checks to that crappy top twenty college, or wherever.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>pg: My question has nothing to do with what the parents would like to happen. It has to do with whether it makes a difference to society at large? </p>

<p>Have a good weekend! I hope you all don’t post too much because there really is a limit to what I can catch back up with monday - 150 pages will probably be too much for me. I don’t have soomoo’s fortitude :)</p>

<p>Well we’re all human and subject to very human emotions. Not saying it’s rational though.</p>

<p>Yup. </p>

<p>My DW, love her to death, but during the process she went from “DD should apply to more Ivies, she’s got a pretty good shot” (despite only a 3.7 WGPA and no stellar EC’s) to “I’m afraid she will have to go to JMU (our 4th or 5th public “flagship” if you can call it a flagship) and while its good for some kids, she’d be at sea there” DESPITE, well, her 3.7 WGPA from TJ and her stellar SAT’s, and decent EC’s. (To be fair the panic set in when the numbers didnt look as good)</p>

<p>however good holistic admissions is for creating wonderful learning communities, it does one hell of a number on many kids and their families.</p>

<p>"pg: My question has nothing to do with what the parents would like to happen. It has to do with whether it makes a difference to society at large? "</p>

<p>there are other developed countries where admissions to university is much more formulaic and test driven, and were the universities are more obviously ranked. While comparing national economic and social performance is complex and controversail, AFAICT those countries dont seem to do much better than we do, and they dont do much worse.</p>

<p>Well, BrooklynBD, don’t forget the andison saga that is often referenced here. He wound up with NO options except a gap year and they truly believed he applied to some schools that were good backup choices to the Ivy apps he put in i.e. oberlin, Swarthmore…</p>

<p>Yeah, well I as I said, DD told us that something like that had happened once at TJ (or maybe it was a kid who only applied to top schools and lucked out and got into ONE) so Im not surprised we have one case here, thats become a CC legend. </p>

<p>But the DISGUST expressed above seems to have been directed at folks who come in complaining about how some top twenty school like NU or UC or ND or WUSTL (or to get outside the put upon middle west, JHU) is where there kid will HAVE to go.</p>

<p>(now whether applying ONLY to schools in the top twenty INCLUDING the ones outside the northeast, and none less selective, is truely a viable strategy, is another thing)</p>

<p>How well of a predictor is a contest like the USAMO in terms of future math geniuses (not sure how to measure this)? If it is not a good predictor then we should be thrilled that holistic admissions exist. </p>

<p>My son hates math contests but his well respected math teacher says he is “brilliant” in math. He would rather be out throwing a frisbee around. As someone said previously, kids mature at different rates.</p>

<p>He does intend to be a math major though so I am hoping good recommendations and an interesting personality will overcome lack of contests.</p>

<p>Just to clarify, in response to Pizzagirl, post #1363: I am not actually arguing that MIT should distinguish between the USAMO winners (who are invited to the Olympiad preparation camps) and others, who qualified to take the USAMO and scored anything above 0 on it.</p>

<p>To take the USAMO, a student has to qualify through a string of exams, starting with the AMC12 (or AMC10, for younger students) and the AIME. The AMC 12 is substantially more difficult than any of the math SAT’s.</p>

<p>I am arguing that MIT ought to take the students who qualified for USAMO and scored some points on it, in preference to people who have 720 on the SAT I math portion, and no other unusually strong academic qualifications, if the latter are not URM’s or people who have overcome some hardship. SAT M 720 + being a mime would not trump USAMO (any non-zero score) + boring for me, even if the mime is rather creative qua mime.</p>

<p>QuantMech,</p>

<p>I really think that MIT takes most of the USAMO qualifiers. I am betting the ones they don’t take have “issues”.</p>

<p>And to soomoo, #1371, contest math is different from math research, definitely.
Some people do not like the competitive, time limited aspect of contest math.
There is an alternate route to the USAMO, through the USAMTS, which is run by the NSA. It consists of more interesting problems (usually 6 at a time, I think), which students have a month to solve.
It is still “contest” math in the sense that the problems are known to have solutions! But it might suit some students better than AMC/AIME, especially if they are creative and/or deep.
The USAMTS problems are marked with commentary by mathematicians (as opposed to scan sheets read by machines). This is like the USAMO, which is also proof-based.</p>

<p>"The way you guys talk about the “ought,” it implies that MIT has some sort of obligation to take these super-geniuses. "</p>

<p>does Mcdonalds have an obligation to provide public restrooms to all?</p>

<p>legally, no, of course not. But there is a sense that private institutions that have a certain place in society, have an obligation to society. McDs we tolerate their market power, and their impact on mom and pop luncheonettes in theory cause we all believe in the beauty of the free market, but some of us who dont - therefore for us its because we expect some corporate citizenship. The top universities, which benefit immensely from their prestige in the public eye, can expect people to expect THEM to offer something in return. Now some of us expect them to provide innovative research and a forum for ideas and intellectual advancement. SOME of us expect them to provide the “right” admissions policies. Though we of course dont all agree on what those should be, or of course, even if there is such a thing.</p>

<p>In the case of MIT all one can do is say “well I’ll be damned if Im ever going to express admiration for MIT” and hope it effects their prestige, which it probably will not.</p>

<p>In the case of ones state flagship, one can write ones legislator and suggest that perhaps the money going to it would be better spent on new roads. Though as some state flagships become less dependent on public $$, even that revenge will decline in importance.</p>

<p>Re #1373, I would have thought so, too, but there appear to be some counter-examples on the MIT forum–e.g., USAMO participants admitted at Harvard, but not at MIT–and therefore, unlikely to have issues. (I am pretty sure this statement is correct.) </p>

<p>Also, one of the rejected USAMO qualifiers was supported on the forum by geomom (an MIT alum), whose son knew him from RSI, a highly selective summer science program for high schoolers, at MIT. People thought he was lying (or trolling) when he said he didn’t get in. Geomom stated that the applicant was a real person, with no character issues.</p>

<p>All of the USAMO qualifiers I know personally were admitted to MIT–just picking up instances of rejection, from CC posts.</p>

<p>One day, out of curiosity, I went to the results page from a few years back of the Harvard-MIT math contest they give to outstanding high school students. I googled the names of the top scorers with “MIT” also in the search. I was surprised at how many of these kids actually wound up at MIT.</p>

<p>Actually, referring to post #1373, this is where I take issue with MIT’s admissions policy: MIT, as far as I can tell, really does reject students who are <em>unusually</em> well qualified academically (really <em>unusually</em> well qualified!), to the point that most observers think the students must have something wrong with them, if they are rejected. This appears not to be the case, actually, based on observations of how MIT admissions operates.</p>

<p>When D was in 4th grade, she was stalked and harassed by another girl, who was also very bright. The teachers didn’t see it (or didn’t want to), because this girl was very manipulative. I transferred D to another private school to get away from her, and guess what, the evil stalker tried to transfer there, too, telling the admissions direcotr she was D’s “best friend.” I told the director that if they admitted this girl, D would not be enrolling. They did not admit the girl, even though she was well-qualified. Just throwing that out there, as I’m sure weirder things have happened in competitive admissions environments.</p>

<p>^^Ok. Maybe you are right. I don’t really have any evidence to say that they take them all. I guess it comes down to then…“well we don’t want the culture to be too slanted toward math geniuses”. Which is a bit of a shame… if they don’t have another top program to attend. Are there really that many who no have acceptances which can meet their math needs?</p>