<p>Do colleges in any other countries practice holistic admissions?</p>
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<p>In California, Yes, if they have just one chair on which to sit/dine.</p>
<p>“In California, Yes, if they have just one chair on which to sit/dine.”</p>
<p>I’m guessing when BBD asked the question about McDonald"s, he was referring to McDonald’s restaurants in the United States.</p>
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<p>When does a restroom become private? Does a restaurant have to offer restrooms to the public-at-large or have to have restrooms for its patrons? Can a restaurant also restrict the use of the room provided to the public to resting? ;)</p>
<p>BrooklynBD: Did the President visit TJ today? I saw his schedule on the news this morning - that is pretty cool!</p>
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<p>It is a great predictor, although some of them went into physics and engineering (which means they shouldn’t just be considered potential math people.)</p>
<p>Even if MIT took all the USAMO winners (~125 a year?), there are plenty of spots available at MIT every year (they accept ~1500 for a class of 1000.) In the 90’s, I pretty much think you were automatic at MIT with USAMO.</p>
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<p>What about the alumni? I can tell you there were alumni writing into the Tech Review (the MIT alumni magazine) complaining about the changes.</p>
<p>BBD - maybe MIT feels that their obligation to society is better met by identifying promising young URMs and / or underprivileged kids who have “talent in the raw” and enabling them to attend MIT via letting them know that MIT exists and has financial aid that will make it possible, than by admitting every single math superstar who sends in an application.</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>MIT is not obligated to take these well-qualified students for the sake of what the neighbors will say if they aren’t admitted. This is equally true of our math super-geniuses as of the merely very brights. I don’t see why this is MIT’s problem, at all. They manage to maintain this math superiority even if they turn down a couple of super geniuses, so clearly they’re doing something right, or enough to keep their program high.</p>
<p>But I’m still a little skeptical (and find it necessary to put on my high-wading boots) at the notion that if these kids don’t get into MIT, any other top college would be like asking them to go back to studying 1+1=2 and the poor dears will be just so, so bored.</p>
<p>PG</p>
<p>I don’t think that the goals of admitting the most talented math students in the country and finding students with “talent in the raw” are mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, on the basis of the numbers, collegealum314 and I don’t actually believe that the USAMO qualifiers are being “displaced” by URM’s or people from socioeconomically disadvantaged circumstances. As mentioned several times above, I support affirmative action. I am questioning the admissions policy within demographic groups.</p>
<p>Re post #1389: The thing about math is this: </p>
<p>Math is about itself, in a way. That is, the accumulated experiences of life, which are crucial for an understanding of literature, say, or history, are not really required in mathematics. In physics, acquired knowledge of the magnitudes of various effects is extremely useful. But I think that math can stand on its own, as a subject. (These statements are all subject to various reservations, but I think there is a kernel of truth here.)</p>
<p>The result is that mathematical prodigies do exist, whereas literary prodigies don’t, really. (Producing great literature requires great maturity and depth of life experience, in my opinion.)</p>
<p>A person who is inclined in a mathematical direction and who devotes a lot of time to it can develop very quickly as a result.</p>
<p>As I have mentioned, I am a strong supporter of large public research universities (LPRU, an acronym I haven’t seen before) as a great choice for STEM students. However, I would not recommend this route, generally speaking, if the student’s first class as an incoming freshman at the particular LPRU is going to be at the graduate level (for reasons discussed up-thread). Some places that is where the student would logically start, by background; at others, there would be sensible undergraduate choices. I have known students who took graduate math as sophomores and found it both challenging and manageable, but haven’t personally known freshman for whom it worked out well.</p>
<p>There are math students in the US who would be prepared for grad courses at some universities, right off the bat. To find a place where they can logically start in an undergrad course, they don’t have to go to MIT, by any means. phuriku and CountingDown have mentioned great courses at Chicago. Aside from Princeton, Harvard, and Caltech, I think there are some other places that would offer right-level undergraduate courses. For example, Duke has had a Putnam team of very high quality in some recent years. Northwestern very likely has courses aimed at this level of undergraduate. Texas used to have a stand-out program in topology, that I think crossed the undergrad-grad levels. I don’t mean to slight a school by not mentioning it–the omission solely reflects my ignorance of math programs at many places.</p>
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Money can buy you into the elite colleges too, it just takes more zeros.</p>
<p>Re #1389: I am not arguing that MIT needs to take into account what the neighbors or the CC community will think about a super-qualified student they reject–namely that the student has “issues.” </p>
<p>I am saying that it appears to be the case (at least in the recent past) that MIT has rejected “issue-free” students with qualifications that are quite rare and quite strong indicators of future promise. No one outside of MIT admissions can believe that they would turn the students down (hence the accusations of lying or trolling), unless there were some quite bad indicators connected with personality (hence the “kicking puppies” comment, about one such student). </p>
<p>MIT really means it when they say that once a student is considered qualified, other factors decide the outcome. Given the level where they set the bar for “qualification,” I think that some meaningful distinctions could still be drawn about the students, in terms of promise in engineering/math/science as opposed to unicycling/clowning/lemming farming.</p>
<p>I don’t think any place has difficulty identifying and admitting the hyper-qualified mathematicians, such as John Milnor or Terence Tao. It’s the merely super-qualified who may be overlooked.</p>
<p>Also, I did not mean to overlook Stanford, in post #1392. And other places.</p>
<p>One other remark: You can find people on the various college forums, especially the threads for discussing admissions, who complain about affirmative action. I do not support their complaints. Depending on the specific nature of the complaints, their statements may indicate undesirable personal characteristics. Dropping all of the questionable applicants of this type does not reduce my category c (from a long time ago on this thread) to zero.</p>
<p>Younger son applied to and was accepted to MIT EA, couple years back (he is currently a M1). Included in his acceptance letter was a hand written note from the AD explaining why they accepted him. Not because of his math ability/or scholarship but because he of his ability to lead and ability to think/live “outside the box”. He did not participate in any math competitions, had a 780 M, 17 APs, some research and was a 3 season varsity athlete…football, wrestling, track and capt.</p>
<p>Fast forward, he declines MIT (and CalTech, Penn’s M&T, Harvard, Chicago…) ends up at pton, and 2 of his 4 suitemates had been rejected from MIT with 2400s and major math competitions. They both lived/loved math. They agreed that MIT had filled their quota of “math” guys and needed to fill out their class with something else, that being DS for that year. He visited after acceptance and realized it wasn’t what he wanted for his undergrad. </p>
<p>The above poster who suggested that a threshold has to be attained I think is close to the truth. After they realize a student can do the work the adcom looks to formulate an interesting and diverse class, I think this true for some of the more competitive colleges.</p>
<p>When son was doing his interviews for med school that also seemed true for some schools and others where concerned greatly with yield management and yet others were all about the numbers.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>I have to say that, while I don’t have a child that comes close to being a math prodigy, or even “merely super qualified”, I might be pretty bitter if my imaginary merely super qualified child (based on all the objective tests, activities and prizes that have been mentioned on this thread) had been rejected by MIT or Harvard because of “other factors”. </p>
<p>I’d think that at some point along the brilliancy continuum, having the foresight to add something “interesting” to one’s life to make a future college application stand out for the adcoms is ridiculous. </p>
<p>Fortunately, my children are only well-rounded and smart, not prodigies or merely super qualified, so I don’t need to worry about lemming breeding as it relates to MIT or the Ivys.</p>
<p>MIT has accepted all of the applications (one) that they have received from my extended family. I’m raising the issue on behalf of some super-qualified applicants who appear to be real people, but were rejected there.</p>
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Ain’t that the truth. 
I have often thought the same thing, kat.</p>
<p>I hope MIT doesn’t require USAMO, because my kid doesn’t know what that is, and neither does his dad. And it’s too late to find out. And if it wasn’t too late, we wouldn’t do it anyway.</p>
<p>But we’ll be very unhappy if some non-USAMO kid takes his place.</p>