<p>I wanted to comment on another set of questions posed up-thread.</p>
<p>That is: how fast can a person grow? Could other students overtake the super-qualified?</p>
<p>In my experience, anyway, math involves a lot of “just kind of getting it” (by which I really mean “just totally getting it”). If a person is persistent in mathematics, and works hard at it, “just getting it” tends to come. In fact, a rather weird thing about math is that once you have understood something, it’s very hard to figure out why it was ever hard to understand. So, of course, I have been in a lot of different leagues, mathematically speaking, over my life–so far (and right now I could really use a stronger grasp of differential geometry).</p>
<p>Growth takes time, though. Four years might not be long enough to catch up. The USAMO-level students, for the most part, will not proceed to stagnate throughout their college years, but will continue to grow at or faster than their previous pace.</p>
<p>Presumably MIT feels that its classroom and pedagogical experience is heightened when there is a broad mix of students (still within the band of bright) than only USAMO-ers. If the profs disagreed, surely they’d make a stink, no?</p>
<p>Not sure when it was decided that only USAMO particpants were good at math, or when it was likewise decided that MIT is the Math Institute of Technology.</p>
<p>Well, MIT apparently “owes it to society,” lol. As if half the higher math being worked on isn’t really just academics for academic’s sake. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.</p>
<p>I don’t see why this is true at all. First off, you’re assuming that USAMO qualifiers will continue to pursue math at the same intensity as they did in high school, which isn’t necessarily true. I know a few USAMO qualifiers who decided once they got to college that they’d rather go into finance or be pre-med instead.</p>
<p>And the only thing that USAMO is substantially useful at predicting is probably Putnam high scorers, which MIT has no shortage of. But other than that, USAMO is more tangentially related to success as a math major. Maybe you’re able to gain some mathematical maturity, and be introduced to topics not necessarily in the high school curriculum, but these are things you can gain easily in other ways. It’s good for the type of problem solving that comes up in math contests, but just because someone’s a USAMO qualifier doesn’t mean that they have a huge head start on learning Abstract Algebra. In fact, it is possible to qualify for the USAMO without even knowing any calculus.</p>
<p>Let’s not forget that MIT does have majors other then math-engineering. Indeed, according to IPEDS, MIT has more bio majors than math majors, and nearly as many business majors.</p>
<p>MIT has an EXCELLENT undergraduate music department, headed by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison. Many Harvard students go over to MIT for music courses.</p>
<p>This is not about USAMO, per se. I performed about the same as USAMO winners in abstract algebra, despite not being as good at contest math. Still, USAMO is a good enough predictor that, out of the people who apply to MIT each year, there aren’t 1500 people who are more likely to contribute to math, science, and technology (or 1200 people if you are comparing within the same demographics.) Also, USAMO winners often end up in physics and/or engineering.</p>
<p>It’s about trying to admit the people who are the most passionate about learning in math and science. Performance in humanities areas, such as english or music, are also predictive of ability in math and science (assuming they are at a very high level in math/science subjects as well.) James Watson, discoverer of DNA, said that after taking a battery of tests in his private high school, the area he was #1 in the school was reading comprehension.</p>
<p>Of course, MIT covers a broad range of subjects–and the developments in biology, for example, make it a really fascinating field. There are future mathematicians who have never heard of the USAMO. But the number of people with reasonable scores on the USAMO–who also want to go to MIT–is small enough that I really think they could take 100% of those who do not have character defects, and still have plenty of room for truly outstanding students in every other area + even a few who will just liven the place up.</p>
<p>By writing about math so much, I don’t mean to imply that the selection issue is limited to math, or that no one but mathematicians should be selected! Not by any means. collegealum314 pointed out that a lot of the USAMO qualifiers decide to do something other than math. But the problem-solving approaches that they have learned in that context are generalizable.</p>
<p>Most USAMO-level students do not have any difficulty with calculus. In the biography of Paul Erdos, called “My Mind is Open,” there is a particular mention of a young student Erdos worked with, who had exceptional command of discrete math, but never got his mind around calculus–it was mentioned because that is extremely rare. I think the USAMO problems actually tend to be a help with courses like abstract algebra–willing to learn otherwise, though, if that’s not so.</p>
<p>Do you think that the Sloan biz profs would agree with your conclusion? How about the Professors for the handful of music majors? Or 40+ Econ majors? Or the lit/hume/lang majors? (Sure not many, but the faculty have to teach someone on their courses, don’t they?) </p>
<p>In addition to music which mini references, MIT has Noam Chomsky, THE guru in linguistics.</p>
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<p>The same could be said for those bio majors (with whatever national test that they take) that want to attend MIT. Or ling prospies… Gotta draw a line somewhere, and MIT has decided that it does not want every AMO qualifier. </p>
<p>And, I would guess that USAMO participation is highly wealth dependent. Few poor folks and URMs even participate? For a college that is interested in economic diversity…</p>
<p>I agree with you, bluebayou, except that I don’t think that you do have to draw a line–you could take the people who are similarly outstanding in every area of engineering, math, science, linguistics, architecture (and music, if MIT is an outstanding school for that), and I think it would fill less than half of the admitted class. You probably could not also take the most outstanding people in English, foreign languages, history, and other areas of the humanities and social sciences–but I don’t think MIT is really the best choice for them (except for future historians of science and technology, and maybe a handful of serious science fiction writers–those you could take–along with the people who might improve on Babelfish by combining artificial intelligence with knowledge of foreign languages). Still plenty of room for others, and meeting various agendas, as far as I could guess.</p>
<p>MIT doesn’t really admit for major like other schools do. But let me address your questions. Music and math ability are tied very closely, so MIT wouldn’t have to compromise at all to have outstanding music majors. Econ is basically applied math (especially at MIT); there will be plenty of people interested in majoring in econ regardless of who they admit. You can’t really choose budding econ stars at 18 years old; the people great at econ in the future probably have not ever taken a course in it. Anyway, just because they have a strong dept. in something, MIT doesn’t feel like it has to recruit people interested in it for undergrad. We have and had a strong urban studies dept., but that was never a backdoor into MIT.</p>
<p>Traditionally, lit/hume/lang. is a second major for people at MIT. Also, the breadth requirements are stout enough at MIT (8 classes) that there are plenty of people to take humanities classes regardless of whether there are humanities majors.</p>
<p>I forgot about Sloan. In the past, Sloan was a second major for people. The number of sloan majors has grown. I’m not sure what is behind this change.</p>
<p>The National Ap scholar is probably as good a gauge of the number of all around academic scholars as there is. Must have 8 ap courses with scores of 4 or more and there are only about 7,000 kids who do that every year. Not alot.</p>
<p>^^^^Some excellent high schools will have practical limits on the numbers of AP classes students can take before applying to college, so it would be difficult to attain that designation before the completion of senior year. It is normal for a student at our high school to have completed between 4 and 7 AP classes by the end of junior year, but even the top students would not have completed any more than that.</p>
<p>At our high school, students who eventually reach or exceed that criteria tend to be the ones who are planning to attend schools that easily award AP credits, such as state school honors programs, and these students might take an additional 4 or 5 AP exams during the spring of their senior year. Students admitted to and deciding to attend elite schools generally skip the senior year AP exams, since they will likely be repeating the courses in any case. Our high school does not require that students signed up for AP classes actually sit for the exams.</p>
<p>^^Our schools sends a kid to MIT most years, and HYP every year. But we have yet to have a national AP Scholar. AP courses aren’t allowed for underclassmen, and are capped with Juniors at 2. (Plenty of high schools limit AP courses.)</p>
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<p>Yeah, I get all that. But my point is that not every econ prospie is gonna want to play in the USAMO sandbox. Ditto music majors. Or Biz majors. Yet some on this thread seem to think that high-scoring math majors only should be auto admits.</p>
<p>Sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that the high scoring math students should be the only auto-admits, bluebayou. I was using the field of math as a convenient sort of short-hand example to represent the whole. I think that MIT could admit top students in every field that makes sense for MIT–if they are standouts in the fields in the way that USAMO qualifiers are in math–and still have plenty of space (I’d estimate half the class) for students in other categories that they’d like to be sure are represented in the incoming class.</p>
<p>Is your school private, bluebayou? Our public school often has some national AP scholars by the end of junior year but rarely sends kids to HYP nor MIT. I’ve heard people say that AP courses aren’t deep enough even if students get 5s.</p>