<p>
</p>
<p>There is no evidence that the elite U’s in this country are “putting less emphasis on achievement and merit.” There is evidence that they have additional considerations that are affecting who, among the equally<a href=“objectively”>/u</a> meritorious, are ultimately chosen from the glut of interchangeably outstanding applications.</p>
<p>
I didn’t win the olympics because I’d rather spend my time on more interesting things.</p>
<p>Obviously there are excellent math students who neither win nor enter the AMC math competition. I do not believe it should be an automatic entrance ticket to any university. But to disparage the accomplishment, which is significant, rings a little hollow unless you have actually won the competition yourself.</p>
<p>Plus, if these types of things interest you, I don’t see what is negative about spending time on some website (AOPS whatever that is) working on these problems and trying to learn to solve them, even if it is for the purposes of a contest. I assume lots of people enter these contests, they all strive to win, and very few do. I don’t see the difference between that, and training for a sport or any endeavor.</p>
<p>bovertine:</p>
<p>I haven’t read anyone on this thread disparaging the accomplishment of achieving any national award. The only objection that I (and others?) have is making ONE national award (USAMO) an automatic ticket to MIT. MIT accepts many/most of those high qualifiers but not all bcos MIT chooses not to.</p>
<p>One piece of evidence:</p>
<p>NMSF Harvard 2004 - 378, 2010 - 261
Stanford 2004 - 217, 2010 - 142</p>
<p>
To me this comment -
Disparages the AMC competition, and by association disaparages the competitors. </p>
<p>That, and claims that the kids who win this competition are really just well practiced human calculators.</p>
<p>
This part I agree with.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What does this prove?</p>
<p>Naturally it doesn’t prove anything.</p>
<p>^^^
I was watching one of ten thousand reruns of “A Beautiful Mind” yesterday. I thought it was funny when some guy at the Pentagon asked Nash “Do you ever just know something?” To which Nash replied “Constantly.”</p>
<p>I wonder if Nash ever posts to message boards?</p>
<p>Of course, I’ll admit that Nash could probably prove it too. And he only went to CMU undergrad (before it was CMU).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What do these numbers even suggest? That H&S are losing students? That H&S have become more holistic in their admissions and not-so-much focused on one 2.5 hour test on one Saturday morning taken in the fall (which still predominates on the coasts)? (The possibilities are endless.)</p>
<p>carreful, blue. To some posters, ‘holistic’ is code for ‘slacker.’ It couldn’t possibly mean that students who submitted different quantitative academic results (different national exams) + did brilliantly on the SAT (vs. possibly not even taking the PSAT NNMSF qualifier) are being admitted. ;)</p>
<p>These are just two data points. Some years it might go up, some years it might go down. </p>
<p>Can you just connect two dots and make it a trend???</p>
<p>Also, even if you could show a decline, does it really mean that these institutions are not admitting the same number of NMSs?</p>
<p>Given that some schools basically give you a whole lot of merit money for being a NMS, and places like Harvard and Stanford offer only need based aid, </p>
<p>and given that test scores tend to correlate with family income, </p>
<p>even if there is a decline, it is possible that more NMS students are going to other places that give them more scholarship money, and they are declining to attend Harvard and Stanford, where they would qualify for less under a need based approach.</p>
<p>thanks for the admonishment, epiph…I’ll try to remember to be more careful next time. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Even if they were not admitting the same number, does it really matter? H&S’s SAT/ACT test scores don’t seem to be affected. Again, NMF is based on one ~2.5 hour test on one Saturday morning. Plenty of students miss the cutoff for their state, but then raise their test scores by 100+ points with the real thing.</p>
<p>Wish I could say that my kids were flying planes in highschool but they weren’t. They did have a friend who was and he graduated from RPI…a trully brilliant kid who probably would have done very well at MIT where my non flying kid ended up.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take flying airplanes to go to MIT, and MIT is not as score driven as most people believe. They are far more holistic in the process just as most of the other top schools are.</p>
<p>Performersmom’s point, a few pages back, that many kids are not the burnished shining stars in high school that they will become, given another couple of years, and that choosing kids based on the passion/brilliance/outstanding achievements of the first 16 years of their lives might not be the soundest method, has also struck me. </p>
<p>A second point she made, that one result of that may be that the kids who bloom a few years later at schools which didn’t rank quite so high on the most-most-most-highly selective list will raise the reputation of those “second-rank” schools, which might finally get us away from this ancestor-worshipping Ivy-league fixation so many of us have, is certainly devoutly to be hoped for.</p>
<p>The point of this whole thread seems to have been that there are way too many highly-accomplished, promising, intelligent kids to fit into the outgrown shoe of the Ivy league, or even the top 10 schools. It makes sense–how much bigger is our population now than 30 years ago, or 50, or 75, when the madness started? Why do we, as a society, continue to define success as “Ivy” when it’s too small a subgroup? If we could get past that, we might be able also to abandon this anxiety over whether so-and-so “deserves” to get in, vs. thus-and-so. We might even be able to let up on the kids a little, and give them some time to be kids and not Ivy-leaguers-in-training.</p>
<p>Correct that there are many Colleges that do believe that National MERIT semi-finalists do represent outstanding achievement and aggressively go after these students:</p>
<p>List of Colleges that have more NMSF students in 2010 than MIT or Stanford:</p>
<p>Texas A&M
Oklahoma
Chicago(#1 in the nation)
UNC
USC
WUSTL
Vanderbilt
Northwestern
Rice
Florida</p>
<p>NMSF follows the accomplishment of their students and their primary majors are in the STEM area, and over 40% of NMSF students graduate Summa Cum Laude(top 5%).</p>
<p>Apparently a lot of top STEM applicants find a college other than MIT that meets their needs.</p>
<p>marysidney,
Thank you for reading my posts carefully. Others here are not so interested…
But it is time to stop ranting, analyzing, flaming, and move on by looking at the current trends and what impact they are having on students’ true opportunities.
There are multiple factors increasing the population of college students:
<p>The quality of the applicants may also have gone up, at least in terms of things like participation in awards, competitions, summer programs, internships, AP and IB, and the like during hugh school. Certainly their eagerness has, overall!</p>
<p>Any of the quants on this forum have the numbers? Applicant trends vs spaces at top 50 unis and top 30 LAC’S? For all colleges?</p>
<p>How many new unis and colleges have opened in the last 10 years? How many spaces have the elites added??</p>
<p>It feels like a scramble! But the trickle-down effect of it all may very well be good for all.</p>
<p>Isn’t it excruciatingly self evident that there are more top students than HYPSM have room for, so that’s why schools 1-25 are equally filled with bright, high achieving kids? This isn’t some new revelation.</p>
<p>Well said, pizza girl. It’s a crapshoot. In my opinion, one could swap out the classes at university # 6 - 10 for those at # 1 - 5 without any problem. “Builidng a class” is code for too many apps and we need some diversity (economic, ethnic, geographic, gender, religious, whatever). It’s time to stop the Ivy mania (and I have 2 Ivy degrees and mentor many current students); there are just too many qualified kids and too few spots.</p>
<p>Why this is so difficult to understand, and why people persist in trying to “determine why their kid didn’t get in” at colleges with 5% acceptance rates, is beyond me. </p>
<p>And I can’t possibly take anyone seriously who is HYPSM or bust. It’s so wannabe and naive. Who isn’t aware of these other top universities? If you’re new to the country you have an excuse but someone who grew up here? How naive can you be?</p>