<p>In most cases, except maybe for MIT, being a geek will hurt more than help.
While being a ‘geek’ isn’t really a BAD thing, I believe colleges like Harvard and Princeton would want to enroll smart social non-geeks instead of super-smart anti/non-social geeks.</p>
<p>Winning a lot of international olympiads or being a super genius in math/physics/etc doesn’t really guarantee admission into the top schools.
Awkwardly, I’ve seen people which stats that almost everyone would call bad get into the Ivies instead of people with ‘super-stats’ because if you realize it, being a leader or being creative and having an open and liberal mind will help you more in life than spending 24/7 programming on the pc and becoming the national programming champion…</p>
<p>(this is not directed towards anyone at particular though)</p>
<p>To summarize: We, online identities, are dissecting other online identities, based on information that may well be hearsay, about a process we have no control over, with a view to a result of which we have no idea.</p>
<p>Bout normal, isn’t it? (Though a bit pointless even by TiT’s standards. :))</p>
Such a brilliant kid doesn’t need the stamp of an Ive League on his resume anyway… it won’t be a prob for him to make his mark on his own
Still one should live life holistically, the moment he got this point, Brown accepted him</p>
<p>most importantly It’s upto the college… They do admit a certain no. of olympiad toppers and after this the well-rounded/passionate ones/academic types</p>
<p>I now have a bet for about five hundred bucks with someone about my MIT decision – if I get in, I pay her, if I don’t she pays me. At least I’ll be up some cash in the worst situation. </p>
<p>That apart, there’s really no point angsting over all the super-qualified applicants. Qualifications aren’t everything (this is the only bit of the application process I approve of!), and finally, no-one knows what colleges really think. Fingers crossed till the seventeenth.</p>
<p>Issac, the faculty (eg the math dept at MIT makes it a point to admit x IMO guys, though they’d also love to have those who didn’t have the opp to perform to their potential…</p>
I strongly disagree.
Of all the people who got into MIT i know, all but one were on geeks. Infact MIT frequently reject Olympiad medalists, ISEF finalists.</p>
<p>Yeah Lakshya… ur World Robotics Olympiad stuff will be given weightage, though given we r intels… first it’ll be the FIRST Robotics guys who’ll get in, then the intels compete for 100 spots…</p>
<p>Oh, for heaven’s sake, guys. They don’t have a rule about this – there isn’t any ‘we will admit x olympiad toppers, y well-rounded students, z research interns, and n(n+1)(2n+1)/6 kids with 1600 old-style SATs’. They accept olympiad kids, yes. They reject olympiad kids, yes. It’s about as definite as the outcome of a coin-toss.</p>
<p>Seriously, you lot, relax! Discussing all this is just disheartening (especially for those of us with no significant achievements, har har), and it isn’t going to get you anything except a migraine.</p>