<p>Well, even Caltech doesn’t go completely by stats. SATI and SATII are too easy to do that. Not everyone has participated in every math competition and science competition, even though these are objective in themselves.</p>
<p>I imagine the Cal states bend their admissions for athletes at least; otherwise, how could they compete?</p>
<p>As for MIT, they have stated that they haven’t changed a decision for a legacy; just that legacy rejects have gotten a second readthrough to make sure some US math olympian didn’t somehow get rejected. I’ll take them at their word that they have never changed a decision for that. </p>
<p>I would say that MIT is between Caltech and the ivies in terms of meritocracy. Legacy is basically no help, athleticism is not much of a help either, and there are no developmental admits at MIT. However, MIT’s admission is still highly subjective and they sometimes choose people who are not as talented at math, science (or school in general) over people they reject.</p>
<p>MIT doesn’t really consider legacy kyledavid. As others reported here a legacy just gets his/her app read by the Dean of admissions before being rejected. Rarely is the decision overturned. Sucks for me, being the only good place I have legacy. lol</p>
kid from my school a couple of years ago was a physics genius. had perfect scores on SAT, ACT, and 3 Subject Tests. also had a near perfect GPA. never got anything below an A. lots of good ECs (did research and what not) yet he got rejected. our college counselor called in to make sure it wasn’t a mistake and was told that MIT rejected him because he didn’t show enough love/passion for science. (this kid had won/participated in numerous science fairs, was on the science and math team, and was literally a genius. kid ended up going to stanford.)</p>
<p>
that’s a stupid analogy. if you suck at school you won’t get into any good schools period.</p>
<p>i also think this whole subject of “meritocracy” is funny. it seems that people who support it support it because they think it will boost their chances or keep people who are “unworthy” of admittance from getting admittance. “meh meh meh i want to feel like i earned my spot/sob sob sob i want to be sure that whoever got “my” spot is more qualified than me…” just ridiculous.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with legacies…and that’s to no personal advantage for myself. My legacies are at Oregon State and the (I believe) now-defunct U. of Tennessee-Memphis.</p>
<p>“kid from my school a couple of years ago was a physics genius. had perfect scores on SAT, ACT, and 3 Subject Tests. also had a near perfect GPA. never got anything below an A. lots of good ECs (did research and what not) yet he got rejected. our college counselor called in to make sure it wasn’t a mistake and was told that MIT rejected him because he didn’t show enough love/passion for science. (this kid had won/participated in numerous science fairs, was on the science and math team, and was literally a genius. kid ended up going to stanford.)”</p>
<p>What’s your point? Are you trying to imply that MIT rejects more stellar students than Stanford for random reasons? That’s backwards. Of all the elite schools, Stanford is the worst in terms of taking less than stellar students over academic stars.</p>
<p>University of Michigan doesn’t take legacy into account.</p>
<p>But how exactly do you determine what a true meritocracy is? I think the problem with any school being a true meritocracy is that there are many different ideas of what constitutes the highest merit. Some people may focus on test scores and grades, but not all schools’ grading systems are equal, and what about students who are very bright but don’t perform well on standardized tests? The same can be argued for systems/ideals based more on essays and other subjective qualities.</p>
This may have been what the counselor told the kid, but MIT almost certainly did not say this to the counselor. MIT and other top schools don’t give reasons for rejection to disappointed applicants, mostly because there’s often not a “reason” someone was rejected other than that there was a huge pool of other qualified candidates. Unfortunately, a very large chunk of MIT’s applicant pool has great scores and grades and participates in science extracurriculars.</p>
<p>At any rate, wouldn’t it be reasonable for MIT to select only students who were certain they loved science or engineering? MIT is mostly a science and engineering school, after all, and all students have to pass a science-intensive core curriculum. It would be just super to have a math-clueless literary genius at MIT, but if he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pass the general institute requirements, what would be the point?</p>
no, the story was straight from the GC’s mouth. anyways, GC’s are allowed to contact admissions officers. also, since this kid was a unique case (perfect test scores, etc.) MIT sort of had to have a “reason” to reject him.</p>
<p>
as i said in my earlier post, the kid i was talking about was a physics genius who wanted to major in, you guessed it, physics. i also later said that he was literally a genius. not a literary genius.</p>
<p>anyways, once MIT starts trying to decide who demonstrates “passion” for math and sciences it can no longer be considered a meritocracy because how can they quanitify “passion” for math and sciences? whether or not they believe you show “passion” for the sciences and math is subjective.</p>
<p>There are some posters on here that seem to think meritocracy is about looking at hard test scores. That’s not meritocracy.</p>
<p>However a school judges a student (by ECs, their essay, etc…), if a student gets in because they think he/she is qualified, it is meritocracy. If they get in because a school wants to foster or maintain a relationship with their family, it is legacy.</p>
<p>2 billion people in China and India combined would tell you otherwise. Not saying I agree or disagree, it’s just that defining meritocracy is a flawed goal.</p>
<p>I think the way meritocracy is defined in India and China is due to the large population; with so many people applying to the same top colleges, numbers are really the only standard to go by because of the impossible task of holistically reviewing hundreds of thousands of applications.</p>
<p>It’s very unlikely that the admissions office would give a reason why a specific candidate was rejected. They may have said that one way someone could get rejected despite perfect scores was if they didn’t demonstrate enough passion.</p>
<p>I have been a pretty outspoken critic here of MIT’s concept of demonstrating “passion”, but your example is not a good one. The SAT I and SATII’s have a pretty low ceiling. Did this guy make USAMO? Did he make the training camp for the physics olympics? That’s what most scientists consider a “genius.” Caltech doesn’t care whether you make one mistake on an SAT or no mistakes either–you’ve got to win some contests where the ceiling is higher. </p>
<p>And also, I did understand your previous post. My point is that meritocracy is not a binary designation, and the implication of your post seemed to be that MIT was worse than other elite schools, intended or not. MIT still does not consider legacy, development admits, or athleticism; so it’s still better than Stanford or the ivies. (Yeah, I know they read over legacy applications a second time, but they claim to never have reversed a decision.) And the ivies and especially Stanford are still worse than MIT at admitting people because of quirky essays or for other stupid reasons. I’ve seen an all-state musician, double USAMO/USAPHO qualifier who was on the national champion ARML team get rejected from Harvard. This was back when you had to be in the top 100 in the country to make USAMO. And his grades/stats were perfect. So there are much worse cases than your friend happening at the other elite schools.</p>
<p>Well, in the US meritocracy is understood to mean getting in on one’s own merit. It has nothing to do with HOW that merit is judged. I think the OP was using this common understanding of the term when posing the question.</p>
<p>i think that what applejack is attempting to say is that meritocracy is based on hard data, not ‘soft’ data that can be opinion based (ECs, volunteer service, essays, etc). This includes grades and standardized test scores. China relies solely on one annual test to place kids into college–that’s about as pure a meritocracy as you can get today (I do not know of India’s practice).</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a US meritocracy.</p>
<p>There are different ways to define academic merit. But legacy, athletic, and development admits are clearly outside of that umbrella. I believe essays, volunteer service, and non-academic EC’s also really have little to do with academic merit, but it’s not as obvious as the legacy and developmental cases. I guess you could argue that someone has to be smarter to get the same grades plus juggling other activities (i.e., getting same grade in less time), but that argument gets pretty dicey. It’s really not academic merit. Even if you take the word “academic” out of it, many people have problems with volunteer service because it’s not that hard to inflate it to look like it’s something that it’s not.</p>
<p>No. I’m saying the opposite. It was just a passing comment to help keep the conversation on the same assumptions. Now I regret making it.</p>
<p>Meritocracy - hard data (test scores, GPA) and / or soft data (ECs, essay) being judged to determine whether a student is qualified in his or her own right to attend.</p>
<p>Any acceptance based on legacy or donation in exchange for admittance is not meritocracy.</p>