@Twoin18 I think that’s a good case for the kids to get to know their AO or if possible interview with someone other than alumni. If you’ve got a student who is good with people, getting them out in front of the decision makers might make a difference. We’ve been told as much by our GC.
Use profs to interview more than 10k kids?
My older son got a lot of 800s (three subject tests in one take), 800 on the CR every time he took the SAT, 760+ on math, 5s on all his APs. But he didn’t walk on water - only 3 out of 10 on the AIMES (math test) for example. He’s close to top 1% of an already preselected gifted sample if you go by CTY testing in middle school, but is he “one of the 200 brightest minds” of his generation? (or whatever the Harvard AO was quoted were auto-admits - I don’t think so. You better believe we had two safeties - along with a reach heavy list.
“Use profs to interview more than 10k kids?”
Who said more than 10K? Oxbridge do it, they limit the number of interviews to three times the number of places. So more like 4K-5K at HYPS. Oxbridge work on two 20 min interviews per candidate, plus 10 mins break between. So with 16 interviews in an 8 hour day, if you only do a single interview per candidate then it would mean 100 professors devoting 3 days to this each year (I assume they’d choose one academic per interview and one adcom not the 2-3 academics Oxbridge use) which is not that onerous.
You make all candidates come to college and pay for their travel if need be. Hosting them there is a great boost for yield, that’s one reason why scholarship interviews do it.
In my view, the main purpose of a university is academic. It is not preparation for a career in finance, nor for med school or law school, nor for being prominent outside academia later. In my view, a university is not an exclusive social club. It is not an assemblage that is designed to stage a good musical (except in the schools where that is the actual purpose), hobby-level orchestral performance, or puppet show.
To the extent that the extra qualities considered in the holistic review add to the assessment of the academic depth of the applicant, I am all for them. Otherwise I am not. Of course, I would rule out candidates if there were character defects; but I would not select on personality.
I realize that this is not a commonly held view. It is a bit more like the Oxbridge model, though. Both Oxford and Cambridge have lively and fascinating groups of undergraduates who interact very well, without being selected for those qualities.
lookingforward, sometime back, you referred somewhat disparagingly to applicants who say (in effect): “Here I am in all my high school glory.” Among the people I have known who had actual high-school academic glory, the total number who would have thought about themselves that way is 0. I’d be inclined to say that if an applicant really thought of their “high school glory,” the odds are that the admissions committee is looking at pyrite. However, if the admissions committee members are imputing that thought to the student, and it’s not actually held by the student, that’s unfair. [Yeah, I know, life is unfair, get over it, etc.]
Among the people I have known who had high-school athletic glory, that is a much more common view.
With regard to blossom’s comment about perfectly good alternatives outside of HYPSM + a handful of other schools: If I am not mistaken, blossom’s child/children were admitted to the very top schools. The remarks about great universities elsewhere would be better in my opinion, if coming from people whose children did not go to top schools.
I have commented earlier about the significantly faster pace of German classes at Harvard (based on one of mathmom’s posts about it) vs. the pace at my perfectly fine alternative university.
MIT is famous for pacing its classes so that students feel as though they are drinking from fire hoses. What if MIT only admitted students who were capable enough of handling the challenges that they did not feel that they were drinking from fire hoses? Maybe there are not enough out there. But maybe if a few more of them were admitted, they could help the other MIT students who do feel as though they are being asked to drink from fire hoses.
I think this obsession with “perfect” standardized test scores is silly. It’s easy to look at the score distributions and say, “Wow, only 2,760 kids scored a perfect 36 on the ACT in 2017, but a whopping 12,836 scored 35—so the 36s are in the top 0.1% (actually the top 0.136%) while the 35s were merely in the top 1% (0.697%). That’s an order of magnitude difference, so the perfect 36s must be truly the academic elite, while the 35s are merely excellent, but on a distinctly lower plane.”
To which I say, “Hooey.” First, you only get to 0.1% and 1% by some rather bold rounding—the actual figures are 0.136% and 0.697%, a decidedly smaller difference. Second and more importantly, the ACT and the SAT are just not that sensitive a diagnostic. The scores themselves are achieved by rounding to the nearest 10 on the SAT and the nearest 1 on the ACT, so a 36 on the ACT could actually be a 35.55 while a 35.48 would be rounded to 35. This could well be a difference of one or two questions on a very lengthy test. Of course, some of the 35s could actually be 34.6s, but the point is, you don’t know where along that continuum any particular 35 or 36 falls—there’s just no sharp break between 35 and 36. It also means that a student who scores a 36 on the first sitting could easily score a 35 or 34 on a retake—not because that student’s academic ability has deteriorated, but because it’s a different test. The tests are not perfectly consistent from one to the next, and they don’t always test exactly the same things with questions of exactly equal difficulty. And like the rest of us, all students have better and worse days. One test might also have questions that fall into a particular student’s wheelhouse, while other tests cover something slightly different.
Example: My daughter scored a perfect 800 on the SAT Literature subject test, in part because a series of questions required reading and analyzing a passage written in Elizabethan English. It just happened that my daughter had done a lot of reading, study, and performing of Shakespeare’s plays, and was fluent in Elizabethan English, so she found that passage, and the questions based on it, a breeze. After the test some other students were complaining about the beastly difficulty of that passage. Was my daughter’s ability in literature superior to theirs? Not necessarily; it’s just that her studies had prepared he exceptionally well for that particular test, and the other students hadn’t done as much Shakespeare. On another SAT Literature test, some other students might have performed equal well, perhaps better than my daughter. But of course, having scored 800 on the first sitting, there was no way my daughter was ever going to take that test again, because the next time she might get a 790 or 780. Same kid, same abiltiy, different test…
When I test in my classes, I don’t really distinguish between a 99 and 100—both are outstanding, essentially the same grade. The difference is just noise. The ACT scores on a cruder 36-point scale and consequently is less sensitive than my 100 point.scale.
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“MIT is famous for pacing its classes so that students feel as though they are drinking from fire hoses. What if MIT only admitted students who were capable enough of handling the challenges that they did not feel that they were drinking from fire hoses? Maybe there are not enough out there. But maybe if a few more of them were admitted, they could help the other MIT students who do feel as though they are being asked to drink from fire hoses.”
Quant, since you have questioned my credibility on the subject of the academic quality of CMU, Vanderbilt, etc. and the other research U’s I cited as being perfectly fine alternatives for very smart, super-stat kids, I will address this comment of yours specifically. Not that I think where my kids went has ANYTHING to do with the academic quality of some first rate research U’s, but that’s on you, not me.
For whatever reason, you’ve got a bug about MIT admissions based on (as far as you have posted previously) exactly one fantastic kid that you know who got rejected. But your comment above is illogical in the extreme. Unlike other colleges (where a kid can practice “GPA protection” by signing up for slower paced classes, or by repeating material they learned in HS AP classes or DE classes, or where advisers help a kid pad their course work so they can get in to med school) MIT’s advising doesn’t give kids much wiggle room to do that.
Hence the fire hose. A kid comes in with three solid years of physics studied at HS? Kid is placed in the “appropriate” class, for his or her level of prep. And it will be a fire hose. Kid comes in with one year of physics (because at his/her rural HS that’s all that was taught- and it was “college prep” and not AP?) Kid gets tracked into the appropriate class, again, a fire hose.
These are all capable students. But MIT cannot control for the wide variance in curricula, intensity, quality of teaching and lab facilities and funding at every HS in the world. Nor is it their mission to impose a uniform preparation across all HS students in the world.
What they can do is accept smart and capable and (often) brilliant students, and then teach enough versions of the required core curriculum so that everyone who graduates has compensated for their prep (or the lack thereof.)
You’ve got some delusion that there’s the Plan B version of MIT where the “holistic but not so great stats” admits get to take “Materials Science for poets” or “Topology for Dummies” which has the result of shutting out dozens of geniuses who ought to be admitted instead of the holistics.
And my only response is- if MIT had indeed engaged in an overall dumbing down over the last 20 years, the faculty would be fleeing for greener pastures, the students would be applying elsewhere, and the research grants would be targeted to all the other U’s and professors and labs. The new interdisciplinary centers for cog sci and life sciences and the continued entrepreneurship of the Media Lab would be holes in the ground with no funders and no academics interested in leading these cutting edge ventures- if indeed, the student body had been eroded by holistic admissions (as if admitting kids who are musically or artistically talented somehow undercuts the math/science focus).
Call me when that happens.
"lookingforward, sometime back, you referred somewhat disparagingly to applicants who say (in effect): “Here I am in all my high school glory.”
Um, no. I said: "You don’t get to just say, “Here I am, in all my hs glory. Love me…or something’s wrong with you.”
There’s a difference. And I’ve suggested in the past that you avoid quoting me, lest we get these mix-ups. kk?
The fact is: the way any 1 or 1001 posters think these tippy top colleges should admit, is not the reality. Those schools are not coming down off their perch to ask you. Nor is the Brtish model relevant. When you start your own college, go for whatever plan makes sense to you and your investors. If you find the US holistic system unpalatable, go elsewhere. If you so object to hoilistic, go for the best rack and stack college you can find.
Now, at this point, this particular argument usually turns to inequality (yup,) the idea that if there are standards, the poor kids or first gens or otherwise not guided by their parents kids are oh so woefully behind. They can’t firgure it out, etc, etc, etc. Maybe how there are kids in some poster’s area that don’t have this advantage or that. More anecdotes and vague “I heard that…”
And then I say, NOT.
LOL.
"I think this obsession with “perfect” standardized test scores is silly. It’s easy to look at the score distributions and say, “Wow, only 2,760 kids scored a perfect 36 on the ACT in 2017, but a whopping 12,836 scored 35—so the 36s are in the top 0.1% (actually the top 0.136%) while the 35s were merely in the top 1% (0.697%). That’s an order of magnitude difference, so the perfect 36s must be truly the academic elite, while the 35s are merely excellent, but on a distinctly lower plane.”
You’ve described perfectly my problem with US standardized tests. They simply don’t have enough discrimination to capture the long tail instead of the random fluctuations of performance within the top 1%.
For comparison, the typical math test my UK company used for potential employees had 32 questions to answer in half an hour (these were not intrinsically much harder than a math SAT-2 but more complex questions in way less time). If you scored 19 out of 32 that was benchmarked to be the top 5% of U.K. college graduates. Top 1% was 23-24 out of 32. The best score I know of (in a company with many Oxbridge graduates) was 29 out of 32.
College admisssions is not an exact science and test results are only one data set but if all things equal, I’m taking the kid who scored a perfect 36 on the ACT over the kid that scored 35. They both are exceptional but you need to break the tie some way…
^ But I’m not convinced colleges are necessarily all that interested in capturing the long tail. If they were, they’d pressure the College Board and SAT to use different tests. And they wouldn’t use a holistic admissions process that considers a lot of factors beyond sheer academic throw weight. I say if Harvard is content to educate some diverse mix of the top 1 or 2% rather than limiting itself to the top 0.1%, more power to 'em.
…well that is a much better test of what, faster math skills? Unfortunately none of these really test out who might be one of the greatest minds of the century or is it greatest leader, or is it something else? Out of the two things that usually garner successful outcomes in any field is talent and work ethic, of the two, work ethic is far more important but if you have both then you might just be the next Lebron James…
Socaldad2002 you can’t pick the 36 over the 35 as a tie breaker because it is likely meaningless statistically. A test score must be read in context of its statistical meaning. The scores are approximate measurement of a “true” score and only represents an approximate measurement of a theoretical score. In order for an institution to make such a decision, they would have to conclude that the delta represents some type of meaningful distinction otherwise it is simply voodoo.
There are a lot more colleges where the mid-range of the SAT allows distinguishing between applicants in a meaningful way (to the colleges) than there are elite colleges which have an overflow of applicants with 780+ scores in each section. The standardized testing market that the College Board sells to is not limited to elite colleges.
Again the focus on test scores, which are not as important as GPA, and only 1/6 of the application at least according to Harvard admissions.
“Again the focus on test scores, which are not as important as GPA”
Tell that to Oxbridge, which doesn’t care about GPA at all. It’s logical to conclude that US test scores aren’t that “important” (by which I presume you mean for being successful in college) because US students do lots of continually assessed busy work rather than the high stakes end of year exams that are all important for UK students. Horses for courses.
Which is better for doing a regular job? Probably the former. Which is better for success at the top levels of academia (and perhaps other areas)? I can see arguments for the latter.
In my mind, this always comes back to the question of whether or not the scores meaningfully differentiate above a certain point or merely act as a threshold. If everyone who scores 33 and above is capable of doing the work, then why use the higher scores to discriminate among students? At that point, you have a pool of qualified applicants and can look at the other metrics that contribute to a candidates success or fill institutional needs.
Those scores can tell a great deal but not necessarily who is going to be the most brilliant poet, or most creative scientist. What about the student who has research or inventions showing they have an original mind but are simply not great on standardized tests?
Moreover, the student who wants to study literature or history with 36s in the language sections and a 27 in math is just as qualified as the student with a 36 overall. What difference do the math scores make for the kid who will never open another math book again? The raw numbers don’t tell that story.
I don’t see how the British system figures in this thread.
@CU123 can you give a link to that 1/6?
Exactly. And the top colleges keep telling us this, but some people don’t want to hear it. I’ve seen statements from both Harvard and MIT admissions offices saying they regard a 750 and an 800 on an SAT as essentially the same score. Students scoring in that range are clearly capable of doing the work, especially if their GPA in a rigorous curriculum reflects that they are capable of harnessing that intellectual fire power to produce real results. Sure, they’d like to have some true geniuses around, people who will make the intellectual breakthroughs of the next generation. But that’s not captured well in standardized tests, whether it’'s the SAT, ACT, or a race-to-the-finish math quiz. A lot of it is the function of creativity and problem-solving ability, a gift for being able to look at an old problem in a new way, or an intuitive knack for spotting a problem that no one’s ever considered before. Standardized tests are terrible at identifying those qualities. Someone who has already shown flashes of that kind of ability in a math or science competition or in a truly original and brilliant written work will be of great interest to them—much more so than the applicant whose main claim to fame is that he scored 800 on every section of the SAT and every subject test he ever took. Or that he scored a 29 on a mathematics speed quiz.
An MIT rep said kids with any score with a 7 in front can do the work.