<p>I’ve heard of stories that Harvard rejects these type of people. And I’ve read their bios online and they seem very well rounded and have good social skills. So why?</p>
<p>Harvard rejects a lot of extremely well qualified students in every field, so it’s not about rejecting IMO applicants - it’s just that very few accomplishments can be considered a ‘guarantee’ or near-guarantee of admission to ANY of the top 5-10 colleges, so you shouldn’t think of IMO that way, and wonder why they didn’t get accepted. Lots of great students of every sort didn’t, either.</p>
<p>But honestly, I would think that qualifying for IMO is probably the biggest accomplishment one can achieve in high school. So what would be one of the accomplishments that can be “considered a ‘guarantee’ or near-guarantee of admission to ANY of the top 5-10 colleges”?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Harvard has 1,600 spaces per year for an entering class selected from amazing applicants all over the world.</p>
<p>Do we actually have evidence that Harvard has rejected IMO winners? Which?</p>
<p>Perhaps they reject them because of their arrogant attitudes in believing that IMO gives them an auto admit comes across in their applications. Harvard is looking to build a diverse class of people that will fit into their college community. What makes IMO so superior over a brilliant musician or writer?</p>
<p>^^superior talent in mathematics is somewhat easier to quantify than for music. It’s even harder to identify the top 5 writers in the US at the age of 18.</p>
<p>So, I would say IMO would be a better predictor of future success in mathematics than any sort of competition/indicator of writing talent at the age of 18.</p>
<p>Which IMO winners have been rejected from Harvard? I have never heard of this happening.</p>
<p>The OP said ‘team members’, not winners - I know too little about IMO to know how many team members there are vs winners…</p>
<p>On what the near-guarantees are, you’d have to ask Harvard admissions, but in the past I’ve seen items like winning an Olympic medal, publishing a book, winning Intel, etc mentioned. I am guessing WINNING the IMO is in there, too - but I would look on any of these anyway as merely greatly increasing one’s chances, not a guarantee. They may, after all, decide they’re ‘not that into you’ :)</p>
<p>Well, the two that I know of (or I’ve heard of from multiple sources) were gold medalists (they were IOI gold medalists as well). And generally, US team members win at least a bronze medal. There are only 6 members, so the members consist of the best 6 high school math students in the nation.</p>
<p>Also, I think gold medals means top 1/12 of all the IMO competitors. Not 100% sure though.</p>
<p>^^did these guys win IMO their junior year or their senior year? Obviously, if they only won their senior year it wouldn’t be on their application.</p>
<p>Even if they only won it senior year, it’s still pretty unbelievable because they undoubtedly had made MOSP junior year and placed highly there.</p>
<p>I pretty sure they’ve been on the team multiple times. Generally that’s the case with IMO members. Their abilities don’t necessarily increase by a lot from say, Jr year to Sr year. Look at some of the team members this year, they won gold last year but silver this year.</p>
<p>lol… im sure they got into SOME Ivy/MIT/Stanford/Caltech. why the complaining? i think every school is idiosyncratic in its own ways… we just have to accept that.</p>
<p>An IMO medal is unequal to a creative talent on mathematics. Just do questions over and over. China had laureled IXOs medals over decades, but got no nobel or fields prize.</p>
<p>^Two of the four most recent Fields Medalists were IMO gold medal winners. (The guy from Russia who refused it and Terrence Tao.) The other guys were from Europe and probably didn’t participate in it.</p>
<p>I have to disagree about the creativity thing. At the level of IMO you have to be pretty creative. It’s not like you get there and solve problems you have seen. </p>
<p>IMO and Putnam winners (the college version of IMO) have a great record of achievement. Many of the Putnam fellows (top 6) ended up winning the Nobel Prize in physics. For those of you who follow science, Richard Feynman was a Putnam Fellow.</p>
<p>And BTW I knew a math professor at Harvard personally who had the utmost respect for IMO. When he heard someone at my high school made the US Math Olympics team, he was like, “wow, those guys were at a much higher level than me.” He wasn’t good enough to make the team.</p>
<p>tongchen, of course, they both went to MIT. But that’s not the point. Why would Harvard pass on these guys?</p>
<p>Yea, I don’t see how you can be uncreative and still write ingenious and elegant solutions to IMO problems.</p>
<p>Agreed with stupidkid. Anyone who characterizes IMO participants as “uncreative” or the problems they do as mere plug-and-chug is embarrassingly mistaken.</p>
<p>I think it’s a mistake to think that because a particular top college denies someone that they were flawed in some way, or even that they were not stunning candidates. Perhaps Harvard admitted some international IMO applicants that year who were even more stellar in Math. </p>
<p>Stanford is explicit about reminding applicants that some of the application variables are out of applicants’ control - in particular who else is applying that year. I am glad that the students you cite applied wisely, to a number of different colleges outstanding in their field - they did end up at an equally world-renowned college.</p>
<p>That would be my advice to ALL standout candidates (and all candidates, but the stellar ones find the outcomes most baffling, and so may need reminding the most) - at any top 10-20 college, no matter how good you are, there is a degree of randomness to the outcome, so apply to a suite of standout colleges (for applicants like IMO winners, target and reach colleges are the same, so apply to several) and then create the best application possible. And, as I have been saying to my children for 6 years, under no account should you fall in love with a college until AFTER you have been admitted!</p>
<p>^^
Colleges cannot take the number of international applicants that they might like–I’ve heard this is due to federal funding (which even private colleges depend on.) MIT, for instance, only allows 15% of the class to be made up of international students. I think this is common, and btw, this is the reason why people tell international students that it is so much harder to get in as an international student.</p>
<p>So saying there may be IMO winners who are international students is not really a valid explanation as to why US IMO winners may be rejected. </p>
<p>Also, most international IMO winners don’t even apply to U.S. colleges.</p>
<p>^
I’m not trying to explain the outcome - only Harvard admissions can do that. I am only pointing out the possibilities, and in this case, even though most international IMO winners may not apply to harvard, perhaps that year some did. There is no particular reason to wonder why IMO members didn’t get in, any more than there is reason to wonder why every Intel finalist didn’t get in, or every top 5 debater in the country…</p>
<p>The real point here is that all top colleges admit a mix of outstanding talents and skills and interests (apart from Math Olympiad team members, there are Science Olympiads, Intel and Seimens and other very prestigious competitions, nationally ranked debaters, athletes, musicians, actors, published writers, etc etc etc), and harvard also makes a point of saying they want a good leavening of ‘regular kids’ as well. So, without knowing the details of the applicant pool that year, no one can attempt explanations - one should just be aware that these outcomes happen every single year, and so students need to apply to a number of schools that are appropriate to their achievement level (apart from some safeties). </p>
<p>And walking the talk, my advice to my daughters, has been that, given the unpredictability of outcomes, they should have 5-7 ‘target’ schools, and 2 ‘safeties’. And again, not to fall in love with any school…</p>