Advice for the ages

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>"Students who are admitted (and their parents and friends) will probably believe that they were admitted because of merit... Don't believe it."</p>

<p>THANK YOU! Oh god I was so scared that for a second I thought that I got in here because I have brains. Nope, I'm just another retard who applied (which automagically makes me awesome right, the fact that I filled out a piece of paper?) and got lucky. /Sarcasm</p>

<p>Yes I'm sure every admissions decision boils down to piano players vs. ski jumpers. </p>

<p>Look I get what you are saying about don't feel dejected if you don't get in. But that's no reason to start slamming people who did get in. A lot of students do get in on merit. It's deceptive to think that even though you didn't get in, you're somehow a lot smarter than all the multi-IMO-gold-medalists and siemens/sts winners etc etc. Some people have spent most of their childhood systematically training themselves in mathematics and sciences rigorously, and as it turns out, these people do very well in the MIT admissions pool. To say it's completely luck based is an insult to their efforts.</p>

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<p>"To say it's completely luck based is an insult to their efforts."</p>

<p>Hey, I never said it's "completely luck." If you go back and read my first post, you'll see that I wrote: "luck plays a role."</p>

<p>Nor is it any insult to an MIT student to say that there were others equally qualified in any given year who did not get in. I'm the parent of a freshman at MIT. I believe she belongs there. I believe Paul belongs there. I believe YOU belong there. But where perhaps you and I differ is that I also believe hundreds of other applicants could have fit in beautifully at MIT, but were turned away. Matt McGann said as much in San Jose, at an admissions session to which I took my son. The low admit rate is a function of the increasing numbers of students who apply.</p>

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<p>I think where you and I differ is in wording. You say that: </p>

<p>"hundreds of other applicants could have fit in beautifully at MIT, but were turned away."</p>

<p>Here I am not frustrated with this statement (which I agree with). But from what I understood, we weren't talking about which applicants would fit beautifully. We were talking about people getting in on merit. And while 70% of the pool to MIT may be qualified to go to MIT, you cannot say that 70% of MIT's applicant pool is of equal merit. </p>

<p>So the main question you have to ask is, if you were to sort applicants by assigning each a score, then yes, many applicants would fall in the same score bound. Suppose we have a small pool of applicants with fitness-scores (you can think of these scores as a on a scale of 0-100, how much of a match is this student for MIT, or w/e type of scaling you like) like this:</p>

<p>Score: # applicants</p>

<p>100: 7
90: 20
80: 25
70: 15
60: 5</p>

<p>So that's 72 applicants right there. Suppose MIT can only take 30 applicants. That means that the cutoff is in the 80's. So yes, for those applicants in the 80's, there is hair pulling, and you can argue that many others are qualified to get in (from the 80's).</p>

<p>This example may be exaggerated, but the point is that the people with 100 scores clearly didn't have hundreds of other applicants who could have filled their spots.</p>

<p>If students want an indicator of how they stand, they shouldn't look to binary decisions like accepted or rejected. Instead, they should look at their own personal statistics, and ask themselves how much do they actually know? </p>

<p>Also I think it's a bad idea for parents and students to go around calling applicants awesome or amazing and "really smart." That kind of praise should be reserved for when it is truly deserved. Instead of saying "If you applied to MIT, you are already amazing, whatever the outcome." That just dilutes the definition of amazing. Amazing is the type of word I would call my professors, or someone who just got their PhD after completing an absolutely stunning thesis. But calling a prefrosh or freshmen undergraduate amazing? Amazing? What have they done? Gotten through a school system, maybe shadowed a real scientist, etc etc. Their life has just barely started! Give them time to do stuff instead of diluting the few words of praise in the english language.</p>

<p>I realize this post may come off as making me look incredibly arrogant. But all I'm saying is that I don't think students should fool themselves one way or another into thinking they are really smart. Whether or not you get into MIT or HYP doesn't make too much of a difference at this age, since you haven't even had the chance to do things that people can judge.</p>

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<p>Differential: "I realize this post may come off as making me look incredibly arrogant."
Ask-Paul: "Because, quite frankly, my fellow students and I are the most qualified students MIT could admit. ... I hope this doesn't come across as arrogant." </p>

<p>Well...I will leave it to other readers to decide whether this is arrogance. </p>

<p>I'll say this: I'm writing for a different audience, perhaps. My post was intended for the hopeful MIT applicant reading this board who may end up with a rejection letter. I've served on grad admissions panels, and from my experience, I can say that at a highly selective university department, it is often the case that there is no difference between one admitted student and one rejected student. At the undergraduate level, most schools select with some sort of geographic diversity in mind, and so despite the fact that there may be 6-8 math olympians at each of the the high-powered Silicon Valley high schools with which I'm familiar, MIT has never admitted more than 2-3 from one school for the past 10 years. </p>

<p>I also believe strongly that most admitted students -- like most Pulitzer prize winners -- never credit luck with having played any role in their success, although it does. Luck always plays a role.</p>

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<p>differential: I mainly agree with your argument, but you are forgetting that the reason people say things like "If you applied to MIT, you are already amazing, whatever the outcome." is not because the person is necessarily amazing but more to calm their nerves because the reason we worry about these things is that we are smart enough to realize the truth. While I agree your definition of amazing is better our culture does not generally agree (hence we have "Participation Awards" which reward one for any performance). However this is not the place to debate the merits of these beliefs.</p>

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<p>For what it's worth, I agree with CalAlum -- the students admitted by MIT each year are very bright and capable, and clearly represent some of the top high school seniors in the country, but I think that many students rejected from MIT also fit that profile.</p>

<p>And I think that in part because I agree with differential -- it's often difficult to tell which college applicants are truly amazing, apart from a few obvious superstars, simply because they've done so little real intellectual work that would differentiate them clearly.</p>

<p>At any rate, I read one of my statements from the original post with chagrin:

Ahh, sometimes I feel a little like Cassandra. ;)</p>

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<p>differential, I actually think that it is possible for a student to be "brilliant..." If the student is an IMO gold medalist, he is almost equivalent to a professional mathematician...</p>

<p>In addition, if said student was an ISEF finalist, he would be brilliant as well, because the awards is equivalent to a "Junior Nobel Prize."</p>

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<p>I agree with CalAlum. You may argue not all rejected applicants are equaly qualify for MIT. Then I can argue not all accepted students are equaly merit qualify. I understand what CalAlum try to say was there were overlap as far as merit quality between those who got accepted and who got rejected. There is difference:</p>

<p>ALL MIT accepted are merit better than ALL rejected. <-- false!
Most MIT accepted are merit better than Most rejected. <-- true!
Small portion of MIT rejected are merit better than some of accepted <-- true! CalAlum's example came to mind.</p>

<p>Luck dose play a role in those top notched highly selected college admission. When a college try to bring the 'diversity' into their admission process, the selection process will never be pure 'academic merit' based selection.</p>

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<p>mollie, is this true that once they start selection session, they are not going to read any new come materials?</p>

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<p>Yes, it is true. I actually emailed Ben about that this morning.</p>

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<p>i'm not sure if updates would be considered supplemental material or not, so-</p>

<p>will MIT accept and take into consideration updates on new accomplishments that are submitted after February 15?</p>

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<p>anotherNJmom: See the example I gave previously. You will see that I mentioned the exact same results from my example. </p>

<p>The issue that caused me to post is when CalAlum made the statement:</p>

<p>"Students who are admitted (and their parents and friends) will probably believe that they were admitted because of merit. They will believe that they were admitted because they were the most talented, the most capable, the most worthy.....whatever. Don't believe it."</p>

<p>If you go through that statement very carefully, you'll see that this implies that the top students admitted to MIT weren't admitted on merit. This is clearly false. As you yourself said:</p>

<p>Small portion of MIT rejected are merit better than some of accepted <-- true! CalAlum's example came to mind.</p>

<p>This is an example of where CalAlum's statement is true. But his statement also applies to the rest of MIT's accepted applicants, whereas his statement really applies for that fuzzy region near the bottom of the accepted pool and the top of the rejected pool.</p>

<p>The argument isn't one big side against another. It's based on a very picky detailed reading of CalAlum's statement, and how he worded it.</p>

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<p>


</p>

<p>Exactly - and, for the most part, I have no problem with anything CalAlum said. But I did take offense to the notion that students admitted to MIT are somehow not as qualified, or less worthy of MIT, than those students who were not admitted. CalAlum - while I understand your intent better now that you have stated your intended audience, I think that we're all just being overly picky.</p>

<p>Perhaps I started this by making a mountain out of a molehill, but in the main I did agree with your post. Please try and understand what was running through my head when I read your statement - or, indeed, how your own daughter would have reacted if you had said that to her.</p>

<p>((A final word on arrogance. It's a problem I think most MIT students/potential students deal with at some point; and it comes out even more clearly when said students are riled. Still, I would like to defend my previous post by pointing out that the somewhat grandiose statements I made were issued in praise, not of myself, but of my class - indeed, the entire student body - as a whole. If I really did appear to come across as a pompous *******, I'd like to apologize. I sincerely hope you will extend me the same courtesy by apologizing for your previous statement as well, but ultimately that's up to you.</p>

<p>In the long run, being at MIT has actually been a humbling experience in many ways - I am most definitely not the smartest person here, and I know it full well. For me, coming to grips with that fact was a necessary evil that, ultimately, turned out to be a liberation.))</p>

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<p>Ask-Paul: "for the most part, I have no problem with anything CalAlum said. But I did take offense to the notion that students admitted to MIT are somehow not as qualified, or less worthy of MIT, than those students who were not admitted."</p>

<p>Ah, but I never wrote this. I never stated that students admitted to MIT were not as qualified, or were less worthy. What I wrote in the original post was this:
" Whatever others say, remember that luck plays a role in the admissions process...Students who are admitted (and their parents and friends) will probably believe that they were admitted because of merit. They will believe that they were admitted because they were the most talented, the most capable, the most worthy.....whatever. Don't believe it. Sometimes an admissions committee, trying to decide between two EQUALLY TALENTED students, will select the ski jumper over the pianist, particularly if the committee has accepted four or five pianists already." </p>

<p>The point I was trying to make is simply that luck plays a role, and that sometimes the choice comes to a toss-up between two equally talented students.</p>

<p>Paul, I don't think my daughter would have any trouble with what I've written here. Why? At her high school, there were two or three top students, very evenly matched. This school is in the heart of Silicon Valley, and many of the students are the children of scientists and engineers, some of whom are MIT grads. My daughter got in to every school to which she applied except Harvard. The other student got in to every school except MIT. Unfortunately, they BOTH wanted to go to MIT, but only one was accepted. My daughter is not so arrogant as to believe that she is somehow more "brilliant" or "gifted" than her friend. If she were, I'd be disappointed. </p>

<p>By the way, I'm female, not male, and I believe that you know my daughter.
:-)</p>

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<p>In that case, I apologize for mis-interpreting your words (and making, perhaps, a flaming idiot of myself). I think I understand much better where you are coming from now. Indeed, I never tried to dispute that "luck" (as you call it - though I believe that's really not the best word) does play some role in admissions. At the same time, though, I can't help but hope that your daughter really was a better match for MIT than her friend who was rejected.</p>

<p>(I suppose I should state that a "better match," as I see it, doesn't necessarily mean "more intelligent/accomplished/gifted" - which, ultimately, gets back to the whole arrogance issue. I believe both of us would agree big-headedness is something to be avoided at all costs.)</p>

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<p>Luck plays a role in everything, yet luck is an intrinsic quality of the self. Luck can't happen if there's nothing there to create it.</p>

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<p>@orbis_somnio : Yeah, I think so too.</p>

<p>I mean, as a prospective student, somehow I have never doubted that MIT's admission process might be random, it might appear to be sometime, but then when you weigh an accepted applicant against a rejected one, you cannot strictly compare and say, this was the reason why someone was rejected.. There must have been something to each and every student who was accepted which made them stand out.... I might be wrong, but I just feel that way. I hope I am not wrong.. :)</p>

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<p>
[quote]
i'm not sure if updates would be considered supplemental material or not, so-</p>

<p>will MIT accept and take into consideration updates on new accomplishments that are submitted after February 15?

[/quote]

No. After they go into committee, they're no longer reading applications, and therefore they're no longer considering new material.</p>

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<p>I'm wondering if CalAlum's daughter ever posted in CC? :-)</p>

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<p>@ another NJmom: No, I doubt very much if my daughter ever has visited College Confidential. </p>

<p>To Ask-Paul and Differential: I'm going to take responsibility for a lot of the misunderstanding on the thread, because my writing could have been much more clear in the original post!</p>