<p>2 siemens national finalists were also deferred....I just found out</p>
<p>Individual or Teams?</p>
<p>1 individual...and 1 team</p>
<p>sort of unrelated, but why did they decide to admit 5 sophomores to RSI in 05? I thought the point was to have everyone be sort of the same age (although we all know there were age differences of an illegal sort anyway ^_^). did they even solicit applications from sophomores that year?</p>
<p>aint<em>no</em>mountain is right. harvard can't take all the great science/math people. they emphasize a liberal arts education anyways. gotta leave some for mit and caltech lol</p>
<p>
[quote]
i think harvard's stress on diversity over merit is stronger than almost any other college out there. EA accepted versus deferred stats proves it.
[/quote]
I think you are discounting the many highly ranked humanties applicants. It is arguably more difficult to achieve in humanties if you look at SAT scores. It's really a numbers game. A high percentage of all the contest winners, RSI, and TASP apply, many in the EA round. Out of 800 odd selections, Harvard isn't going to take them all. They also take the majority of the athletes, developmental admits, etc during EA. In short, they take what they want and leave the rest.</p>
<p>bandit_TX: I don't think SAT scores say anything about whether it's easier to achieve in math/science than in humanities, because SATs--all sections, math, reading, writing--are much, much easier than any of the competitions we're talking about.</p>
<p>It seems to be much harder to rank humanities students than science students. I can't venture to say which requires more time or effort or talent to succeed at, although from personal experience I know many primarily math/science people who are accomplished writers, but few really good writers who also do well in science and math. (That to me suggests that math/science is tougher, but it's a personal bias.)</p>
<p>Let's just say the colleges find plenty of top math and science people, hence the surplus the last few years and the hurt feelings.</p>
<p>i wouldnt be surprised if the adcom people are overly critical of applicants with siemens, RSI etc in terms of the personality factor. how did the interviews go guys?</p>
<p>Yeh...math people tend to be better at the humanities than the humanities people are at math.</p>
<p>i think 9 rickoids were deferred from harvard, 12 got in; 3 were deferred from stanford as well. for rickoids this year, the admissions process was brutal.<br>
i went to rsi, won second at isef, was a siemens semi, and, wait for it, am from kentucky...and was deferred.
the deferral wasn't completely negative, as it it did prompt me to finish the rest of my college apps. Good luck to everyone else who was deferred; there's always hope in april :D
btw. i find it really cool that mit sent out admissions on pi day last year.</p>
<p>another thing; humanities people tend to write essays and conduct interviews better than those in the math/sciences. I've heard of people without stellar stats, but wrote great essays, and were accepted.</p>
<p>i don't think that's necessarily wise on Harvard's part though.
so if someone accomplishes something truly amazing, you're going to discredit them because some less impressive applicant can write an essay that is slightly better?</p>
<p>I contend that essays matter but not as much as people make it out to be. Remember, most of the admissions decision is based on academics. If the kid doesn't have the academics (of course, all in context), the essay sometimes doesn't even get read - since he/she wouldn't be competitive in final committee.</p>
<p>I have a couple of thoughts about why all of these contest finalists did not get admitted. First of all, Harvard seems to attract many more of these math/science contest finalists/winners/RSI kids than any of the other top schools. Whenever they have press releases about winners of science and math competitions and where they are going to college, there are always more kids going to Harvard than anywhere else. This also means that they face their stiffest competition at Harvard admissions.</p>
<p>Students who do well in these competitions are certainly talented, but they also get a lot of help. To do well in these national competitions, you have to not only be talented but have access to resources. These kids have high level math training and access to laboratories and mentors. It's no accident that certain schools produce more of these contest winners than others. I'm not saying these kids aren't talented, but they have more opportunities than other kids who may be equally as talented. A number of years ago a local student won the top prize at the Intel science fair as a junior for inventing an important medical device. I later heard she was not accepted to Harvard and everyone was shocked. A few years later one of my sons had her former science teacher. The teacher told him that this student had gotten a tremendous amount of "help" from one of her parents who was a scientist in the field of her project. The teacher said that the student had actually not done much of the work themselves and their parent actually developed the idea. I guess Harvard was able to see through this.</p>
<p>Harvard and other top schools are also trying to actively recruit talented students who are from low income families with fewer opportunities to showcase their talents as high school students. I think that's one of the reasons may be seeing more math/science students admitted, but they are not all contest finalists/winners.</p>
<p>The same is true for RSI kids. Geographic location figures heavily in acceptance into RSI. I'm pretty sure they will only take 2-3 kids at most from any one state. That means that if you live in a state that has a lot of strong math/science kids you could be extremely talented and not get into RSI. I remember reading posts from kids with very strong profiles who were very disappointed they were not accepted to RSI. A lot of them were later accepted at Harvard.</p>
<p>I also wonder if the day of the well lopsided student is coming to an end. I'm seeing more evidence of admissions officers looking for students that have exceptional ability, but are also well grounded and balanced in other areas. I'm referring to recent comments from Marilee Jones of MIT and statements from another poster about students who were strong in math/science but very talented in other areas as well. There is also much more emphasis on interdisciplinary cooperation and research in academia today. The belief is that the important discoveries of the future will require cross disciplinary expertise. So schools are looking for students with interests and talents in more than one area.</p>
<p>Here's a quote from the current president of Princeton that I found on the Princeton website:</p>
<p>
[quote]
There seems to be a sense that while in the past Princeton looked for very well-balanced students, now Princeton wants a well- balanced class, with different students who are exceptional in different things.
Both [former admission dean] Fred Hargadon and Janet Rapelye have said to me that this is a misrepresentation of what an admission department thinks about and what they face. Because the pool of applicants is so strong, you dont have to make these kinds of apparently distinctive choices. You can have someone who is an absolutely stellar mathematician, but is much more than that.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The RSI limit is 4/state max( I heard this from jrickert, so uh, it's probably still quite valid)</p>
<p>Anyway, based on talking to people who were deferred from RSI, it just seems really arbitrary. Like uh, it wasn't that the people who were deferred were retarded at essay writing or couldn't do anything besides talk about math problems. And I don't think the other more competitive kids in the area applies to this year's deferrals either.</p>
<p>Has anyone gotten in touch with their regional adcom</p>
<p>Leah--hadn't heard that one before; from what I heard, RSI didn't have to satisfy a geographic diversity requirement. I suppose it's possible--say in MA, I think there were only four people, even though there probably could have been more easily. p.s. you, uh, type like you talk</p>
<p>Decisions will be announced tomorrow, I hear, so let's see how many science and math people deferred from the early round will be accepted in the regular round.</p>
<p>I'm curious about this too, so I hope some of these deferees or their parents/friends let us know. (My son's a math-science type, and he was admitted, but he didn't apply early so they didn't get a chance to defer him :) )</p>