<p>(Editorial comment: People who can't work well in groups don't tend to do well at MIT. One of the big freshman bonding experiences is doing problem sets together in groups, because they're generally too difficult to do on one's own. Kids who are generally struggling are helped generously; kids who don't contribute because they're jerks are usually cut off. </p>
<p>We find the kind of kid you're describing completely obnoxious too. There aren't too many of them here -- even if they start off obnoxious and arrogant, they usually figure out pretty quickly that they need to play nice with everybody else.)</p>
<p>I would guess that the kid was rejected because he's exhibited no evidence of original scientific thought. If you have all that potential and know so much, why don't you do something intereseting with it - take a chance and just run - rather than just enter more competitions? Then again, we don't know the kid's full list of EC's. But still. MIT declares that the most important factor of an application i the applicant's character. How does this kid's stats list make him interesting?</p>
<p>Jeezus H., though--these are HIGH SCHOOL KIDS. Give them a break. Not everybody has the maturity to think "oh, I am so smart, let me apply my gifts to independent research." </p>
<p>After hanging out with teenagers for eight years, I wonder how adcoms do it. The creative ones like my S. are in the basement, building distributed computing systems to support protein folding research. As a result they forget to turn in their community service agreements on time and thus get a C in English--not because they are illiterate, but because they are not focused on completing their checklists. Then you have my daughter and her friends, who get their paperwork in on time, but are doing their "research" on adolescent social networks and are not quirky enough to build computers in the basement. On the other hand, they are the first ones to sense when another kid is struggling and offer help. D. mentored another girl in math last year and got her from thinking she was hopeless at math and would quit at the first opportunity to signing up for Algebra II/Trig. </p>
<p>I would not presume to know which type of kid would be best suited for MIT, but that's their job to sort it out. Both types of kids will do well in the right environment.</p>
<p>Mombot, I am not sure how relevant is your example in this discussion. Nobody likes an selfish and annoying person. The student I described is a honest and caring person. He ran the math club of 40-50 people. Officers were voted by peers. </p>
<p>BTW, I want to point out that if that obnoxious guy bragged his 800 on the Math I, it means his math skill is not good. In my earlier post, I said that 800 can be easily achieved by a 7th grader. In fact, the younger brother of this student made it too.</p>
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I basically agree with all said in the previous three posts. But when it comes to the objectivity of admission process, it is undeniable that ethnicity weighs in heavily. Asian students (especially male) are unfortunately in the disadvantage end.
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<p>How can you honestly say to yourself that Asian students are at a disadvantage when statistically they achieve some of the highest avg scores?</p>
<p>You completely ignore the fact that "statistically" many other groups do poorer than asians for a variety of reasons, and it's not simply a matter of being smarter (i hate that word). </p>
<p>If anything Asians are at a much higher advantage in life compared to other ethnic groups becuase they DO get the education that other groups do not get. I would hope that such an education allows an individual to really mature as a person and understand that difference between being educated, and just having good grades.</p>
<p>There are plenty of opportunities in this world for a well educated individual. If you feel that you "must" get into HYPSM then prepare to be disappointed. Plenty of people are qualified for such schools, and if you choose to ignore the plethora of schooling opportunities availble to you then perhaps you are not as educated as your scores tend to think.</p>
<p>christ. if you get rejected from a college and it's suddenly the end of your life and you have to bemoan the very injustice of it all endlessly to your peers, your friends, strangers on internet forums; if you're going to Yale and you feel somehow wronged in the college admissions process; if you're a sophomore in college and you can still cite your SAT scores and your entire laundry list of extracurriculars, volunteer hours, and awards won-- then quite frankly I'm glad I don't go to school with you.</p>
<p>bomit--maybe I wasn't clear. High SAT I and II scores are a specific type of data that indicate a type of cognitive ability probably related to traditional measures of intelligence such as IQ. Maybe it's a function of internet forums, but after reading and posting for several years on several types of forums I have become familiar with a certain type of personality that thinks this type of cognitive ability should get them some type of recognition beyond the test score itself, maybe career success, admission to a selective school, etc. when in fact this type of intelligence is just one factor in a complex mosaic of qualities that are necessary for success in something squishy like education, research or in a career. Test scores ignore discipline, they ignore emotional intelligence, they ignore tenacity, they ignore intuition, they ignore creativity--all of which are necessary to be successful in the "real world." </p>
<p>Other countries do a far better job of selecting for cognitive ability than the US--look at US math scores. Lots of hand wringing when we come out behind Bulgaria. However, the US has the most dynamic, flexible and resilient economy in the world. Why is that? I would say that it is because those selected for schools that contribute a large number of research and business leaders select for factors that go beyond the ability to recall facts and work preset problems.</p>
<p>From what I heard at the info session and stuff, MIT looks a lot more at traits like risk-taking and creativity than most other schools of similar caliber. So it isn't impossible to imagine that someone who just aces tests wouldn't be shoo-in.</p>
<p>That was what we learned when we visited and read the website. We got the impression they want a person who is busy doing other things and who just happens to ace tests, not a person who can only operate within the constraints of a classroom or a standardized test.</p>
<p>ah, well, what school wouldn't want that kid? Is that different from what any other school wants, or is this a trend true for all top universities?</p>
<p>For me, I haven't really memorized anything yet at MIT; all I learned so far are how to solve problems--this is totally different than scoring well on the SAT.</p>
<p>I'm gonna play devil's advocate here sort of ... please indulge me ...</p>
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For me, I haven't really memorized anything yet at MIT; all I learned so far are how to solve problems--this is totally different than scoring well on the SAT.
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<p>Many people downplay the importance of 'memorizing stuff' and feel that it's inferior to learning how to 'solve problems' or 'derive stuff from first principles' or 'using ingenuity instead of rote memorization.' Well, in order to achieve expertise in ANY field, you NEED to memorize A LOT of material. Memorization is the basis of expertise because what are you going to base your problem-solving upon? The larger a body of knowledge you memorize and the better you make connections between the knowledge you've assimilated, the better you can recognize patterns in real-world problems and pull out solutions from your cache to ADAPT them to solving new problems. The real ingenuity is in being able to mine all of the knowledge you've memorized and use your previous knowledge to solve novel problems. Experts have a HUGE database of patterns, previous solved problems, and heuristics in their heads. The chessmaster doesn't whoop you by magically 'seeing things' on the chessboard that you don't ... he/she (semi-consciously) draws on an enormous collection of rules and patterns inferred from previous games.</p>
<p>You are going to have to memorize A LOT of stuff by the time you're through with MIT ... nobody makes it through by, say, just learning Maxwell's equations and being able to magically 'figure out' all of electromagnetism.</p>
<p>The key is not to shun memorization, but rather to do it in an intelligent manner whereby you make lots of links and cross-references between all the data you memorized so that you can have an interconnected web of knowledge that you can draw upon to solve new problems instead of having a collection of disparate facts.</p>
<p>(This thread is probably getting way off topic, but oh well)</p>
<p>I think the value of memorization varies a little by field. A lot of upper-division biology and chemistry classes, for example, are open-book and/or open-note -- since anything they teach you about Protein A affecting Protein B will probably be outdated in a year anyway, it's more important for you to learn what general sorts of processes cause proteins to affect each other, and how you'd figure out that proteins are affecting each other, etc.</p>
<p>I learned a lot my junior and senior years at MIT, but it wasn't because I had to memorize anything. This is, after all, why God invented the internet. ;)</p>
<p>I don't know -- as a biology major, I never took any upper-division math or physics classes. The physics classes I did take (8.01 and 8.02) generally allowed us to have a formula sheet, at least.</p>
<p>I should add, I guess, that making a test open-book or open-note doesn't make it easier, it just makes the types of questions that can be asked different. You'd never find the answer to a test question in your book, but you might find a piece of information that would help you reason through it. At the very least, you could ensure that you're not being tripped up by something simple and factual.</p>
<p>Regarding explicit memorization: I disagree in a fashion with the person who said that a good deal of memorization is necesary and unavoidable. I would distinguish between what might be termed explicit and implicit memorization. The former would be stuff like memorizing the periodic tables, various cases of Maxwell's equations, etc; the latter would be stuff like understanding and internalizing approaches to solving problems, ideas behind problems and the like. I can't really think of any significant cases in which explicit memorizaton is very useful; memorizing the period table is really not necesary in an environment where you could be doing other things. Implicit memorization comes close to what I think of as learning, and I wholeheartedly support that. Doing lots of problems, thinking about chess patterns -- they are implicit. I have friends who have done IMO's and the like, and they describe an implicit process over anything else. This holds true in many of the classes here; for example, I haven't studied for a physics test, and I'm doing very well.</p>
<p>Mombot, such a mature responce! Are you a student? Well, I just wanted to let you know that you made my day/night when I read your comment in which you mention Bulgaria. Not a lot of people are aware of this. You made me smile :)</p>