<p>If someone has trouble understanding sarcasm, humor, and idiomatic speech, and takes things too literally, the first thing to suspect is a touch of Asperger’s or some other mild and perhaps undiagnosed autism spectrum. Not familiar with QM’s posting history. </p>
<p>Right, I am not confused, and I do not have Asperger’s syndrome (now called high-functioning autism), though I have been characterized in that way by one person on CC, based on a few people’s misunderstanding of my posts.</p>
<p>I understand sarcasm quite well. I even use it on occasion. 
However, I specifically object to sarcasm that is directed “down” in status. For example, I do not think that it is appropriate for anyone connected with admissions to use sarcasm that is directed against applicants–even hypothetical ones–because one has the sense that annoyance with real applicants is behind the joke. Some people find sarcasm funny, when it is directed against people in a weaker position. I don’t.</p>
<p>PG, I have no opinion on the relative merits of the Harvard vs. MIT math departments, but I would be inclined to give the nod to Harvard.</p>
<p>To give an example of someone who pretty clearly deserved admission to a very top school: Jacob Lurie is a Professor of Mathematics at Harvard, and he is among this year’s MacArthur Fellows. I am essentially certain that Jacob Lurie applied to my university. He went to Harvard, however. There is no question that he was special enough that he deserved admission to Harvard. There was nothing snowflaky about him, though. There are other such people out there. I know a small number of them (3, 4? over 30 years).</p>
<p>PG’s #256 is such a caricature of my views that I wouldn’t even know where to start.</p>
<p>Re lookingforward’s #257, the toad reference showed up in the MIT forum on Sept. 23 of this year (for the first time, to the best of my knowledge). I haven’t even hashed toads completely yet, let alone started to rehash them.</p>
<p>I think many of us are being deliberately obtuse about a perfectly valid point QuantMech was making (and makes periodically). I don’t think she is upset because she believes that a teacher really wrote in a letter of “recommendation” that a student was a “brown-nosing toad,” or anything like that, or because she failed to understand that the original reference was a joke that employed hyperbole as a rhetorical strategy. </p>
<p>Her point was that the joke depends on the premise that a certain percentage of applicants to MIT really are brown-nosing toads, that MIT admissions officers and teachers alike can identify them among MIT applicants, and that all of us should have nothing but scorn for such creatures. And even if we understand that as metaphor and hyperbole, there’s still the idea that MIT admissions officers may think YOU are one of those brown-nosing toads. And no one, least of all an ambitious, hardworking 17-year-old nervously submitting him- or herself to the judgment of strangers, deserves to be characterized that way, even in jest, by the very people who are sitting in judgment.</p>
<p>I agree with that, although I probably commit similar sins periodically. The MIT admissions people probably agree with it, too. I bet they have thought better of it, and will probably be more judicious with language in future blogs.</p>
<p>One of the things I have learned here on CC is that brown-nosing toads are people, too. They are kids, like other kids, with a lot of insecurity masked as bravado and character masked as uncertainty. They may not know how to play the game, exactly, or they may be trying to play several games at once, whose various players don’t understand one another at all. Sometimes, as with many kids, their heads are screwed on backward, and I try to get them to straighten out. But they are real-live boys and girls, not wooden puppets, and not brown-nosing toads. I am grateful to QuantMech for reminding us of that (even as I disagree with her about any number of other things we’ve been discussing here).</p>
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Funny you should mention that…my son is in the last year of his master’s program in music and is approaching the point of key decisions about what to do next. I’ve realized that I have to be very careful in what I advise him to do, because I really don’t know what is the best thing to do. I have my biases, but I realized that they aren’t really all that well-informed in this specialized area.</p>
<p>And on the off-topic discussion, the “brown-nosing toad” comment reminded me of the time Porky Pig says to Daffy Duck: "T-T-That does it! You web-footed, n-n-no good, two-timing, d-d-double-crossing, d-d-double-dealing, unsanitary old snake in the grass! " Daffy responds, with outrage: “Unsanitary?!?”
I was thinking that “brown-nosing” could be pretty much factual, while “toad” is perhaps more ad hominem.</p>
<p>Thanks, JHS, #263. </p>
<p>In my neck of the woods, high school students are careful not to show too much enthusiasm for academic subjects, lest they be accused of simply trying to ingratiate themselves with the teachers. Toad-type comments just tend to increase their level of caution about showing enthusiasm. This may not apply elsewhere.</p>
<p>Also, I want to mention that the person making the reptile joke interviews for MIT, but is not part of the MIT Admissions Office.</p>
<p>“Also, I want to mention that the person making the reptile joke interviews for MIT, but is not part of the MIT Admissions Office.”</p>
<p>That’s the kind of detail that doesn’t matter in this discussion. </p>
<p>Really? I haven’t received the CC etiquette guide. It has seemed to me that detail is the essence of long threads. </p>
<p>Actually, PG #266, I think it does matter that the person is just an interviewer and not part of the Admissions staff at MIT. I don’t want my comments to be used to cast aspersions on the people in Admissions per se.</p>
<p>JHS, the toad comment - did you real it in the original context? It was a offhand remark, no one said some % of MIT applicants are so. It was hypothetically attributed to an LoR. But a few here don’t want to let hypotethicals go. OMG!, they want to cry, look at what you are calling students! (Uh, no.)</p>
<p>It may be a fixation, it may be true inability to get the drift and move on- or it may be yanking our chains. Look at all the attention it (and the caller) get. The distraction. Name dropping, references to the past or to geography (gosh we aren’t like that where I live, defensive protests that the complaining poster is just trying to be fair and kind hearted. And it dominates a thread that started on another topic.</p>
<p>Should someone insult kids? No Why can’t we leave it at that? But nooo, some have to go over and over and over it. Until a thread strangles.</p>
<p>And I don’t care if one calls it by one name or another, from Aspergers to an issue with usual elements of discussion or just plum being coy. It turns a thread away from from a conversation. </p>
<p>lookingforward, I understand what you mean, but I also understand what QuantMech means, too. </p>
<p>There are all sorts of cultural elements baked into how people react to one another. Whoever said it, the brown-nosing toad joke is a really complex thing: To understand it you have to know that brown-nosing is bad, and that even the authority figures you may be brown-nosing view it as bad, and that it will be seen as a character flaw by admissions personnel, a flaw sufficient to deny admission to a dream school no matter what else you bring to the table. And to really understand it, you have to have a good sense of the line between “brown-nosing” and being an enthusiastic, engaged student. </p>
<p>All the cool kids, it seems, condemn brown-nosing, and compare brown-nosers to toads, and the powerful admissions adults make a connection with the cool kids by referring to that shared value. If you aren’t certain you understand perfectly what constitutes brown-nosing, the brown-nosing toad joke will tell you (a) that brown-nosing toads exist, and (b) that you may be one of them.</p>
<p>It’s pertinent to this thread, in my opinion, because if one is going to advocate for holistic review, it really ought to be holistic review that is sympathetic to kids’ personalities, and does not dump them into boxes.</p>
<p>Literal-minded comment here: Toads aren’t reptiles.</p>
<p>JHS, ime, teachers will damn with faint praise if they feel it’s called for, not name calling. They’ll write three lines or skip academics entirely, if they have little good to say. (Would we want to surgically explore all that? How it’s not fair and yada yada about feelings and ruined lives? ) Obviously, blatant name calling would flag an issue with the LoR writer. </p>
<p>Respectfully, I see people making assumptions about how adcoms “must be” reacting and judging. And these threads get locked up in what ifs and empathies and value judgments and we lose sight of the discussion track we were on. One or two posters do that. </p>
<p>It seems completely inappropriate and unprofessional, to me, for admissions officers to ever joke about applicants. However, I was raised by doctors and lawyers who never joked about patients/clients and never shared any professional stories, even in family settings. So I still see that as the expected standard, even when it probably isn’t for most folks. But I find that kind of sad.</p>
<p>But the comment about not taking things so literally still stands. There are a couple of MMV false-note comments that emanated form one school we discuss and a few rush to paint some sort of picture from that. IRL, I have never heard ungracious comments. There can be the occasional student there is a common reaction to (just as lawyers and doctors have reactions.) But there is much more overt emphasis on being good and fair to these kids. (And no time to sit around joking.) I know folks find that hard to believe. As a group, these are adults, who meet and read apps from thousands of kids, annually who know more about kids than ordinary folks. If you don’t want applicant to be referred to in some ways, why turn the same sort of sweeping generalizations on adcoms? </p>
<p>Nobody was joking about applicants. Somebody was talking about what the reaction would be if a hypothetical letter of recommendation said something really negative about an applicant, such as (for example) that he was a brown-nosing toad. That isn’t a joke. It’s a colorfully worded example. It isn’t mean or cruel, because it isn’t directed at any real-life person. It is no different from saying, for example, “well, it would be negative if one of your letters of recommendation said very negative things about you, such as, for example, that you were dishonest, unpleasant, obnoxious, sexist, racist, or anything else bad.” The example chosen used colorful language to make the point memorable (sort of what a good admissions essay might do, as a matter of fact).</p>
<p>I would like to suggest an on-topic point related to this: it is fanciful to imagine that admissions officers are not normal human beings.</p>
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<p>Do you want some soft-string violin accompaniment with that slander?</p>
<p>All I am saying is that Harvard and the rest of the schools can’t distinguish between the white bread candidates, and so grasp on to any straw of “distinction” to justify a candidate: this can be the handicapped ski jumper, the conventional lacrosse player with a a 25%tile SAT score, the whatever. But you get my point: for the admissions representative in committee to “sell” his/her candidate versus all the other candidates all the other representatives are pushing, that representative has to come up with something “distinctive.” On the other hand, having had access to Harvard’s admit profiles from New England at one point, I am mystified by how many second rate hockey players with Studen Council Treasurer resumes they seem to take – it’s as if something breaks down in their process when it comes to Massachusetts kids. </p>
<p>I think the hidden key is to find out who your admissions rep is for your region and secretly stalk them and get to know everything about them and then write an essay that doesn’t offend. For example, most regional college reps these days are about 25 years old and, this being so, will essentially have deep liberal tendencies. In that context, slipping in a remark or two about how it is important for the queer community to “fight” for their rights would probably be welcome. The point is: the admission system is run by human beings; ergo, it is as flawed as human beings can be and as personal. Ergo: don’t have personal truth insult the common wisdom or received certainties such as global warming, gender equality and for sure, do not write about mission trips etc because while service to others is venerated in college apps, service to others provided through a Christian organization is not.</p>
<p>Just oberservations based on experience.</p>
<p>Well, we all have our observations and experiences. Mine lead me to suspect that Harvard accepts more liberal kids because they tend to be smarter.</p>
<p>Harvard’s bias towards local kids is not a secret. You don’t need to be a sleuth to “uncover” the very well stated desire by Harvard to be seen as a “good neighbor”. Moreover, having known a few of those “second rate” kids you deride- some were children of cafeteria workers, clerical employees, etc. and it isn’t just Harvard which hopes to encourage the children of its employees to apply and attend.</p>
<p>Made me laugh, Hunt, both posts this am.</p>
<p>Mackenna, I can’t figure where your assumptions come from and don’t believe you could defend them.</p>