And indeed if anything, MIT has been cutting back on its recruitment efforts. I have been an EC for a while now, and when I started, there asa a concept that you simply could not do too many college fairs and recruitment visits. That has largely disappeared. The admissions office worked out what we were in fact doing was encouraging more students to apply who did not have a chance of admission. After all, at a college fair, I have no idea whether the student I am talking to has a 2300 SAT score or a 1200, but I am still pitching the virtues of MIT. This is the problem with outreach to a rural school that rarely sends students to MIT. I would love to meet the student who matches well at such a school, but finding them is really, really, really hard.</p>
And the paper itself (or the series of papers, rather) also make the point that, even when these high-achieving students receive mail from colleges, they and their parents tend to view it as advertising for the college rather than as neutral information. The intervention that Hoxby and Avery tried, which was surprisingly successful, was to send information to qualifying students on college applications and financial aid in general, including a fee waiver for the SAT (and for many applications? I think it was a CB-type fee waiver) and an accordian-style folder to help organize applications for multiple colleges. Recipients reported that they viewed the information included as more neutral than information from specific colleges.</p>
<p>In relation to the issue of geographical diversity, from the same website (Where Does Your Freshman Class Come From) referenced upthread, MIT is the only USNWR top 10 institution where Texans are represented in a proportion roughly equal to their proportion in the US population. Most of the rest are not even close.</p>
<p>The comments yesterday are true in many areas of the southeast as well, especially outside of the top few high schools (and some IB programs) of the state. My kids’ classmates were unaware of most of the Ivy League Plus schools, although they may have “heard of” Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and maybe Columbia through TV shows or other media. Many had never heard of Yale or Princeton. </p>
<p>They, and their teachers, for the most part have no clue regarding what a student does to create a competitive application. Taking more than 3-4 AP courses in all of high school is rare. I do not know of any kid in our school’s history who has done Intel/Siemens level research. Most everyone goes to state or community colleges or possibly one state away. Top academic students go to the state flagship. The few who go to the most competitive schools usually are recruited via athletic scholarships. At times, I wonder if there are two Americas regarding high school experiences; those kids in an academic bubble and those kids outside. </p>
<p>I should note that it is not impossible to get into a highly selective school if you are in a school like I described above; however, you will simply need to convince your counselor that yes, you can handle this kind of course load, and you will need to create your own extracurricular activities cause they probably don’t exist (yet).</p>
<p>But it has turned into something all together different. </p>
<p>Point was that the athletic recruiting is total out of touch with admissions and end up toying with these candidates in a cruel and irresponsible way. Additionally, if you are a white male from the North East, don’t bother to apply. Save your time on the MIT essays and use it more wisely elsewhere. Looking through the stats of the accepted students make me laugh - meritocracy my ass. </p>
<p>We know a white kid from Mass, 2400 SAT, never anything less than an A in 12 years of school, 2 sport varsity captain, volunteer of the year candidate in town. Into Harvard with a good package, full ride at Duke… Deferred EA and Rejected RD. some of you will claim I made this up, but I have access to this kids details and know him well.</p>
<p>^ 2400 SAT kids who play sports and volunteer are a dime a dozen, and many of them lack passion. Some of them are awesome, and just got unlucky when they were competing against thousands of people who were also awesome. </p>
<p>If you think it’s impossible for a kid like that to be rejected in a meritocracy, you just don’t understand how many great applicants MIT gets.</p>
<p>There are plenty of white males here. They won the meritocracy game because they did a lot with what they were given. Raw achievement means nothing without context.</p>
<p>^If you think that Harvard is more of a meritocracy than MIT, you are sadly mistaken.
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<p>I know people who got straight A’s from schools where it actually is hard to do so, had perfect SATs, were ranked in the top 100-200 in math, plus had impressive ECs, that were rejected from Harvard. And some of these people went on to be famous for their contributions to their field.</p>
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<p>Harvard doesn’t give merit aid, so how much financial aid they gave to some kid is irrelevant to how good his application is. Duke has a limited amount of merit scholarships, but as with most schools, there is a clear distinction between merit and financial scholarship.</p>
<p>I agree, although instead of the word “passion”, which has almost become a cliche’, I would say that 2400/straight A’s doesn’t mean that a person has any interest in science or technology. This is the first priority of MIT.</p>
<p>The original post and #266 has a lot of different ideas thrown together which aren’t really related. Affirmative action is a policy which MIT and every other top school has in the country. MIT’s minorities have better qualifications than any ivy, that’s for sure. Second, I agree that coaches shouldn’t mislead applicants by saying that they have more pull in admissions than they actually do. However, the original post and post #266 seems to imply that MIT should value athletics more than they do. I value athletics too, and there are arguments that good athletes have abilities which translate to non-athletic careers, such as teamwork, high energy, and drive to perfect their skills. However, this is indirect, and people who demonstrate such qualities in science and technology are better bets.</p>
I think it is important to realize that such people are not actually a dime a dozen, even if it may seem so in the rarefied college admissions world. </p>
<p>Also, I have to say that I don’t know actually know any students who fit that bill and lack passion. I am willing to concede that in other parts of the country, there might be such people, but to the best of my knowledge, I have never met one in my travels. </p>
<p>How many of those people characterized by 2400/sports/volunteering/no passion have you actually met, PiperXP?</p>
<p>I’m curious in exactly what contexts major achievements like USAMO are not impressive. My impression has also been that at the very high end achievements inevitably came from considerable talent and hard work. This isn’t to say that going to a high school with a tradition of doing well in USAMO or similar competitions isn’t helpful but it’s very very far from sufficient.</p>
<p>So the path in seems to be elitist private school, URM or female. That’s fine, it is a private institution who can set policy and quota they choose, but let’s call it like it is and stop calling it a meritocracy just to help the elites and minorities, for whom the criteria was manipulated (lowered), can sleep through the night. MIT for the most part believes their own BS, but come on use your brain. </p>
<p>Yes, Harvard was financial aid, but the Duke free ride was 100% merit $. I should have been more clear on that.</p>
<p>But these things happen all the time. On the whole, very promising applicants tend to be admitted multiple places, but if you look at individual cases, the pattern of acceptances and rejections isn’t necessarily predictable. I guarantee that there is at least one person admitted to MIT this year who has the opposite outcome – wasn’t admitted to Harvard, but was admitted to Duke with merit money. That’s the nature of a system where there are way too many qualified kids and too few seats.</p>
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It goes without saying, I assume, that the plurality of the class is white males who went to public school. MIT takes a larger fraction of its class from public schools than (to my knowledge) any other top school.</p>
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This is rich, given that the original post is a complaint that athletic criteria are not given enough weight in the MIT admissions process.</p>
<p>“So the path in seems to be elitist private school, URM or female.”</p>
<p>Well, granted, my sample size is small. But both my white, male sons were accepted. Coming from a large public Midwest HS that sends around 3/4 of its graduates each year to the local community college and had never sent a student to MIT (or an Ivy) in its 50 year history. Neither ever had the opportunity to participate in large science fairs or national math competitions (nothing outside the district really). Sometimes I think it’s a bit more of “what you do with what you’ve got”.</p>
<p>Quite a few! I’ve even hosted some of them as part of the overnight program. Some of the most boring people imaginable came from that group.</p>
<p>If you’re the type whose parents are directing you the entire step of the way, what are they going to tell you to do? They’re going to tell you the cookie-cutter life of getting good grades/scores, play sports, and volunteer. These activities are not inherently boring, but it’s what boring people are directed to do, so many people in that group… end up boring.</p>
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<p>I did not say that the award itself is unimpressive. I am saying you cannot adequately judge an achievement without context.</p>
<p>I guess that based on personal experience, I have a hard time imagining a student who could actually be directed by his/her parents at each step of the way! Not happening around here! I have to suppose that such students exist, though.</p>
<p>Eh, I was referring to public magnet schools, actually. And it’s not easier to get in from there, it’s harder, unless you are a star there. If you are one of the top few from there, then you have proven yourself, whereas the valedictorian of a regular good high school is still a question mark. That is, if everyone there was the top person at their high school before they went to the magnet school, it’s a bit harder to distinguish yourself. </p>
<p>But again, MIT is a bastion for prep school students and Harvard is not? This is backwards. Harvard takes like 40 students a year from Exeter. MIT doesn’t do that.</p>
<p>Affirmative action is a different issue, but I don’t get why you single out MIT. Do you think Stanford and the ivies don’t practice affirmative action? I guess the only thing we have that they don’t is affirmative action for females, and I don’t believe that’s a strong hook (although it was in the 70’s and 80s.) Med schools are 50/50 males and females, so there are an adequate pool of qualified females in science these days. Average GPAs are slightly higher for the females at MIT, and although its unclear whether majors may have something to do with this (i.e., they may be in bio or chem more than say, electrical engineering), this is still somewhat of an indication that the females aren’t much behind the males, if at all.</p>
<p>I’m not going to say that your friend’s kid isn’t smarter than some people at MIT. But the info you’ve provided isn’t enough to make someone a shoo-in, even by purely academic criteria. I guess if you add the athletics in, he’s a stronger candidate, but again, what does athletics have to do with the mission of MIT again? And besides, MIT has more sports than nearly any other school. If being recruited was such a strong factor, we would have a lot less room to recruit people who were good at academic ECs.</p>
<p>Piper, in post #276 you allude to specific, boring students - how many 2400/sports/volunteering kids could you have hosted? I sure hope that kid isn’t reading this thread! How mortifying.</p>
<p>Makes me wonder what that student thought of his overnight host in return.</p>