<p>I would also add that good training is probably more important for doing well on the USAMO than making the USAMO because good feedback on proofs is hard to get while anyone can check whether their solution to an AMC/AIME problem is correct. Also 4 points on USAMO seems like a strange threshold given USAMO grading. 10% also seems like an underestimate as ~50% of Field Medalists in recent years were IMO medalists.</p>
<p>The estimate of 10% might be an underestimate–I am trying to be conservative.</p>
<p>I picked 4 points on the USAMO, based on looking at the patterns for a single year, in terms of the numbers of scores of 0, 1, 2, and 3 vs. 4 and up. That year may not have been representative, though. The suggestion of 4 and up is more for the sake of discussion than anything else.</p>
<p>I think that there are a lot of mathematicians I would consider “promising” who will never win the Fields Medal. </p>
<p>Also, not directly relevant to this discussion, but: The reason that Harvard has such a poor track record of tenuring its young faculty is that until recently, they had no intention of tenuring any of their young faculty, not that they picked poorly. The overall tenure rate at Harvard when I entered the academic job market was about 2% and in my particular field, no one who had not been a Harvard undergrad had been tenured in the past 15 years or so. Within the last 5-10 years, however, Harvard seems to have realized that this is not a good policy, and they have significantly increased their tenure rate for young faculty. I was told by the people in my field at Berkeley that they intended to tenure everyone they hired, and wound up tenuring about 50% (whereas, at the time, Harvard intended to tenure 0% and wound up tenuring about 2%).</p>
<p>MIT’s entire application process is very difficult. Our son applied and was denied. He was a soccer player, and the coach was impressed with the video. Under no circumstances did MIT make statements to any effect that his admissions would involve sports. It is clearly academic and “other things”. BTW, he tested in the top 98 - 100 percentile, took all AP / IB courses, and his college “resume” looked wonderful on paper. MIT did tell us that they received over 20,000 applications this year, and other top notch engineering schools have told us the same. Engineering is not the “it” degree to get, if you are good in math and science as it guarantees a high paying job upon graduation. At the end of the day, how a school picks one kid over another with such outstanding applications is unknown; they do have 20X or more qualified applicants for the freshman class.</p>
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<p>I still disagree with that. In my case, I’ve made top 500 in the Putnam twice, which isn’t great but I think it would suggest that when I was in high school, I would have also qualified for USAMO, at least once. But I never did - my senior year I didn’t even qualify for AIME - and this was in spite of the fact I spent a lot of spare time on AoPS and took classes specifically to prepare for AMC/AIME, and was in general very informed about math contests. Maybe I’m weird, but I think being around others that were even more interested in math and taking more demanding classes helped a lot, and these are things I might have gotten at a top magnet or private school.</p>
<p>I think some people require the “big picture”, to know the way the theories and concepts fit together, in order to learn algorithms and so-called math tricks that are derived from said theories. I think these people tend to do better on the Putnam than would be predicted from AMC/USAMO results.</p>
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<p>They are for someone who feels like they could benefit from extra preparation. It is entirely possible and indeed probable that an extraordinarily bright student from Idaho or South Dakota could be accepted to MIT for making the most of his or her opportunities, but they may not have taken calculus or physics, so they’d want to prepare with Interphase.</p>
<p>A student from a rural area with no calculus or physics classes who has done outstandingly well in what they’ve been offered, as well as participated significantly in many ECs and made a really big contribution to their community in general, could well be accepted over someone with calc/physics experience who doesn’t do much else. And that first student may want to explore the option of Interphase to catch them up to MIT’s curriculum – not because they’re dumb, but because their school didn’t serve them well.</p>
<p>Remedial classes are not the same as Interphase. Interphase evens the playing field between brilliant farm/inner-city kids and brilliant prep-school kids. All are brilliant. Some are not as well educated. Your logic argues that only the very highest achievers should be accepted, which would mean that rural kids with fewer opportunities would be replaced by more and more prep-school kids who have been coddled and trained for success every step of the way.</p>
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<p>Bingo!</p>
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<p>I don’t even know my UW GPA because it’s not reported at my school. I estimated it to be a 3.8, but it’s probably higher than that. Also, it’s a 3.8 because a 4.0 at my school is all A+'s (A’s are less than that). I have gotten 1 B in my entire career, and 1 B+ (both in rigorous AP classes, both of which quickly improved by the next quarter). I have never gotten less than an A- as a semester grade.</p>
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<p>Like most MIT students, I don’t have outstanding achievement at the national or international level.</p>
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<p>This, I can agree with. However, I’m not an Asian male, and my upbringing/social class is different because of it. My life would be entirely different and the odds of an Asian male – or anyone – having the same application as me are ridiculous.</p>
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<p>I get defensive and argumentative when attacked. And as polite as you think you’re being, you are telling me directly that you think I’m not good enough to be admitted to MIT, and was only accepted because I am a girl. Others have hinted at it in this thread, but you are essentially stating it, which is far more offensive to me. So yes, I am arguing.</p>
<p>luisarose took Multivariable Calculus as a junior and aced it, and is assisting with teaching it this year. She is taking Physics C online currently–and incidentally, I think this order of subjects is really good, though rarely possible for a high school student. It means that E&M can be approached “right,” since results from multivariable calculus can be used, and there has been time for them to be internalized.</p>
<p>I suggest that people should look elsewhere, if they are going to argue that someone is underqualified for admission.</p>
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Ah, NIH, that bastion of pure merit-based funding, where the grizzled graybeards keep getting funding because they really, really deserve it, not because they’re allowed to coast on their previously-acquired reputations. </p>
<p>NIH does, though, absolutely gives explicit slack to young investigators, in the same way that MIT (and all other top schools) give implicit slack to applicants from underserved backgrounds. NIH’s goal is to fund the best science, but that doesn’t always mean the best-pedigreed science.</p>
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This is sort of an amazing thing to say based essentially only on GPA. At any rate, anyone with anyone’s application will most likely be rejected – the acceptance rate is sub-50% for any demographic you can pick out.</p>
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But how does this matter? Participating in Interphase is meant to bring students up to speed in subject matter – it’s not that they’re not intellectually capable of succeeding at MIT, they just need to be exposed to some of the material. </p>
<p>Some students start their freshman year at MIT in graduate-level courses. In that sense, the argument could be made that everybody else is in remedial-level introductory courses, and that MIT should only admit students for undergrad who have already completed the equivalent of a full undergraduate degree. I would not argue for this standard, personally.</p>
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<p>But there is no way that MIT could fill its entire class or even a non-trivial portion of the class with students who start in graduate level classes. I think a standard that MIT should admit all students who are actually ready for graduate level classes and don’t have any black marks on their application is actually pretty reasonable as such students have demonstrated 1) a fair amount of ability and 2) serious dedication to math/science.</p>
<p>“Grad-level” in this case does not mean harder…</p>
<p>lidusha can you explain your comment? Are you saying that grad classes aren’t harder than 18.01/2 and 8.01/2 or something else?</p>
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There’s no reason MIT has to have an undergraduate class of 1000 people.</p>
<p>(I don’t disagree that all or virtually all applicants who are genuinely ready for graduate-level work ought to be admitted, and I think that is probably happening already. But I don’t think that’s the only population MIT should be admitting, meaning that most students are engaging in comparatively remedial work as freshmen.)</p>
<p>My argument basically boils down to this: academic preparedness and intellectual preparedness are not the same. Many bright kids from sub-par schools are not academically prepared but are intellectually prepared for MIT’s work, and they may benefit from Interphase introducing new material that they should have learned in high school, but didn’t, due to lack of opportunity.</p>
<p>As a side note, Interphase offers classes in Multivariable Calculus as well as high-level (AP Phys C-level) physics. Would you consider a freshman in college taking multivariable to be remedial? I wouldn’t. Interphase serves many purposes: it can bridge the gap between a less than stellar HS career and MIT, or it can offer enrichment opportunities to students who want to take advantage of them.</p>
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<p>I agree with this and feel that AOPS is the single best resource for ambitious math students. My son went to an “elite” science/tech magnet high school, considered to be one of the best in the country, where support for the high achieving math student was virtually nonexistent. There was no way that the teachers could help prepare any of the kids for AIME, let alone USAMO. Math Team classes were taught by the students and any accolades that the team received was a result of the students’ efforts, not because of school support.</p>
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<p>I think that a lot of these high achieving kids get the short shrift because others claim that they had resources not available to all. In reality, these kids take it upon themselves to learn and nurture their talents. It can be a lonely pursuit as they pore through stacks of books; thankfully though, with the popularity of sites like AOPS, they are also able to work through problems with like minded mathletes. If you want to talk about passion and love of a subject, these USAMO kids have it in spades.</p>
<p>I’ve never even heard of AOPS. I don’t think that makes me untalented or uninterested in math.</p>
<p>What if I cane from a poor family without internet access and worked during the afternoons so I couldn’t go to the library or something? Or what if I had internet etc. but was never aware that academic competitions existed, and thus didn’t seek opportunities to “self-prepare”?</p>
<p>I certainly don’t think the USAMO kids are getting shafted here. They are absolutely brilliant. I am just saying they are not the only kids who are brilliant or, necessarily, the only ones good enough.</p>
<p>I do not mean to imply that I was a prodigy or incredibly passionate about math. I was good at it and liked it, but I never went further than that. I do think that after skipping 2 levels of math and being in the gifted program for my educational career, I sort of figured that if there was more I could do in math, someone would have told me. My school system had no idea what to do with me and kids like me, and after I realized i’d never be challenged by math class I thought that there was nothing else to do in math. If I had heard of USAMO my life would have been different – I would have at least tried.</p>
<p>luisarose, just from skimming your posts on this thread, I truly believe that you took full advantage of all your opportunities. Kudos to you!</p>
<p>I am new to these boards but get the distinct feeling, especially in the Parent’s forum, that USAMO achievement is not always held in the highest regard. I’m just saying that these kids should be given a little more credit. By no means am I trying to denigrate any students who did not have opportunities to participate in these competitions.</p>
<p>I’ve only recently started looking into the Parents Forum so I don’t really know much about that. If that’s the case then that’s totally unfair – I would never fault or diminish a USAMO qualifier as they are far smarter than I will ever be :)</p>
<p>I agree that many students who have not qualified for the USAMO and in some cases have never even heard of it are well-qualified for admission to MIT.</p>
<p>In the Parents Forum, I have been suggesting that students who score above some threshold value on the USAMO during their junior year in high school or before should be “auto-admitted” to MIT, if they are not disqualified on the grounds of character. (I suggested 4 as the threshold, but some other value is fine with me, too.) That would mean that students who were able to garner some points on the USAMO would be admitted even if they are unbelievably boring, or total grinds. :)</p>
<p>Based on a multi-step analysis, I estimated the number of students who would qualify for MIT admission via this route, and who are not being admitted already as it stands as about 10-15. Given that about 1500 students are admitted to MIT, it doesn’t seem to me that this would totally disrupt admissions. However, there was some extremely forceful opposition to my suggestion in the Parents Forum.</p>
<p>Maybe if the students in question were admitted to MIT, they would become less boring after a few months.</p>
<p>I have guessed that the USAMO route picks up about 10% of promising young mathematicians in the US. The % might be a bit higher than that, I don’t think that it is remotely close to 100%.</p>