<p>My viewpoint is slightly different from this. I would say that academic preparedness and intellectual promise are two separate qualities. A student who comes from a weaker background may be extremely promising. Such a student is likely to blossom at MIT, particularly if the student can sequence the courses sensibly. MIT should take students like that–I have no doubt of it. </p>
<p>At the same time, I think that MIT as an educational institution should appreciate that differences in course backgrounds are not limited to differences in acquired knowledge, in terms of their effects.</p>
<p>The reason that I have a slightly different view is this: I believe that working on challenging problems actually affects a person’s capability, and can increase the person’s ability to solve other challenging problems that the person has never encountered before. I experienced this when I took abstract algebra–that course in particular caused a kind of “jump discontinuity” in my mathematical maturity and the way that I approached problems. There are likely to be different courses that have this effect for different people. But the effect of taking courses at just the right level of challenge is not solely a question of background knowledge. I actually think that hard courses can make a person smarter.</p>
<p>People who work at it can continue becoming smarter throughout their lives.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with QuantMech. I would also add it’s much easier to assess intellectual preparedness if the applicant has taken really challenging coursework or difficult competitions. If a student has only done the typical work at a high school they may have lots of potential or they may not have lots of potential but it’s hard to determine. For students with access to lots of opportunities it’s much easier to determine potential as very difficult classes and competitions can distinguish the very good from the merely good in ways that most high school classes can’t.</p>
<p>luisarose, my post #341 explains why I think that someone might be smarter than you are at this instant, yet not at all smarter than you will ever be. People make huge jumps during college. This is particularly true if what you have encountered so far has been a bit difficult, but not so hard that you feel utterly stumped.</p>
<p>I think that number is reasonable, and your proposal is reasonable, but I do think that MIT values USAMO scores highly in their admissions and if someone is not admitted who has achieved in USAMO, there is likely to be a reason for it regarding well-roundedness. I understand, and partially agree with, your argument that USAMO achievement is so significant that it could be an auto-admitting criteria, but there could be practical issues with that if it became official policy.</p>
<p>For instance, if a student achieves the threshold but in his interview/essay/mandatory reporting of disciplinary action seems to exhibit poor character, MIT would be in the awkward place of having to openly reject someone because of their character, without the “well-roundedness” explanation to fall back on. And if USAMO becomes an auto-path to MIT, it’s possible many more kids will hear of it/self-prepare/work intensely hard to achieve, and the scores may improve and more kids will be auto-admitted…etc etc. It would be too complex to implement.</p>
<p>The number of USAMO qualifiers is essentially fixed (unless the MAA changes the number as they do occasionally) so the number of students admitted this way is not going to balloon into a large part of the class.</p>
<p>Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. Grad classes vary, but those that I and my friends have taken have been significantly easier than, say, 8.012, in every way that it is possible for one class to be easier than another.</p>
<p>I also feel that perhaps it makes more sense to be somewhat holistic about this instead of a sharp cutoff at 4 (or some other number). I would state the criteria something like this: anyone who gets at least question on USAMO mostly correct or equivalent other achievements and has nothing seriously wrong with their application should be admitted in almost all cases.</p>
<p>@lidusha perhaps a qualifier that ready mean ready for relatively serious graduate classes. Some graduate classes don’t really seem to grade but at least in math I’m pretty sure the material is always substantially more difficult than the material in basic calc or physics.</p>
<p>In one sense, nothing that I ever took was harder than honors E&M with multi-variable calculus simultaneously. But the difficulty of a course depends on many things: the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, the level of the problems posed in the course, and the intellectual preparation of the students, relative to the challenge level of the course. My college freshman self would have been doomed in graduate statistical mechanics, but it was pretty easy by the time that I actually reached it (not that the course itself was considered easy).</p>
And this represents what percentage of the total population of “qualifiers”? (That is to say, what percentage of the students you think should be auto-admitted are currently being admitted?)</p>
<p>But the difficult problem, it seems to me, is how to pick the remaining 70% of the class from a group of eighteen-year-olds who have a variety of interesting credentials and accomplishments, but who don’t have a blow-you-out-of-the-water record of academic success, and who may never have been challenged to anything approaching their full potential.</p>
<p>Well, as Will Rogers used to say, “I only know what I read in the newspapers,” . . . or in this case, on MIT’s Admissions web site, in terms of estimating whether a “fun personality” is an admissions plus. I realize that PiperXP does not contribute to admissions decisions, but PiperXP sure seems to dislike boring people. (And the boring people were probably admitted already, if they are being hosted overnight?)</p>
<p>In fairness, MIT Chris has said that he understands the comments that I have made about some of the material on the MIT Admissions site. He hasn’t promised anything; and indeed, he may not be the “cognizant administrator” in connection with this in any event. However, I had already decided to wait until at least September and possibly December to take a fresh look at the MIT Admissions pages, and see whether (in my opinion) the tone had changed at all or not.</p>
<p>Edit: And I am trying to refrain from further comments on the web site in that time interval–please help me out with this? </p>
<p>Since Chris’s estimate is that nearly 50% of the “academic stars” are admitted, I would guess that 50% of the people who have managed to score a significant number of points on the USAMO are admitted–just as the “zeroth-order” approximation. Actually, if MIT is only admitting 50% of the stars, perhaps there are more than 10-15 whom I would suggest admitting, but who are not being admitted now.</p>
<p>A quick calculation suggests that if MIT admits about 50% of the “academic stars” and they make up about 30% of the class, then MIT could admit 100% of the “academic stars” (which I think they did in the olden days), and still have 40% of the spots remaining available. In fact, MIT might have more than 40% of the spots available, if the yield among the stars they are not currently admitting is lower than the yield among the stars they are admitting. (I don’t know about this, obviously, but I would guess that if MIT is currently turning down a “star” on the grounds of fit, the student would also recognize the limited fit.)</p>
<p>But the question of which non-stars should be admitted is a much trickier question and will have to depend on individual characteristics in a way that makes general discussion very difficult. It seems much harder to come up with specific criteria for non-stars than with stars where we could in theory make reasonable generalizations about groups like USAMO qualifiers (is there data on how well USAMO qualifiers do at MIT academically?).</p>
<p>I was afraid that the “boring overnighters” might provide counter-examples to my general thesis, but if they haven’t been admitted yet, then apparently not.</p>
<p>One other remark about “academic stars:” If a student who is reasonably bright works for one summer with a particular one of my colleagues, I think the student’s chances of becoming at least an Intel semi-finalist are quite high. (Past performance is no guarantee of future results, of course, but I suspect that this is true.) On the other hand, I don’t actually know of a program that will take any reasonably bright student for a summer, and turn out a student who gains a meaningful number of points on the USAMO. There are some summer math camps that don’t require USAMO participation beforehand, as a qualifier (e.g., Stanford has one), but I don’t think they have that effect. There is a USA Math Camp (I’ve forgotten the exact name) that is pre-USAMO and might do the trick, but I’m not sure about that.</p>
<p>So I am of the opinion that Intel/Siemens are more connection-dependent in general than USAMO. That is why I have not been suggesting similarly that all of the Intel/Siemens people should be auto-admitted. This opinion is subject to revision based on additional information, if other posters can supply it.</p>
I think there’s a difference between having a “fun personality” and being genuinely passionate about something in your life, which may or may not relate to academics, since you may or may not yet have had exposure to genuinely interesting intellectual work.</p>
<p>I can only speak for myself here, but I know that the genuine passion for theater and choral music that I displayed in high school has basically transferred, since I started at MIT, to a genuine passion for my chosen academic discipline. I think that the kind of time and effort and enthusiasm I displayed for my extracurriculars in high school is probably a reasonable predictor of my attitude as a scientist – that workaholism transfers from purely nonacademic activities to purely academic activities. </p>
<p>I think it’s disingenuous to pretend that the admissions office is just looking for people with whom they’d like to have a beer. </p>
<p>
Well, as an aside, some percentage of those “stars” are probably international applicants, whose admission is limited by forces considerably higher up in the MIT administration than the admissions office. So we don’t know what percentage of domestic “stars” are admitted.</p>
<p>And the “stars” category does include science contest participants. I would similarly not like to see all science contest semi-finalists/finalists admitted. </p>
<p>I also think that having a large percentage of the class “automatically” admitted by virtue of a defined list of achievements is detrimental in several ways. First, it increases the random nature of the remaining spots – if 900 spots are taken already, then there are ~600 spots for ~17,000 applicants, and I think the complaints about the “random” and “cruel” nature of the admissions process become even worse. Second, it encourages students who would not otherwise be able to achieve “starriness” to do so. I’ve never claimed that anyone who tried sufficiently hard to qualify for USAMO could do so, but I think it’s certainly true that there are people not as talented as those who currently qualify who could do so, given the right combination of luck and preparation.</p>
<p>
Well, of course. But when people talk about the unfairness of the admissions process, they are almost always talking about their friend’s son who was the valedictorian of his class and just the best! ever!, not about anyone who qualified for USAMO. And when the latter situation does come up (e.g. waitingforgodot; was that his name?), it’s because it’s genuinely surprising, because those applicants are admitted at such high rates to begin with.</p>
<p>I am totally in favor of intensity and genuineness. </p>
<p>I think that having a passion for theater and choral music translates into more effective interactions with others than having a passion for (say) silicates, though. The latter person is likely to run the risk of seeming boring. </p>
<p>I don’t think that if you mentioned your interest in theater it would often get the reaction “Oh, I hated theater in high school.” Math/physics/chemistry do often get that reaction. Biology might not.</p>
<p>My remarks aren’t intended to suggest that the admissions officers are looking for someone they’d like to have a beer with. But I think that coming across as vibrant must help, yes? Also, I suspect that Silicate Guy might come across as more vibrant to Carbonate Guy than to Quark Guy, let alone to a non-scientist.</p>
<p>I am not sure about the effect of “auto-admits” on strategies in preparation for college admissions, and recognize that as a possible drawback of my suggestion. On the other hand, I think that a reasonably bright person who becomes a member of the US Olympic team in swimming would be pretty certain of a spot at Stanford. Yet there doesn’t seem to be a hyper-focus on developing swimming skills. I suspect that this is because it takes a rare combination of qualities to make an Olympic swimmer, and no one can be brow-beaten into it. Similarly, I would guess that no one can be brow-beaten into making the US IMO team. But if I am wrong about that, I would withdraw my suggestion.</p>
<p>I’ve tried to avoid this conversation but can’t any longer. I agree with Mollie … the question is not is the applicant “fun” … but are they passionate? will they bring something to the community? Etc.</p>
<p>I interviewed applicants for Cornell’s engineering school for about 5 years and in that time there were only 2 candidates for whom I wrote interview summaries where I conveyed my opinion this applicant should not be admitted.</p>
<p>The first might have been one of QM’s academic stars. The applicant was brilliant … perfect scores, great ECs … way-way smarter than I … and one of the most arrogant, rude, and insufferable people I have ever met. He got in. I’d guess QM would be happy about that … but as a rep of the school I’m not a fan of them accepting students I would be embarrassed to be the parent of.</p>
<p>The second is more relevant to this discussion. These are far from correct quotes (the interview was 10+ years ago) but an accurate path of the interview.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>What is is your favorite subject?
Math and any science class</p></li>
<li><p>Why are they your favorite subjects?
Math and science classes because I get As in them</p></li>
<li><p>Which courses to you enjoy the most
(blank stare back)</p></li>
<li><p>Which courses are the most rewarding and why?
The AP courses because they will help me get into top schools</p></li>
<li><p>What do you do for fun?
(blank stare) … I am not making that up</p></li>
<li><p>What do you do in your spare time?
I don’t really have spare time</p></li>
<li><p>Why not
I study a lot, I work on my ECs, and I’m studying for the SATs and my AP tests.</p></li>
<li><p>What are your ECs?
I do not remember the ECs but they were things like robotics and Olympics of the Mind (all academic ECs)</p></li>
<li><p>Why did you pick there ECs?
My parents told me they would help me get into a top school</p></li>
<li><p>What is the last book you read?
The answer was something about school books</p></li>
<li><p>What is the last book you read for fun
(blank stare)</p></li>
<li><p>What was the last book you read on your own
I don’t really have time to read other than to study</p></li>
</ul>
<p>And on and on. 45 minutes or so and not one glimpse of the drive, passion, interest, personality, etc of this applicant beyond “because it will help me get into a top school”. QM may object but I challenge anyone to describe this interview in anything but extremely negative terms.</p>
<p>On CC I tell applicants to not be afraid of interviews because virtually all my interviewees did fine … and that included some incredibly shy quiet folks. Virtually everyone manages to communicate their interests and how they what they bring to Cornell … however there were a couple applicants that whatever their academic accomplishments were it was hard to see what they would bring to the community.</p>
<p>My impression is that if a decent number of points on USAMO made one an “auto-admit” at MIT there would be increased focus on the contest by some students but not that many as the vast majority of students are not going to be achieve this regardless of what they do. Luck is a different issue as the AMC and AIME are both quite noisy but I don’t think random people without considerable skill are start qualifying for USAMO in great numbers. I think science fairs are a different matter where there are a considerable number of people who could make semi-finalist or so if they got a professor to oversee their research and this would really change the incentive calculus.</p>
<p>In the case of USAMO qualifiers, I would say that their intelligence adds a lot to the community. My impression, based on what MIT parents have told me, is that these students are the “go to kids” when classmates need help with problem sets. Some of these kids may seem very shy and quiet, but I would bet that when they are in their element with math, they can be quite passionate and helpful.</p>