<p>I was just browsing the internet, looking up IMO (international math olympiad) teams of the past, and as I was looking through the profiles of the 2008 team (found here: 2008</a> USA IMO Team announced) I read something that raised my eyebrows:
[quote]
Shaunak Kishore</p>
<p>Shaunak is a graduate of Unionville high School in Kennet Square, Pennsylvania. He will be attending MIT this fall unless Harvard decides that they cant begin the school year without him. Hes planning on studying applied mathematics, possibly biology or economics. He won the Princeton math Contest this year and presented a project on the spread of TB at the Young Epidemiology Scholars national convention. In his free time he enjoys running track, playing Frisbee, and playing video games.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Am I misinterpreting the passage, or was he really waitlisted by Harvard? I know, I know; Harvard's the most selective college in the us, and their "unhooked" acceptance rate is probably in the low single digits. But let's be real; here we have one of the 6 best math students in the entire US. I thought these were the guys that got recruited by all top schools by the time they were sophomores in high school. Harvard couldn't have knocked down one of their hundreds of "well-rounded" candidates to reel this guy in? Exactly whom are they using to fill with their class sizes well above 1,000?</p>
<p>Forgive me if this is all a misinterpretation of words, but I just find it all rather hard to believe. I just want some clarity on the matter.</p>
<p>Your interpretation definitely seems correct, but maybe the passage is simply phrased badly. Maybe MIT is offering him a generous research grant or something similar, and Harvard hasn’t “topped” it. Maybe they wait-listed him because they assumed MIT was his 1st choice. Maybe he spent absolutely no time on his essays and Harvard decided that he just wasn’t worth their while. While this is all completely conjectural, I’m sure there’s some valid explanation.</p>
<p>I’m surprised, too. But being a member of the IMO team is not the same thing as being “one of the six best math students in the entire US”. Not everyone does math competitions; not everyone thinks that math competitions are good things, or have any strong relationship to actual math scholarship. That said, it’s obviously an admirable achievement, and going to MIT isn’t too shabby.</p>
<p>Sometimes I think Harvard turns down a few unbelievably great applicants just so they can say “Look, we turned down this unbelievably great applicant, stop whining about how YOU didn’t get in.”</p>
<p>I note that, of the 6 people on the team, four were headed to MIT and one to Harvard. (One was a 9th grader who also won the National Spelling Bee. That’s a scary kid.) What do you think the odds are that none of the other three applied to Harvard, or that they all turned Harvard down? I suspect Harvard really turned down several members of the US IMO team.</p>
<p>(Looking at the results, if Harvard was only going to take one, they took the most impressive one.)</p>
Really? I always assumed they got into MIT EA and didn’t bother with Harvard or that they, yes, turned down Harvard after applying and being accepted. 2005 IMO perfect scorer Brian Lawrence went to Caltech, and I don’t think anyone can rationally assume he was denied by Harvard and MIT; he most likely found Caltech best suited towards his needs. Plus, I always thought the IMOers were amongst the 200-300 kids that Fitzsimmons said got in based on pure academia. I mean can you seriously think of 5 accolades awarded to high schoolers considered more prestigious in the US than the IMO, let alone 200?</p>
<p>the article is worded as if the member would still go to harvard if he had the chance mmm. Though maybe Harvard thought that this kid is more suited for MIT.</p>
<p>Some of the IMO Medelists from here did not do well on the Putnam Contests. So the schools imported the IMO Medelists from other countries. For example, the two 2007 Putnam Fellows from MIT were made in China. Stanford got one IMO Medalist from other country this year, I believe. We will see if anyone from Harvard who shows up at this year’s Putnam Contest is imported or not.</p>
<p>Frankly, I can understand Harvard turning down IMO members from other nations simply because that’s how competitive international admissions have become. But the fact that this guy was on US’ IMO team makes me really confounded as to how he was rejected.</p>
<p>And this guy didn’t win Putnam or anything but he was an honorable mention…certainly not bad, even for an IMO member.</p>
200-300 students are admitted solely on academic achievement. If Harvard is waitlisting IMO team members, who exactly ARE they using these 200-300 spots on? And Intel finalists, albeit incredibly talented, aren’t close to being as distinguished as IMO members There are 40 finalists every year in Intel alone…then there are the finalists from the Siemens and Westinghouse competitions as well. There is but one competition universally accepted as the national math competition, and there are only 6 true “winners” every year, and those are the US IMO members. So while it’s plausible for them to waitlist Intel finalists, it’s really baffling for them to be turning down US’ IMO members.</p>
<p>^ Whoops, my err. But the point remains that while the finalists of these science research projects are brilliant students who often get into the very top schools in the nation, I don’t think there’s a legitimate comparison drawn between the magnitude of being an Intel/Siemens finalist and being a US IMO member. The latter is truly the top accolade for high school students in the nation, which is why I remain bewildered that Harvard waitlisted this kid. There are no sour grapes; no pointing of fingers; just my curiosity. Going back to what Fitzsimmons said in that video, whom exactly is Harvard accepting to fill in those 200-300 academically distinguished seats?</p>
<p>Well you also have to keep in mind that Shaunak made IMO during his senior year (after admissions results came out) and also that he didn’t have any spectacular EC’s other than being a Blue MOPper and USAMO qualifier at the time that he was applying. Furthermore, you can’t expect every high caliber student to be able to run the table (especially if they’re Asian), as there are far too many subjective variables involved in the American college admissions processes.</p>
Yeah, that is true. But he was put on the waitlist; was the announcement that he made IMO still not enough to push him in?
Well…uhh…Bio is lame compared with math?
But yeah, that is surprising. Who the heck are the 200-300 people that took his spot for those “academic stud” slots at Harvard?</p>
