<p>"I think that most schools are playing more than just a numbers game with their admission strategies."</p>
<p>It would just be nice if the rules of the 'game' were a bit more transparent to the pawns.</p>
<p>"It would just be nice if the rules of the 'game' were a bit more transparent to the pawns."</p>
<p>Except that a goodly number of the "rules" are moving targets.</p>
<p>"It would just be nice if the rules of the 'game' were a bit more transparent to the pawns."</p>
<p>In some ways, the game is very transparent, and has been virtually unchanged for quite some time. Not a moving target at all. "We will accept half a class of students of families who are prepared to pay the full list-price for their education. Large donations will march you to the head of the list, as will relationships with members of the Senate and House Committees on Higher Education. We will accept 10% of the class from the bottom 40% of the population in income, and will fully support them. We will accept most of the rest from the top quintile of the population in income - many of them legacies, who do not require much in the way of aid, and will make sure to make the loan burden small so they are not drawn off to other schools offering more. For the rest (statistically not a very large number), we need athletes (highest priority!), desired URMs, three trombones and an oboe, a couple of published poets and novelists, and at least three holders of major patents. Oh, and we'll accept a smattering of internationals, though we hope they are prepared to pay for the privilege (unless they fall into one of the other categories.)"</p>
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Except that a goodly number of the "rules" are moving targets.
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<p>I agree. It is harder to define, quantitatively, a stellar humanities/social sciences student than a math/science one. So it's easy to exclaim over the number of stellar science/math applicants who were deferred or rejected, not knowing what the prospective humanities/social sciences majors bring to the table. But Harvard is trying to build a diverse class. Fwiw, last year, Math 55 had 12 students remaining after the 3rd week test. This year, it has 26. I don't know whether this played a role in the recent admission decisions or not. It could have.</p>
<p>EllenF, what an excellent post. Your insights really should be required reading for people trapped in this or that narrow, hyperacademic world.</p>
<p>Yeah, EllenF's post made me stop and think, a bit. And I realize there's a reason for geographical diversity in college admissions, and that's to help alleviate a problem like that, but can you still imagine how many insanely gifted kids are skipped over at top Ivies every year because of the lack of opportunities available to them?</p>
<p>GuitarMan, if you really care about education and the insanely gifted you'd be lobbying your state legislators right now about increasing their funding to your local university. Whether some kid does or doesn't get into Harvard really doesn't bother me one iota. There are smart kids everywhere, and a kid who is "harvard material" whether or not they get accepted will have a bright future at any number of wonderful universities. Not so long ago, those "insanely gifted" kids you write about ended up working in factories or going to trade school if their parents had no money, or spoke no English, or didn't know the way the higher ed system worked.</p>
<p>But what does bug me.... is that the state U's which were set up using public funds to provide a college education for all are being eviscerated. Legislators don't want to risk the ire of the folks that elect them by voting to increase spending.... the voters care more about an award winning basketball team than about nano-technology labs; the local papers write about the brain drain when smart kids leave the state for college and never go home but who really cares about a bunch of science nerds anyway?</p>
<p>This thread is indicative of all of this myopia. Easier to blame Harvard for a lack of transparency than to blame your own legislators... who you voted for, and whose salaries you pay, for caring more about politics than educating the citizens of your own state. The president of Harvard is accountable to whom? Not to me, that's for sure. But talented kids in my state can't graduate in four years with a BS degree.</p>
<p>Surely there's nobody here who really thinks that HYPS and who knows else rejecting a bunch of smart kids (or defering them) is them a societal problem that requires a group solution. Anxious parents of 10th graders read these threads and decide that their kid needs to learn to translate Beowulf since Math and Science is no longer the ticket into Harvard. The sense of entitlement that permeates some of the kids threads is just palpable and obnoxious.</p>
<p>Actually, translating Beowulf might not be such a bad idea....</p>
<p>:p</p>
<p>Blossom--To be fair, many states don't suffer from that problem. Many do, but look at top public schools in the SUNY system (in my state), the UCs, etc. Schools like U of Arizona, UT Austin, UC Boulder, etc. are all known as very strong physics/astronomy schools. But ehh, of course in many many states the public universities leave a lot to be desired and it's not a good thing.</p>
<p>Here on CC, we see the students with perfect SATs who are rejected from Ivy League schools. We dont see the students with perfect SAT scores who never apply to Ivy League schools for a variety of reasons. These students, and equally talented ones, can be found all over our country. </p>
<p>Just as talented students are everywhere, so are excellent colleges. Dont denigrate public universities. Many provide outstanding educations to very talented students. Some have areas of specialization. My favorite example comes from an article about Lyndon State College that appeared a few years ago on the front-page of the WSJ. Where? Its a small school in the middle of nowhere that Im sure many students on CC would dismiss out of hand. However, Lyndon State happens to have a meteorology department which is known for turning out well-trained meteorologists. At the time the article was published, for as long as anyone could remember 100% of Lyndon States meteorology graduates had found employment or gone on to graduate school. Thats a remarkable record for any college, let alone a small state school.</p>
<p>Many of the large universities established pursuant to the Morrill Land Grant Act have excellent science, engineering, and agricultural schools. Some offer outstanding programs in the arts. Almost all do extensive research. Just as students dont have to attend elite high schools to be talented, neither do they have to attend Ivy League schools to be well educated. </p>
<p>N.B. I like the nowhere around Lyndonville, Vermont. Its a beautiful part of our country, as is the entire state of Vermont, which is my favorite state in the US, not only for its geography, but also for its people. So, please, Vermonters, dont view my reference to nowhere as negative.</p>
<p>"We dont see the students with perfect SAT scores who never apply to Ivy League schools for a variety of reasons."</p>
<p>Absolutely. And some that are admitted will go to their flagship state u for financial reasons - or because the departments of interest happen to be fabulous - or because they want to be close to home. Smart kids - and excellent profs are everywhere. Sadly, all are not equally well cared for.</p>
<p>My niece is an excellent student who would be competitive for admission to one of the highly-selective colleges. However, she and her parents strongly feel that it is not worth the cost since she wants to study engineering. She has been accepted to Pitt, Drexel and Penn State and is waiting to hear from Delaware. She may do applications to Cornell and Lafayette, but she can get such a good education at some of the other schools (especially for the money), that there isn't much chance that she would go to the private colleges even if accepted.</p>
<p>The top science kid from my son's high school class of 2004 is at Penn State honors - very happy. Physics ... manderin ... bee keeping (yes, bee keeping, its a ag school).</p>
<p>Go beekeepers:) My observation hive has new brood this week.</p>
<p>Best math school in the country (per Ph.D. productivity) among the non-tech schools, and corrected for the number of students who are social work or music majors, is by far, St. Olaf. In fact, it really isn't even close. Corrected for entering SAT scores (so looking for differences the school made, as opposed to what the students brought with them), it's off the charts. Even without any correction, the only four above would be Reed, Chicago, Harvard, and Pomona. Rate of math Ph.D.s out of St. Olaf is greater than that at every other one of the Ivies, substantially greater than AWS. </p>
<p>It's at least as interesting to look at what the students are like when they get out as they are when they get in.</p>
<p>Um Ya Ya Um Ya Ya</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Best math school in the country (per Ph.D. productivity) among the non-tech schools, and corrected for the number of students who are social work or music majors, is by far, St. Olaf. In fact, it really isn't even close. Corrected for entering SAT scores... it's off the charts. <<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Which suggests that if you define the category narrowly enough to exclude the real competition and dream up enough "corrections" to weed out any data that doesn't fit your hypothesis, you can declare pretty much any school in the US to be the best at SOMETHING.</p>
<p>Yes, Donemom. The kid that was the Seimens winner was also an IMO medalist and is a sophomore at Harvard now. Is it scary that we know this stuff?</p>
<p>While it is surprising that Harvard is rejecting IMO medalists, it's true that they may have better potential math students that did not do competitions. I can tell you that when my S talked to professors at Princeton, they down played the importance of math competitions. One professor told him, "Math competitions just show you're good at doing tricks. We're more interested in your ability to do analysis." Princeton does not seem to attract a lot of the domestic IMO medalists - they all want to go to Harvard. Most of their medalists are international students, who did quite well in the Putnam last year.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the Princeton physics department does not select freshman for their Honors section based on their prior accomplishments. They base their selection on the first three weeks of the student's performance on problem sets and quizzes and an interview. In S's interview they told him he looked weak on paper, having only taken Physics B, but his work performance was and continues to be stellar. He's one of those kids with great ability who went to a high school with limited resources. He's says there's a line outside his door the night before tests and problem sets. This is exactly what colleges are looking for - someone with great ability who is going to enhance the learning of others.</p>
<p>"Which suggests that if you define the category narrowly enough to exclude the real competition and dream up enough "corrections" to weed out any data that doesn't fit your hypothesis, you can declare pretty much any school in the US to be the best at SOMETHING."</p>
<p>So don't weed the data - take the PURE data - the percentage of students who went onto Ph.Ds in math. Not my data, so there's nothing for me to weed. Higher than Princeton. More than Columbia. More than Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Penn. Take the raw data - it ain't mine.</p>
<p>Or, if you don't think it is fair to include students who are looking for a social work or music degree, take them out of the equation. Doesn't matter. </p>
<p>You'll be hardpressed to find the competition winners at St. Olaf. Something very interesting is going on once the students get there.</p>
<p>Mini's point about St. Olaf being an outstanding math school is absolutely, positively correct. An unbiased, informed source (the recent past chairman of the math department of WUSTL) writes in A</a> Mathematician's Survival Guide: Graduate School and Early Career Development that St. Olaf is a standout LAC in providing really excellent undergraduate preparation to math majors that gets them ready for the top graduate schools. Many other LACs that are otherwise in the same echelon do not have this characteristic of a renowned math department. </p>
<p>That said, Marite has made the point in various threads, and I have every reason to agree, that some young people have so much math preparation before they matriculate for their undergraduate degree that they really need to study math at a research university, where they can take graduate-level courses very early on. Most RSI students and USAMO students belong in that category, which is why they find Harvard such an interesting place to apply to. For a student like that who desires to study math deeply beyond what he or she already knows, the better school in Minnesota than St. Olaf is the University of Minnesota, and other schools besides Harvard that get frequent mention are some of those already mentioned in this thread as destinations for this year's RSI alumni.</p>