<p>Periwinkle, the mission statement you quoted does not necessarily contradict Pinker’s ideal. The only phrase which <em>might</em> diverge from this is the part about exploring “interests”.</p>
<p>As I think back over this whole discussion, one question occurs to me: in today’s high school environment, how many kids are there, really, with super-high grades and scores who do not also have a lot of other activities and achievements? I haven’t really observed any kids like that, even though I observed kids in a pretty big magnet program over a number of years. Well, maybe one–but that kid went to Harvard. Almost all of the high-stats kids I knew were also active in a lot of areas–even if they were STEM-focused kids, they were doing a lot of STEM stuff outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>Even the kids who were limited in their activities by their parents for cultural reasons typically had multiple activities, including music and often some kind of sports.</p>
<p>Plenty of high stats/rigor kids follow in-the-box thinking. STEM kids doing STEM things is good. Know how many don’t? </p>
<p>Your post about the mission of Harvard College, Periwinkle #499, reminds me of a colleague of mine, who used to differentiate rather snobbishly between people who had degrees from “Harvard College” (the highly exclusive undergraduate school) and “Harvard University, but not Harvard College” (the organization that admits the hoi polloi who are distinguished academically only).</p>
<p>I did actually write about the mission of a “university.” I am not sure whether Harvard University has a separate mission statement, but they certainly have a separate mission from the College.</p>
<p>I only know a few Harvard grads personally–maybe 150. I haven’t talked with enough of them about their undergrad experiences to generalize about Harvard undergrads, even if a sample of 150 would be adequate. When I was a grad student, I did observe that the subset of Harvard grads I knew then seemed to be still rather focused on Harvard, whereas grads of other schools seemed to be focused on their subjects. However, this could have been a side effect of the relative numbers from various undergrad schools. There were a lot of people from Harvard, and fewer from any other college.</p>
<p>I don’t actually get the import of your question in #502, lookingforward. I’m guessing the that number of STEM kids who don’t do STEM things is either close to 0 or surprisingly large, but I don’t know which.</p>
<p>"Likewise, every single person who claims that not admitting some applicant with a sterling academic profile is missing the point, especially if that applicant has been hothoused to the extent that he or she cannot lead in some fashion, or cannot take on some cooperative role in a college community. "</p>
<p>Well, not to put too fine of a point on it, but the kind of kid that QM has mentioned in earlier threads – who was so disappointed by the rejection from one school that he questioned his own capacity in the sciences and was dispirited enough to consider leaving science entirely because how could he possibly make a difference if he weren’t at This One Particular Uber-School – that’s precisely the kid of person Harvard does NOT want to attract. The kids that Harvard et al most wants are PRECISELY the kids who would do just great at any school, because they are natural leaders who create opportunities for themselves and fully leverage their available resources, not hothouse flowers who require just the right conditions to make any headway against their goals.</p>
<p>What’s the advice always given to the kids who come on CC and say “How do I get into an Ivy?” The advice (from the smart folks, that is) is usually some variant of “Don’t make getting into an Ivy your goal; develop yourself to be the best person you can be on whatever those terms on, so that if you don’t make it into an Ivy, you’re still completely poised to rock wherever you wind up.”</p>
<p>“I would like “standardized” tests that could do a better job of differentiating near the top.”</p>
<p>Why? What is the real, practical difference between someone who is a 2370 and a 2400? Or for that matter, a hypothetical 2430? It seems to me that needing to differentiate at that level is merely an academic exercise.</p>
<p>Also, there are about 3 million kids per year taking the SAT and the ACT. How much additional trouble and expense do you want to put all of them through so that 10-15 colleges (at most) can have an easier time of it distinguishing among the top 0.5% of them? Especially when those colleges all have substantial admissions department budgets, are pretty experienced at making the distinctions required (even if imperfectly), and are not actually clamoring for more-sensitive testing. The colleges may not be error-free in making the necessary distinctions, but adding more test data wouldn’t eliminate – or even necessarily reduce – the risk of error.</p>
<p>PG, I clearly have not explained my point well enough.</p>
<p>The students who were dispirited by rejection from MIT were acquaintances of collegealum314, not of mine. I am sure they bounced back and have done fine by now. But it makes sense to me, not that a student who is rejected by MIT would “question his capacity in the sciences,” but rather that he/she might question his/her own view of how he/she stacks up against the competition at that point. </p>
<p>It is difficult to obtain an academic position in STEM fields in the US. Our mathematics department is advertising for an Assistant Professor this year, and they expect 1,000 applications. We are searching in my field (a narrower search) and expect about 150 applications. </p>
<p>lookingforward is always the advocate of the idea that one doesn’t have a sense of the competition based on one’s local environment. So suppose that the students are not arrogant. They know that MIT preferred 1500+ applicants over them. You need to keep in mind that this was before CC made information widely available that MIT follows an academic-threshold theory: after meeting the threshold, a student doesn’t get any bonus points for crossing it by a large margin. The applicants didn’t know that at the time. Suppose further that they have been working hard academically and have been involved in science ECs. Does it really make sense for them to think that they will “overtake” 1500+ students during their undergrad work? Probably not. To me it would make good sense, in that combination of circumstances. for the student to wonder whether he/she could ultimately obtain a STEM faculty position, or whether he/she would be better off adjusting their career plans, in light of what looks like reality.</p>
<p>A somewhat analogous situation might be: Suppose that someone wants to be an NBA player. However, the person is not recruited by any NCAA Div I school to play college basketball. There are probably roughly the same number of students who are admitted to MIT in a given year as there are students who are recruited by NCAA Div I schools to play basketball in a given year. If the prospective NBA basketball player decided that the odds were against him, if he didn’t make the recruited athlete group, would that be indicative of character flaws, or just realistic? I know that there are walk-ons who make the team. I suppose there are some walk-ons who make the NBA eventually; but I would’t advise anyone to bet the house that he/she would be one of them.</p>
<p>There is a difference in that the narrowing of the field from NCAA basketball to the pros is more drastic than from a field of 1500 or so “top” STEM students to the number who will get faculty positions at research universities. But there is still some narrowing among the latter group. It is quite true that a STEM student could do many other things, besides becoming a faculty member in a STEM field, some of them much more remunerative, and many of them more rewarding in other ways. But they don’t offer the opportunity for self-directed research that STEM faculty positions in research universities do. </p>
<p>Re PG #505: My point is that the SAT is too crude an instrument to tell you much about the students who score near the top. Although CB will tell you that a student who scores 2300 probably would not perform as well as a student who scores 2400, if they both retested within a short time frame, I am not totally sure that I buy that. </p>
<p>In the talent searches at 7th and 8th grade level, it generally happens that students who have scored within the top 5% on a grade-level test are spread widely across the score range when they are tested on an “off-level” test–in their case, the ACT or SAT. These tests are off-level for 7th and 8th graders because they are designed for older students who understand more and can do more than the younger students, speaking in general of the groups.</p>
<p>Similarly, it would not be impossible to design an off-level test for high-school juniors. The GRE is too easy to fit the bill, though. </p>
<p>The top 1% of scorers on the SAT actually <em>are</em> differentiated from each other, whether or not the colleges have access to any data that would show it. </p>
<p>It wouldn’t be necessary for all of the students who take the SAT or ACT to take the test that is a stronger differentiator, JHS–just the subset who have scored high, and are interested in one of the small number of schools. For example, many of the colleges of Cambridge University have their own admissions tests, in addition to the A levels (and post A level tests), in order to differentiate very near the top. Only the students applying to those colleges within Cambridge take the more difficult tests.</p>
<p>QuantMech, as MIT seems to look for gender balance, wouldn’t it be accurate to say MIT preferred about 800 applicants to disappointed applicants? </p>
<p>And does the eventual outcome make a difference? Should I feel a student should be devastated if he got into Princeton, but not MIT? Quite a few of the “I/my child wuz robbed!” plaints seem to figure students getting into one elite school, but not all elite schools. If an applicant got into MIT, should he feel peeved that he didn’t get into Harvard?</p>
<p>Why do you think a group of colleges would want to restrict access through test scores? As a parent of 21st century college applicants, I fail to see how adding more testing to the schedule would improve college’s knowledge of a student’s academic prowess. There are only so many weekends. Many of the weekends are already swallowed up by other extracurricular activities, such as sports, model UN, choral festivals, Future _______s of America contests, fundraising carwashes, DECA, moot court, community service, etc. </p>
<p>Many students participate in contests which show interest in subjects, and rank them, such as the math contests, language exams, etc. Every state has a champion this or that, in many fields. </p>
<p>tl;dr, there’s lots of information available to college admissions officers; no need for more tests. </p>
<p>"So suppose that the students are not arrogant. They know that MIT preferred 1500+ applicants over them. You need to keep in mind that this was before CC made information widely available that MIT follows an academic-threshold theory: after meeting the threshold, a student doesn’t get any bonus points for crossing it by a large margin. "</p>
<p>Even 30 years ago applying to schools - and this was just at the point when USNWR rankings were coming into vogue! - I knew that after meeting an academic threshold, students didn’t get bonus points for crossing it by a large margin, and that it was important to show evidence of leadership, creativity, intellectual curiosity, etc. The bar itself may have been lower in my day because there weren’t so many applicants crowding the schools, but the concept was exactly the same. BTW, I was the first person in my family of origin to go to a four-year sleep-away college experience, and I had just typical suburban high school college counseling, and of course we didn’t have Teh Interwebz. Hasn’t this always been obvious? I’ll give a pass to internationals or children of immigrants, but this has hardly been some state secret that only CC has unearthed.</p>
<p>“Does it really make sense for them to think that they will “overtake” 1500+ students during their undergrad work? Probably not. To me it would make good sense, in that combination of circumstances. for the student to wonder whether he/she could ultimately obtain a STEM faculty position, or whether he/she would be better off adjusting their career plans, in light of what looks like reality.”</p>
<p>It makes no sense at all, QM. Taking the student’s desire to ultimately be a STEM faculty member at face value, MIT is not the only university in the land that produces future STEM faculty members. So thinking “I didn’t get into MIT, so I’ll never make it as a STEM faculty member” isn’t particularly smart thinking.</p>
<p>And, of course, high school students know only about 1% of the possible careers out there - doctor, lawyer, engineer, nurse, and college professor (and fireman, rock star and pro football player too, I suppose). So for someone to narrow themselves down to “I must be a future STEM faculty member, that’s the only way I can exercise my jones for science” - well, that’s not evidence of a real smart thinker, either. </p>
<p>“It is difficult to obtain an academic position in STEM fields in the US. Our mathematics department is advertising for an Assistant Professor this year, and they expect 1,000 applications. We are searching in my field (a narrower search) and expect about 150 applications.”</p>
<p>It’s difficult to obtain LOTS of jobs, QuantMech. My history-and-poli-sci kid is applying for various governmental jobs, you don’t think there aren’t thousands of those applications for the “sexy” jobs in the CIA? The difference is, here in the real world, we don’t think highly of people who decide upfront that they HAVE to be one particular thing or else they throw down their cards and decide they won’t play any more. We value people who can say – hmmm, this looks interesting, but that looks interesting too. </p>
<p>Also Re JHS #506: Pinker’s article doesn’t constitute a “clamor,” but I think his ideas about selecting the class are consistent with the suggestions I am making.</p>
<p>Obviously, Harvard admissions can do whatever it wants. I don’t really care about it–I am writing more about an idealized system for a really top university–much like Oxford or Cambridge. </p>
<p>PG, #512, your comment “hmmm, this looks interesting, but that looks interesting too,” is exactly the frame of mind that I was attributing to the MIT applicants who were rejected, and decided to rethink their career plans at that stage. Sure, many people go elsewhere and still become STEM faculty. But of that set, how many applied to MIT to begin with? How many applied there and were admitted, but decided to go elsewhere? Pretty soon, the numbers are still against the person, especially in a field like theoretical physics. Outcomes in other fields may vary.</p>
<p>I agree with you that many of the high-profile really interesting jobs have many, many applicants, when the jobs are outside of STEM, as well as when they are in it. No argument there.</p>
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<p>Well, they may think the STEM faculty who went to undergraduate schools out of the top 5 did so by choice or because they couldn’t afford it. </p>
<p>I would not be surprised if UCB produced most of the current faculty at the top schools in STEM field. </p>
<p>When I looked up Harvard requirements in 2011, they were about only school which said that they would like to see scores from multiple SAT IIs, even though only 2 were required. I was trying to confirm it was the same when answering some kid’s question on CC recently and was shocked to see that they now no longer require any if someone claims a financial difficulty which makes it similar to Standford which advocates a preference for 2 but does not require any SAT IIs.</p>
<p>Looks like more schools are going AWAY from standardized testing requirements. The new SAT will not even have the same type of testing. </p>
<p>I am looking forward to what happens in 2017 admission cycle.</p>
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<p>The other thing which can happen is that people decide that in order to “play the game”, they need to significantly increase their extracurricular involvement at the expense of their academics. For instance, someone may have serious academic interests but may want to possibly be a doctor, CEO, high-level governmental official, in addition to considering a faculty position. Assume they apply to top 5 schools and get into zero, but get into some other good schools (top10 or top 20.) If their academic credentials were stellar (way beyond the typical high school distinctions and perfect standardized test scores), these people may assume that they came off like a Sheldon on Big Bang Theory. Whatever they had did not communicate “future leader” in some field. Whatever non-academic extracurricular involvement they had was not enough. And so, if they do <em>not</em> adjust course, if they apply for that “sexy” CIA position, top medical school, or whatever in the future they are not going to get the call again.</p>
<p>So it’s not just a matter of throwing down your cards and deciding they won’t play any more; it may also be a matter of trading one card for another. </p>
<p>And the question becomes whether that time was better well-spent than if they had approached school in a similar way as in high school. </p>
<p>Re PG’s comment in #511: “Even 30 years ago applying to schools - and this was just at the point when USNWR rankings were coming into vogue! - I knew that after meeting an academic threshold, students didn’t get bonus points for crossing it by a large margin, and that it was important to show evidence of leadership, creativity, intellectual curiosity, etc.”</p>
<p>I agree with that, but I don’t think it is necessarily relevant to what an MIT applicant might have thought pre-CC. I believe that there was an era in which MIT admitted on sheer “brainpower.” This was the era when MIT was providing the guys who wound up in Mission Control, sporting crew-cuts, white shirts, narrow ties, and pocket protectors. You can laugh about this, and I am willing to join you in wondering where the women were. But these people had the ability to respond well in a life-and-death situation when Gene Kranz asked them to “work the problem” with regard to the return trajectory for Apollo 13, and the problem of carbon dioxide build-up on the return.</p>
<p>Intellectual curiosity seems like an academic quality to me. Creativity does not necessarily correlate with academic ability, but I don’t think it’s disproportionately distributed among the not-as-smart. Leadership is probably an independent variable, as qualities go. When I was at MIT as a post-doc, there was considerable concern that MIT graduates wound up working for Harvard graduates. It may be that the change in MIT admissions criteria was intended to address that. I think that collegealum314 has also raised this possibility.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t see it as a bad thing if MIT grads <em>did</em> wind up working for Harvard grads. If you take the Steve Wozniak/Steve Jobs pair as an example, I think it is correct to say that Wozniak in fact worked for Jobs, even when they were partners. Yet if I had to be one or the other of them, and if I had a choice, I’d rather be Wozniak (when both were alive). I realize that I am most likely in a small minority, in this opinion.</p>
<p>Today, any top performing kid should be smart enough to read what his/her target colleges have to say about their process and values. I don’t get this idea kids don’t have opps to learn about these schools. They can also look at the numbers and see that they have an x% chance. If they can’t process this info, and if they can;t see that the world is larger than their own hs, then some of us on this thread win the point and others can’t.</p>
<p>they need to significantly increase their extracurricular involvement at the expense of their academics. Not from my view. Not at the expense of their academics. </p>