<p>I agree that you cannot identify the “utterly brilliant” by test scores. There are no test scores that would help one pick out an “utterly brilliant” historian or philosopher.</p>
<p>What about the “merely brilliant,” though, Hunt? Those are the people whose Harvard admissions outcomes I am unsure about. They are also above the threshold where a 1600 on the SAT tells you anything (CR +M!–my era is showing).</p>
<p>I don’t know about math/science but think at least in other fields the super-genius future academics who apply to Harvard because they want to work with certain faculty are accepted. I’ve always assumed they qualified as part of the future movers and shakers and leaders group.</p>
<p>Hmm, that seems like an academo-centric view of the world to me, alh! It is an interesting question whether Harvard considers its faculty in the humanities to be “movers and shakers” or not. I admire Helen Vendler, but I would be hard pressed to name any other member of the Harvard faculty in literature.</p>
<p>I should correct an earlier post: On further reading, it looks as though the complaint that students don’t read all of every book they pick up was Deresiewicz’s complaint, and not Pinker’s.</p>
<p>guilty as charged</p>
<p>What about future political sorts who move back and forth between policy making and teaching? I have to go google what faculty have had books reviewed in the NYTimes.</p>
<p>I don’t think there are really all that many clearly super-genius high school seniors each year in the first place. My kids went to a magnet high school program in a well-off and highly educated county in the DC suburbs. I was pretty familiar with the kids in the program over several years. How many of them were clearly super-geniuses? Well, maybe a couple over several years. Maybe. But also, some of the most impressive kids didn’t have perfect grades or scores. In terms of Harvard admissions, the one kid everybody assumed would get in, did. There were a few others, and they were all good students but not super-stellar, and they didn’t all fit any obvious institutional needs, either. [I omit my own kids from this analysis, because I’m biased, because they were legacy admits, and also because your own kids do too many dumb things for you to fully recognize their genius.]</p>
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For starters:
[Stephen</a> Greenblatt](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Greenblatt"]Stephen”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Greenblatt)
[Louis</a> Menand](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Menand"]Louis”>Louis Menand - Wikipedia)
[Amy</a> Hempel](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Hempel"]Amy”>Amy Hempel - Wikipedia)
[Jamaica</a> Kincaid](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_Kincaid"]Jamaica”>Jamaica Kincaid - Wikipedia)
[Henry</a> Louis Gates, Jr.](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates"]Henry”>Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>I agree with this. The ones who are identifiable at the age of application are very seldom denied. </p>
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<p>My great speculation is that he thinks its not getting the proper consideration * because * of the presence of the wrestler and glee club kid. That doesn’t follow. There are a number of athletes and glee club kids who wind up doing as much for the university or society than academics who spend their lives dreaming up ways to qualify for taxpayer grants. (Sorry, but there are different ways to look at everything.) Jack Lemmon did as much for the world as many top tier academics, IMO. </p>
<p>Harvard might intend to admit every super genius in the world but they don’t all apply or go there.</p>
<p>Right. Some apply to MIT.</p>
<p>sorry - couldn’t help myself</p>
<p>I’ve only met two people in my life that I would categorize as super geniuses. One was at Harvard and he now directs opera and theater. I had lunch with him and thought this is the smartest person I have ever met. Very charismatic too. </p>
<p>The other was an undergrad at Oxford (having started originally some state university in the US and realizing he was bored) and then ultimately got his PhD from Caltech. He could talk on any subject and was an amazing banjo player to boot. </p>
<p>I don’t think Harvard is full of geniuses, but I do think they do try to admit them as many as apply. I’m sure Harvard like most colleges admits a few duds. You always wonder how that happened.</p>
<p>Of course they deny some utterly brilliant kids. Think about what they tell us, in print, that they look for. </p>
<p>This’ll get you further than speculation, from Janet Lavin Rapelye, the dean of admission at Princeton University, Sept '12, NYT:</p>
<p>To answer these questions, it is important to understand how admissions officers read an application. At Princeton, every application is given a holistic review. Because we look at the totality of your experience, there is no formula to the process.</p>
<p>We look first at the transcript that is sent by your secondary school, and we evaluate the rigor of your program and the grades you have received. If you are in our applicant pool, we expect that you have taken the most demanding academic program offered at your school. You will be challenged when you get to our campus, and we want to be sure you are well prepared to handle our college courses.</p>
<p>We are looking not just at your potential, but at your performance. If you had a slow start to your studies in high school, we hope to see academic improvement.</p>
<p>We then review the recommendation letters that are sent by your teachers and guidance counselor. We read your essay and assess your extracurricular activities, how you have spent your summers, if you have had a job or were engaged in community service, what you may have done outside of school, and any other supporting material.</p>
<p>Admission officers understand that standardized tests measure quantitative ability, critical reading, an understanding of some subject areas, and writing skills. Combined with your grades, they only partially predict first-year performance in college. They do not predict, however, other values we hold in high esteem at the college level, such as motivation, creativity, independent thought, intellectual curiosity and perseverance.</p>
<p>When we shape our class, we look for students who will continually challenge themselves and contribute to a lively exchange of knowledge and ideas in the classroom. We seek students whose interests are varied and who have a record of accomplishment in athletics or the arts. We look for qualities that will help them become leaders in their fields and in their communities.</p>
<p>If one test could measure all these things, our jobs would be easy. Standardized test scores help us evaluate a student’s likelihood of succeeding at Princeton, but by themselves are not accurate predictors. For all these reasons, we have no cutoffs in test scores, nor do we have cutoffs in grade point averages or class rank. We consider all of these measures within the context of each applicant’s school and situation.</p>
<p>Although our most promising candidates tend to earn strong grades and have comparatively high scores on standardized tests, we look at other parts of the application, including essays, to learn more about the kind of student you are and how you approach learning.</p>
<p>*Of course they deny some utterly brilliant kids. *</p>
<p>Okay. Are there too many to fit into a class? or is there another reason? I thought it was an interesting argument that there aren’t actually that many “utterly brilliant” and those that apply to the appropriate college will be admitted. I tend to think they are auto-admits, getting likely letters and calls from faculty. But my experience is very limited. Yours isn’t.</p>
<p>" If the purpose of Harvard is to educate the people who will become the world’s “movers and shakers” in their post-collegiate lives, what is the point of having the top scholars to educate them?"</p>
<p>That’s ONE purpose of Harvard; it’s the philosophy of the undergrad admissions department. But it also has a mission to create the most influential new knowledge, and that’s what drives faculty hiring.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.harvard.edu/faqs/mission-statement”>http://www.harvard.edu/faqs/mission-statement</a></p>
<p>Too many to fit into a class? Doubt it. These are 17 year olds, just coming into their own, most not quite getting the difference in college expectations. Lots of growing yet to occur, even from October or December to the following September… And, you have to see that “utterly brilliant” isn’t all they look for- as Rapelye tells. These threads keep hyper-focusing on utterly brilliant and missing the bit about “other values we hold in high esteem at the college level, such as motivation, creativity, independent thought, intellectual curiosity and perseverance.” And I’d add vision, perspective, maturity, and the ability to influence and be influenced, among others. Utter brilliance is just one point in a scheme that asks for many- and benefits from many.</p>
<p>But you’re in good company: I don’t think Pinker gets it, either.</p>
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<p>You will probably recognize at least a couple of these names as public intellectuals:</p>
<p>Stephen Greenblatt is probably the world’s pre-eminent Shakespeare scholar at the moment, and an important theorist of the New Literary History movement (which, for better or worse, is the current dominant modality in literary studies).</p>
<p>Henry Louis Gates is a huge name in African-American literature and African-American studies in general.</p>
<p>Jorie Graham is a very highly regarded poet.</p>
<p>Jamaica Kincaid is a brand-name novelist and memoirist</p>
<p>Louis Menand writes for The New Yorker a lot.</p>
<p>Daniel Donoghue is pretty much the pre-eminent Old English scholar now, and author of the current state-of-the-art Beowulf translation. (And also the possessor of a fairly unique bio line among Harvard faculty: BA University of Dallas.)</p>
<p>Stephen Burt is a really well-regarded contemporary poetry scholar/tastemaker. The New York Times Sunday Magazine did a profile of him a few years ago.</p>
<p>Marjorie Garber is another eminent Shakespeare scholar, and also a theorist of feminist criticism and cinema/visual arts.</p>
<p>Leo Damrosch is an important 18th Century scholar, and author of acclaimed books on Rousseau and Swift.</p>
<p>Harvard used to have very influential faculty in Spanish, German and East Asian literatures, but I peeked and I don’t recognize any names now, which may be more an indication of my being out of it than of Harvard’s being out of it.</p>
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<p>Creativity and independent thought come under the umbrella of “utterly brilliant”. And usually, intellectual curiosity, motivation, and perserverance are also required to get there.</p>
<p>However, maybe you are defining “independent thought” as outside the academic realm, such as solving some community problem.</p>
<p>I appreciate the posts by WasatchWriter and JHS. I know of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of course, and have heard of two of the others listed (pretty sure). But I am mainly drawing blanks, sorry to say. (Scientist! It’s the all-purpose excuse, sort of like “Pirate!”) </p>
<p>Added: What would someone mean by “utterly brilliant” if that did not include creativity, independent thought, and intellectual curiosity? That combination of qualities drives the motivation and perseverance.</p>
<p>Again, you’re thinking in terms of (your) ideals, Q. These are 17 year olds and the instituions’ interests… If you want to define utterly brilliant to include all the tags, fine. And if we don’t slip back into ‘raw,’ (but keep to Rappelye’s comment, “looking not just at your potential, but at your performance,”) yup, we’re closer. . </p>
<p>I don’t see any way to address Harvard’s selection process WRT the “utterly brilliant” unless we can identify the set or a good sample of “utterly brilliant” people who either: (a) applied to H and were (1) admitted or (2) denied; or (b) did not apply. I know some utterly brilliant people who did not apply to H. I know a few who applied and were rejected. And I know some who applied and were admitted. There are probably far more of them out there who never applied than who applied.</p>
<p>I think that Harvard is really looking for the “movers and shakers” and people who will appear on the pages of the New York Times (in a good way) in the future. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that.</p>
<p>Obviously, I have no problem whatever with the component of Harvard’s mission to generate the most influential new knowledge.</p>
<p>In my personal experience, Harvard took all (1) of the utterly brilliant people I know who applied there any time recently, and it took all (1) of the “merely brilliant.” It took some other students, too, who were quite smart.</p>
<p>Given that the mission in paragraph 1 and the mission in paragraph 2 above seem somewhat at odds to me, I wonder how the “merely brilliant” applicants fare in general? By “merely brilliant,” I don’t mean students who lack maturity, or who lack objective evidence of accomplishment. I just mean the very, very smart students who don’t quite reach the level of “utter brilliance.” I think that Pinker would like to see more of them.</p>