I think of it is more of granular scale than just IMO level or nothing. For example, the Harvard lawsuit document lists the following Class of 2023 reader guidelines for rating applicants in ECs; and percentages of applicants and admits in each category (sample is several years old, so admit rates are lower today). I also included results from a regression analysis with full controls. This is similar to the expected change of admit rate if an applicant had the same hook status, the same academic, LOR, and other ratings; and the only thing that changed is their EC rating.
Only ~75 Harvard applicants per year received the maximum EC rating corresponding to national-level achievement, which I expect includes things like IMO. Among these rare few dozen applicants per year, the regression analysis estimated a 70x increased chance of admission compared to 50x for being African American, 25x for being on special interest list, or 20x for being a double legacy. Getting this type of national-level achievement appears to be more influential in admission decisions than most traditional hooks. However, there was also a significant boost for the much larger 24% of applicants who had local/regional level type ECs. There are also more fine +/- granularities for applicants who are borderline, such as 2+ or 2- , who I expect get boosts between the listed averages for 1 and 2, or 2 and 3. It wasnât simply IMO level or it doesnât really matter.
Regression Analysis Odds Ratio by EC Rating (unhooked âbaselineâ, full controls)
âPossible national-level achievementâ â 70x increased chance of admission
âPossible local or regional recognitionâ â 6x increased chance of admission
"Solid participation but without special distinction â Default reference for comparison
âLittle or no participationâ â 1/3 decreased chance of admission
Extracurricular, Community Employment, Family Commitments
Unusual strength in one or more areas. Possible national-level achievement or
professional experience. A potential major contributor at Harvard. Truly unusual
achievement.
Strong secondary school contribution in one or more areas such as class president,
newspaper editor, concertmaster etc. and/or significant involvement in organizations
outside of school. Possible local or regional recognition; major accomplishment(s)
that have had an impact outside of the classroom. Can include significant term-time
work or family responsibilities coupled with extracurricular engagement.
Solid participation but without special distinction. (Upgrade 3+ to 2- in some cases if
the e/c is particularly extensive and substantive.)
Little or no participation.
Substantial commitment outside of conventional EC participation such as family
obligations, term-time work or a significant commute (Important: should be included
with other e/c to boost the rating or left as a â5â if that is more representative of the
studentâs commitment).
Special circumstances limit or prevent participation (e.g. a physical condition, gap
year(s), compulsory service of some kind).
The Putnam math exam is taken annually by about 4000 of the best young math minds. It is scored out of 120 (12 questions, 10 points each), and participants can get partial credit if they solve part of the problem or show the beginnings of a solution. Despite that scoring system, the Median score on the most recent exam was 2. As in, slightly more than 1. This was actually considered a high scoring year, since in prior years the median was typically 0 or 1.
I was a math major in college and would never have dreamed of attempting the Putnam. Higher Math is a whole 'nother world.
Junior Olympics are serious business around here, especially for water polo. No way you are making it to the Olympics without being spotted as a young âun and getting into the training programs. Which I think is odd, especially for boys, because well, puberty changes so much. Early maturers get an edge.
So I see the comparison. Club => JO => recruited for college => Olympics
Big fish, small pond. Itâs hard to know how that fish will swim in other waters if they donât even know they exist.
That said, to what ends are you willing to go to increase your odds at Caltech and/or MIT? Do you want to give up sports? Music? Social time? Itâs all a matter of balance. For my son, he had zero interest in either of those schools. He wanted a more rounded college experience and wanted to be able to hang out with non-STEM students. He ended up at a program that fit him well and has had a short, but wildly successful career thus far. Heâs two years in and already getting headhunted for cool, novel projects.
It does temper my claim that the admissions process at those schools is random. There are certainly a few you can look under the covers at to see what they want.
I donât think those competitors are doing it primarily for college admission help, any more than Olympic swimmers are. Both activities provide big boosts in admissions, but are driven by other things, similar to extraordinary achievement in music or any other field.
There is probably a mix. If, as reflected above, Asian STEM males see it as their only way into HYPSM, then I donât know how you parse out the motivation.
Plenty of athletes- same thing. Sat on too many youth soccer sidelines in my time to have illusions about the pure âlove of the sportâ motivations. But HYPSM could be the parentsâ motivation more than the kids.
Not saying there arenât kids who canât help but do what they love, but doing that EC at the highest level often requires doing it in college, and for STEM doing it at particular colleges that are highly competitive.
I agree. Also, while those involved take these things extremely seriously, competitive water polo and competitive academics are ultimately niches within niches. And while those involved may view the niches as objective determiners of the âexcellenceâ of a college applicant, this is at least debatable.
Being a top 100 or 200 water polo player in any class may help you get you into a good college, but in the greater scheme of things it doesnât mean much. It is still a long ways away from âOlympicâ caliber, and even further away from being a truly transcendent athlete/talent. Same goes for the thousands of honorees in various academic competitions.
That was essentially my point. You should do that, and will be good at it, if youâre truly passionate about it, not as a side hustle to get into some school somewhere. Itâs not a little side gig.
My son had the chops. He does very complicated math now and has always thrived even on esoteric concepts. Would he do it for fun though when he could be skiing, playing soccer, playing music, hiking, etc.? No way!
What about the kid who does do it for fun, but doesnât have the exposure to the competitions to ever be identified? They arenât getting a Harvard rank of 1 or 2. I would think it would only be reflected in a college app by maxing out the courses offered, and a âbest everâ LOR. And that isnât enough to stand out. And yet, those competitive schools are the ones most likely to be able to nurture that love of math.
The EC rating is meant to be a representation of all the studentâs ECs. For example, the guidelines for the 2 category begin âStrong secondary school contribution in one or more areasâŠâ I expect the emphasis is on quality of ECs, rather than than quantity; but all things being equal, multiple achievements/ECs of similar level (including similar time commitment) is better than just 1.
Thatâs a GREAT question. He was on the math team and he enjoyed it, but it was just a local inter-high school competition. Had the culture been there at his school, Iâm sure he would have participated and done well. The Rensselaer Medalist in the class behind him was cut from a different cloth. No sports. He played music and liked to do chemistry experiments over the weekend in his garage at home. He also didnât do math competitions beyond what my son did. He attend MIT. It was a fit for him. My son would have been competitive too, but the fit wasnât remotely close to what he wanted. So, long story short, kids can get in, but those awards probably increase their odds. I liken it to a good job candidate referred by an inside employee versus an equally qualified candidate applying cold. The extra information increases confidence. The cold applicant might still get the job.
That reminded me of the advice that Cambridge gives to entering maths students, where they do expect you to enjoy doing maths for fun (otherwise youâll probably be miserable after three years of just studying that subject):
âMost students will find that there is enough mathematics in Part IA to keep them busy (or very busy!), and the Faculty places no expectations on students beyond keeping up with the first-year lectures, examples sheets and supervisions. There are many other educational and recreational opportunities to enjoy at university, though mathematics itself can hopefully be recreational.â
They do have recreational (not competitive) math clubs that people participate in for fun, eg https://tms.soc.srcf.net/
As a bit of personal history: I took a year off before college and decided to change to study maths because I missed it so much (it also helped that maths required less work than other subjects). I never competed seriously in high school but still occasionally do math competition questions for fun when Iâm bored on a long plane journey (not so much recently of course).
Doing well on the USAMO and other Olympiads takes every bit as much work and talent as being a top athlete or musician. Preparation is done outside of school (sometimes starting in elementary or middle school) as the depth to which the problems go is not practiced at school (US math curriculum is said to be a mile wide and an inch deep). The most successful students have an extraordinary ability to solve seemingly impossible problems by a clever shortcut as the contest is time-limited. The first round, IIRC, consists of 25 problems, around 20 of which need to be done within 75 min for the person to pass to the next round. A good math student can probably solve those 20 problems if they have a day or a week to think about them but doing so in 75 min requires practice and special analytical skills. And this is just the first round.
It is easier to do well on the other Olympiads as there are not so many participants but again it requires extraordinary aptitude and hard work. The math one is by far the most popular.
In our CA Bay area school, all students in the highest math lane are required to sit the AMC-10 and AMC-12. Only a handful of students qualify for the AIME, and we are a top STEM school (nationally-ranked) where large parent resources are dedicated to kidsâ education. There were about 20k+ students that took AMC-10 and additional 15k+ that took AMC-12 in 2021.
MIT has long required to submit AMC/AIME scores as part of the application. Interestingly, this year a non-STEM school like Brown also had an essay dedicated to national awards, specifically mentioning the AMC.
The number of high school graduates per year is pretty steady, the number of top schools and admitted students is pretty steady, and thereâs no reason to believe that the student talent distribution has substantially changed.
So all the numbers say is that students are applying to more schools.
The students who get into the top schools are probably the students who would have been admitted if 20,000 additional students hadnât said âwhat the heck, letâs give it a shotâ. And if one is rejected, it means someone who wouldnât have been admitted before was. So the admitted student probabilities are pretty much the unchanged, regardless of the âstatisticsâ on acceptance percentage.
If Harvard offered free, one-click application to every sub-1000 SAT scorer, accepted none, and drove their acceptance rate to sub-1%, is it really âmore competitiveâ? The same students would be admitted. Students with no chance and not applying being replaced by students with no chance applying doesnât really change anything.
So the question is whether parents shelling out an extra $500 for 6-8 more applications is sustainable. Probably.
Only ~75 applicants per year, 1/2 of whom are admitted . . .
Doesnât this cast doubt on the notion that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of kids who are getting a huge leg up in admissions to these schools by being honored in these various competitions?
Hasnât awareness and access changed? For example, there were always (and still are) talented kids in underrepresented demographics who never even considered top schools. If more of these kids are applying than used to apply, then more talented students will be competing of the same spots.
In other words, I donât think it it reasonable to assume that most or all of new applicants all of the new are wholly unqualified. Many are qualified, and this means more qualified applicants for the same number of spots.