help! passion for maths but no olympiads etc?

<p>is it ok if i say i love maths but i havent taken part in any maths competitions whatsoever???</p>

<p>Depends where you are aiming. If Ivy high then probably not</p>

<p>as long as you have substantial evidence to back your claim up then you’re fine. </p>

<p>still, you’d better be VERY persuasive. it’s very rare that som1 who’s passionate for math doesn’t get involved in any sort of math competition.</p>

<p>Did you have the option of doing olympiads?</p>

<p>I’m similar. I didn’t know about math competitions until this year, but I do love math. I started MAO at my school, took college math via dual enrollment, and also did SAT tutoring. You don’t have to be a national champion to be passionate about something - just be involved.</p>

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<p>That’s not true. Very many schools do not offer the opportunity to participate in math competitions at all, so people who usually attend these schools won’t know about them and therefore won’t participate. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t passionate about math though.</p>

<p>i didnt have many opportunities because i didnt take science, and all the olympiads etc were given to science students…
and i screwed up my sat1 for maths i got 720, but im probably going to get a really high score on mathslevel2 do you think that will make up for it?</p>

<p>I didn’t have great showing in math competitions - they were available at my school, but I participated pretty sporadically and was really more interested in hanging out with the mathy people than training for whatever test. Actually, I’m not sure I even thought to mention the competitions anywhere on my apps… just was not an important part of my world. How I did display my passion for math was through my essay, in which I (among other, less boring things) explained some basic topology to illustrate why it was so fascinating to me. If you love it, you can talk about it and sound like you know what you’re doing - that is plenty convincing. I wouldn’t make excuses about not taking the competitive exams - just don’t mention them at all. But yeah, talk about your passions! Who are they to doubt them?</p>

<p>… well, I mean, of course no one takes anything an 18-year-old says with conviction without a grain of salt (my 1st year college advisor actually refused to declare me as a math major, because she ‘knew’ I would switch and didn’t feel like taking the extra 30 seconds to set that up - I just graduated with that major and am going on to a PhD program in maths), but that you have a passion is definitely a good thing, even if they guess that passion may change over time.</p>

<p>That said, if you love maths absolutely talk about it… if you aren’t really that into maths but think being so will help your chance of admissions, don’t. Falsifying application information is a very serious offense, and can get you blacklisted if you’re caught. Be yourself! because what on earth is the point of going to a school you couldn’t get into unless pretending to be something you’re not?</p>

<p>Only on CC do people think that not having been in an olympiad means that you’re insufficiently dedicated to your subject of choice.</p>

<p>The key is that you have evidence to back up your claim, not that it has to be a specific type of evidence. Taking extra math electives, participating in a math club, tutoring your peers in math, doing a mathy research project, reading a lot of math-related books and being able to discuss their content in an essay or during an interview…all of these are evidence of dedication to math.</p>

<p>wow… 720 SATI math… that would be like four questions wrong or so. Even if you did AMC 12 you probably wouldn’t make AIME</p>

<p>I would think that the competition type math available during high school trains a certain level of thinking beyond teh class room crap. Number theory, combinatorics, set theory, group theory, geometry, probability, are all great subjects rarely, if at all, explored in the class room setting. More than learning these topics, one learns how to think in creative, abstract ways born into existince through patience and dedication. Though it’s not required to do well in college math, i’m sure it gives a tremendous boost.
That said, as long as you are convincing in your essays, you should be fine with admissions. Only a very small percentage of high schoolers make it to AIME/Olympiad, so don’t think of it as a pre-requisite for top school admissions in math. If you really love math, then it will show through your essays-- if you choose to write on the subject.</p>

<p>Most acceptees at the top schools who convey math as their passion scored, probably with ease, both an 800 on the Math SAT 1 and on the Level 2 Subject Test.</p>

<p>^There are plenty of people passionate about math who have testing anxiety or otherwise would miss a few questions on the SAT due not to lack of intelligence or knowledge but simply silly mistake. 720 is 96th percentile, placing th OP in the top 4 percent of everyone taking the SAT in math (testing) ability - nothing to sneeze at. And believe me, if you think a top-rate admissions officer is dumb enough to think there’s a difference between a 17-year old who missed two questions on an hours-long test and one who missed three, you’ve got some nasty surprises coming.</p>

<p>I’d take some of the ultimatiums people will post on here with several large grains of salt.</p>

<p>“There are plenty of people passionate about math who have testing anxiety or otherwise would miss a few questions on the SAT”</p>

<p>I never doubted this. I doubted that most of these people get accepted at top schools. Your perspective is much more pleasant but is less realistic.</p>

<p>If math is one’s passion, being below the 50th percentile at a school is not advantageous. You are wrongly comparing the performance to all taking the test instead of to applicants to top schools.</p>

<p>I maintain that at that level, maths passion is less testable by SAT than a more specialized test - just as a general IQ test will have trouble differentiating between scores of 160 and 180, a few missed questions at the upper ranges of the mathematically passionate determine less about their ability, more about stress factors, boredom, or other simple and irrelevant reasons for mistake.</p>

<p>You can flout large numbers all you want, but as someone with a just decent high school GPA, small SAT mistakes, and no hooks but an intense passion for math and love of learning in general, who not only got into UChicago and Harvard but knows many others with a similar story, I have to maintain that the correlation between SATs and admissions is less a factor of high scores impressing numbers-crazed admissions officers, more that those likely to score high, whether they actually do or not, have other indicators of these abilities and passions that can show through the application as a whole. Correlation does not imply causation, and I really think the admissions officers at top-ranking schools (some of whom I know personally by this point) are smart enough to figure that out. No one I’ve talked to outside of high-strung high schoolers and their helicopter parents cares a whit whether you miss a few questions on the SAT.</p>

<p>thanks so much everyone… =) apart from maths i’ll be talking about some other areas of interest as well so i guess it wont be that bad</p>

<p>I am not claiming that I care nor that one should care, mathgrad. What I am saying is that some admissions officers care; a 720 in math on the SAT 1 likely does not help one’s chances if he or she conveys math as a passion.</p>

<p>And what I’m saying is that any admissions officer worth their salt doesn’t distinguish much between a 720 and 760 or 760 and 800 - the point of the SAT is to get an idea of the general range you test within, not to penalize you for not managing a perfect score. Poor SATs coupled with low grades, unfocused ECs and lackluster essays paint a very different picture than poor SATs (a 720, I maintain, if far from poor) with otherwise good grades, activities and a general expressible passion. You can have a particularly good or bad 3-4 hours, but it’s a little harder to have misrepresented years-long interests and ambitions, and it’s those driven students that admissions seeks, not the perfect scorers. If you can at ~16 suss out the difference, don’t you think people who do this for a living can too?</p>

<p>(to clarify: I realize some of my statements probably sound somewhat aggressive/confrontational… this is the nature of written text, to be less nuanced and so less clear than face-to-face conversation. I hope you take from my tone here less that I’m ‘yelling at you’, absolutely not my intent, more that I’m fed up with the general impressions people have of a system much more intricate and caring than generally represented)</p>

<p>You don’t have to be good at something in order to have a passion for it. I really like Baseball and I’ve played it since I was 5 years old. Am I good enough to play Division 1? Hell no. Am I any good at all? I’m probably average - below average. But I love the game and love studying it and watching it. I am passionate about it, even though I lack playing ability. </p>

<p>I know many people who are fanatic baseball fans, yet can’t play a lick of it. They have passion even though they lack talent.</p>

<p>“You don’t have to be good at something in order to have a passion for it.”</p>

<p>No one in this thread suggest to the contrary.</p>