<p>
Given this fact, it seems it isn’t much of a boost :D</p>
<p>All I know is the two kids who won from our school now attend Harvard. I think they were both Milken Scholars too, whatever that is. And a bunch of other things as well. They cleaned up on the award bling. Oh, and I know all this because it was all on the school website, and in our local papers.</p>
<p>^ Usually, presidential award is based on a lot more than their SAT/ACT score since so many have perfect scores to start with (only takes CR+M) and California starts with a large number prequalified for this award. So if someone is getting an award in California, they must be a pretty special snowflake by that time which gets recognized by the schools too.</p>
<p>My nephew got rejected by MIT, went to Rice, worked in the summer at a lab that wrote “the biology paper of the century” and is an author on it. He’s now at MIT (having turned it down for Berkeley but the prof moved to MIT). He might be doing ground breaking work now, or he might be in danger of being scooped. (Which sadly can happen and doesn’t mean your work wasn’t good.)</p>
<p>My recollection is RSI scholars do get rejected from time to time and there’s lots of tut tutting from the students, but I’m sure there are good reasons for it.</p>
<p>I don’t think Harvard kicks themselves every time a Yalie becomes president of the US any more than MIT is kicking themselves for missing out on a few Nobel prizes - especially at the undergrad level. Maybe for not hiring one as a professor.</p>
<p>
It may very well have been 50% at some time, but I just happen to know that in 1973 it was 26%. At least according to my handy dandy Cass and Birnbaum Guide to College 1974 edition. Still significantly better than 6% or whatever it is now.</p>
<p>^ Must have been self-deprecating humor! I was wondering about it ever since.</p>
<p>
I don’t think it’s terribly common – after all, a large number of admits (at least those from schools that rank students) were val or sal of their high school classes, and a decent number of those that remain probably went to good magnet or private schools from which a B is not a stain on one’s record. </p>
<p>Speaking in my own defense, and with the caveat that my memories of high school are a little fuzzy around the edges, I think I did get a B+ on the final exam for freshman geometry, but not a semester grade. I cannot think of another B+. </p>
<p>
I think this is the purpose. I don’t think there are boatloads of MIT admits with multiple Bs, let alone in math and science, any more than there are boatloads of MIT admits with math SAT scores below 750, even though anyone with a 700+ is encouraged to apply.</p>
<p>D1 was very upset when she didn’t get accepted to any of her reaches. We talked about the whole process much later. She said what helped her through it was knowing that she gave it all, she didn’t have any should have or could have. She doesn’t know why she wasn’t accepted to those schools, but the one she ended up with was the right school for her because she had the best four years of her life there. </p>
<p>This is more of a side note, later on when she was competing for a job with students from the schools she was rejected from, she “won.” Does that mean that those schools made a mistake? D1 doesn’t think so. There is another thread about regrets of not going to another school. It has never been my character to look back, I try to be happy with what I have. I think both of my kids take after me in that regard. I also believe in giving it all you have for what you want out of life, but move on if it doesn’t happen.</p>
<p>I am glad that molliebatmit is around to contribute to the discussion, for multiple reasons. On the MIT forum, in a thread called “B in math, am I doomed,” on 10-25-2012, Mollie contributed this comment:
So this meant just the grades for a single marking period or exam? The student in question was not doomed, but he did appear to have a B in calc BC as a semester grade, which would appear on the transcript in most schools. I think the OP’s question on that thread was about transcript grades.</p>
<p>I have been thinking about the suggestion that students who were not admitted to a university they really wanted to attend should just get over it, as should their parents, not to mention the parents of their friends.</p>
<p>I think there are multiple reasons that it is difficult for me to simply let go of MIT’s admissions philosophy and its outcomes. (These considerations do not apply to any of the other top schools.)</p>
<p>First, I feel that MIT does in fact have an unusual role, though not unique, in educating America’s future top scientists and engineers. Yes, excellent scientists and engineers can come from a number of universities. On another thread, I’ve mentioned a friend/acquaintance (somewhere in between) who went to U Wisconsin, Eau Claire, because his girlfriend was going there, and he hadn’t really given much thought to college (or even whether to go). Now a member of the National Academy of Sciences. There is an MIT faculty member, I am pretty sure, who is a Nobel Laureate and attended UC, Riverside as an undergrad. So excellence can surface in many places.</p>
<p>Yet, the programs that MIT offers are, as I perceive them, stronger than most. Their culture is also different from most other schools, even strong ones. The University of Chicago has sometimes been mentioned as a great alternative, with challenging courses. In certain ways, the University of Chicago would have been my dream school (if I had known more about it when I was in high school–but I didn’t.) However, its culture is very different from MIT’s, and I think that different types of people would be happy in the two places. Ditto Caltech–probably more challenging than MIT on balance, but its culture is not for everyone.</p>
<p>Given the unusual role that MIT plays, I would like to see their admissions decisions made with a strong eye to the future of science and engineering at the very top level.</p>
<p>I am happy to remark that Mollie fit in very well at MIT and took full advantage of the opportunities there–so no mistake there.</p>
<p>On a side note, the rumor is that having been trained at MIT, she cruised through Harvard with 8 hours of beauty sleep every night. :D</p>
<p>I am going to google unusual role that MIT plays and try to figure out what I have missed.</p>
<p>So why the perseveration about MIT’s admissions philosophy? Again, I am glad that Mollie is around, because I know that she likes or has liked Marilee Jones.</p>
<p>As I read the MIT Admissions web site in the final years of the Jones era, I felt that there was a very strong undertone of distaste for students who had “perfect” SAT’s and “perfect” grades (not to mention the “gazillion” AP’s). There were multiple examples of this, quite a few of them emanating from Ben Jones, and some of them from Marilee Jones. The blog comments taken together gave me the impression that a student with the 2400 SAT I/2400 SAT II/4.0 UW/lots of AP 5’s in meaningful AP’s was actually at somewhat of a disadvantage in MIT admissions. Such a student would have to overcome the stereotype that he/she was a “grind” or had sacrificed many more important things in order to achieve those statistics (not a direct Jones quotation, but pretty close). Some students did not realize that in advance. </p>
<p>I made hard copies of the MIT web sites/posts/blogs at the time, although I don’t know where they are offhand. When I come across them again, I will probably post some of them.</p>
<p>The distaste for the “top stats” applicants came across so strongly on the MIT web site, that I have some question whether their applications were all evaluated in an unprejudiced manner, or whether indications of “grind-hood” were seized upon.</p>
<p>Matt McGann seemed to me to be more balanced in his reactions to the “perfect stats” group than Ben Jones, for example. However, there was one post by Matt (I am pretty sure) that sticks in my mind. Some hapless applicant had been recommended by his guidance counselor as having the “magical 1600” in the days when writing was not included in the SAT I’s.</p>
<p>Matt took strong exception to this. Now, I will certainly say that there is nothing “magical” about a 1600 nor about a 2400 these days. On the other hand, I hope that particular applicant was admitted, Matt’s exception notwithstanding.</p>
<p>The student didn’t characterize the 1600 as “magical,” his guidance counselor did. If your children attend schools with guidance counselors who are “cued in,” then they would probably never make that sort of error. However, there are plenty of schools in the country where a student could be disadvantaged by that sort of remark by a guidance counselor.</p>
<p>In my high school graduation cohort, there were 25 students in the country who had scored 800 on the verbal section of the SAT (now the SAT I) and who were National Merit Scholars. I doubt that the total number of 800 scorers was more than double that. Post the re-centering of the SAT I, scores of 800 on the SAT I became much more common. It is possible that the GC was unaware of the recentering, or its effect. A 1600 wasn’t “magical” in the “olden days,” either, but it was rarer.</p>
<p>A question for Mollie: MIT apparently has an interviewer who goes by the name of Mikalye in the MIT forum. I think that Mikalye interviews some of the international applicants.</p>
<p>I am not sure whether MIT has officially taken notice of Mikalye’s remarks about the interviews, but I think they should.</p>
<p>Among other remarks, Mikalye has stated that he has interviewed students who were only barely human (or a phrase extremely close to that). He has said that he interviewed students who had no friends. He has said that he interviewed students who seemed unacquainted with soap. There is another pair of comments by Mikalye that I will return to later, but I’d like to deal with these first.</p>
<p>Let me start with the easy one: being unacquainted with soap. Mikalye is interviewing international applicants, as I understand it. On the one hand, I understand that odors can make an interview difficult, having had a very hard time serving as a tutor to a student who was a chain smoker (“Oh no, go ahead, it doesn’t bother me”–even though I think the smoke took about 25 points off my instantaneous IQ).</p>
<p>However, I’d like to think that MIT interviewers are more sympathetic to students who may have had to take public transportation to their interviews in a developing country, and who may not have been able to afford to stay overnight in a hotel ahead of time to freshen up. I do not see in Mikalye much ability to put himself in the applicant’s place.</p>
<p>Perhaps he needs to avoid doing that, given the exceedingly small number of international applicants who are admitted to MIT.</p>
<p>Then, the comment by Mikalye about interviewing students who had no friends. I’d think that one would want to talk carefully and sympathetically with the student being interviewed, to find out what was behind that (surface) circumstance. I know no one who is friendless. If a student in a developing country had no friends, I would like to understand why his/her circumstances kept him/her from a near-universal human experience.</p>
<p>Then to the remark about applicants being only barely human. I would be deeply ashamed if anyone who interviewed for or represented my university in any way ever made such a remark, even anonymously. It was still up in the MIT forum the last I looked. It may have been taken down by now.</p>
<p>Final comment on Mikalye’s posts: A few years ago, Mikalye posted a remark about a hapless applicant (my words), who when asked what he liked to do for fun, told Mikalye that he liked to solve differential equations with his friends (more or less Mikalye’s words).</p>
<p>Mikalye thought this was evidence that the student just wouldn’t fit in at MIT, because collaboration was needed in problem solving there.</p>
<p>I pointed out that the student was engaged rather exactly in problem solving with his friends, which apparently he enjoyed. Also, I think that an interviewer ought to take into account the likely degree of savvy that a student has about the interviews. This student probably thought that it was advantageous to say that he enjoyed problem solving as recreation. (I don’t find that fake.) But I think it was clearly disadvantageous, based on Mikalye’s reaction.</p>
<p>Later, an incident somewhat similar to this had transmogrified into the student’s saying that he liked to go to the library and read physics books with his friends. Maybe two different applicants, maybe not.</p>
<p>Apologies for the lengthy set of posts. Perhaps the expressed distaste for the “perfect score” applicants on the official MIT web site was intended to encourage students who did not have “perfect scores,” many of whom would make excellent MIT students nonetheless. In my opinion, that was a sensible goal, but the method went way overboard.</p>
<p>One more question: Has anyone located comments by “Momchil” on the MIT admissions site? I believe that they were made in a running interchange with Bryan Nance, posting under his own name.</p>
<p>"The blog comments taken together gave me the impression that a student with the 2400 SAT I/2400 SAT II/4.0 UW/lots of AP 5’s in meaningful AP’s was actually at somewhat of a disadvantage in MIT admissions. "</p>
<p>I have seen for Brown and I think a few other schools CDS data which shows the acceptance rate at various SAT levels. The acceptance rate did go up as the SAT scores increase, though of course even at 2400 the absolute rates are low. I’m on n ipad so difficult to search … Does this exist in the CDS for MIT? (Not % of the class made up of …, but acceptance rates at each band)</p>
<p>But remember that MJ left 6 admissions cycles ago. I am not sure who benefits from looking at that era. </p>
<p>But regarding perfect scores, is it a clear distaste for/prejudice against those kids? Or simply that they won’t bow before them, unless the “holistic” strengths are there? See the difference? This latter is common.</p>