"How did HE Get In?"

Parents Forum
1061

<p>Sorry to have obfuscated my objection with so many posts, Hunt. The clearest statement is probably in post #1046.</p>

<p>Don’t others find it objectionable to label “quite a few” applicants as “only vaguely human?” I think that respect for other people as fully human is incumbent upon everyone. The type of remark made by Mikalye has historically (and still now, I think) been used to classify people as part of the “other,” who need not be accorded the same dignity as members of one’s own group.</p>

<p>I object to the classification of MIT’s very smart, but hard-working applicants as “robotic,” because I think that too is dehumanizing. But not so much as I object to the explicit dehumanizing impact of “only vaguely human.”</p>

1062

<p>It’s not that it’s too candid, Hunt, it’s that I consider it categorically false.</p>

1063

<p>I find it so objectionable it makes me almost physically ill, especially as it is language directed at young people probably still developing a sense of self. It also models behavior for all the youngsters that seems to me very undesirable.</p>

<p>The exchange between mathboy and Mikalye is pretty illuminating of both personalities, imho.</p>

1064

<p>Thank you alh! I hope that I am not stoking old resentments!</p>

<p>For what it’s worth, I will mention that I try to remember all of the good that various people have done with greater intensity than I remember the ill. Still working on forgiveness, though.</p>

1065

<p>"If you had no B’s in math/science on your transcript, Mollie, is it ok for me to carp about the MIT admits who did? "</p>

<p>Is this your contention that MIT should reject anyone who gets a B in high school?</p>

<p>All it takes is one bad morning of a final to get a B. It means absolutely nothing.</p>

<p>Knowing high school students, there are usually many bad mornings.</p>

1066

<p>QM. It’s gotta be right up against the TOS to repeatedly name one person on CC and critique. Please consider.</p>

1067

<p>You left out the smiley face in the quote, texaspg.</p>

<p>Do you mean Mikalye, lookingforward? I am critiquing the attitude in the posts, not the person.</p>

1068

<p>Holistic admissions to the most selective US schools simply aren’t set up to objectively distinguish the academically “most deserving”. If they were, they would rely on a harder, more discriminating test than the SAT. The objective measurement bars are set at “good enough” but not at “the best”. ~25% of Harvard and MIT students have at least one perfect SAT score. So nobody knows just how high some of them (and some denied applicants) might have scored on a far higher test.</p>

<p>Absent a harder standardized test, are there specific achievements that mark some applicants as clearly “deserving”? If so, could we list them a priori, or must we invoke the porn test (“I know it when I see it.”) If the latter, then clearly, human judgement is involved. If the former, then unless the adcoms can agree on the list, we’re back to human judgement and class-crafting voodoo.</p>

<p>This system isn’t necessarily worse than what prevails in other countries. However, I don’t see how it could not be vulnerable to shape-shifting prejudices.</p>

1069

<p>

I think the objection to this statement is not really that it’s false, but that it’s rude. Would your reaction be the same if it were edited to say the following:

I think it really says the same thing, although more nicely. Is it less objectionable? Is it true? If it’s true, is it wrong for MIT to limit the number of such persons that it admits?</p>

1070

<p>I’m going back to catch up now and am surprised we are going back over- no, I am not surprised. Quant, for me, sometimes the value in participating in CC is the discussion, itself. Sometimes, it’s what I learn. Sometimes, it’s getting a new take on some poster’s perceptions, watching as new ideas come forth from someone I thought was off track. Etc. </p>

<p>It’s less fun when some poster repeatedly recycles. And, many have to repeatedly explain. And we don’t get very far. Much like any interaction.</p>

<p>*committee decisions ensure that every decision is correct in the context of the overall applicant pool * I hate to have to point out again that “correct” for MIT does not mean 2+2=4. There is no absolute and they know it. And we should. They have to make decisions and know it. They make the best decisions they can. That is what "correct"means. </p>

<p>If you had no B’s in math/science on your transcript, Mollie, is it ok for me to carp about the MIT admits who did? Afaiac, you can go on about B kids. But IF you speak with some better position than MJ said something or other more than 6 years ago. And get it straight. You told us Mollie said she had sci B’s in hs. You passed that info, made that impression. I honestly don’t think you can definitively point to more than a random person who supposedly got B’s and got admitted. An anecdote, fine. </p>

<p>The MIT interviewer objections need to be taken up elsewhere. If you really care, do something about it. Referring us to dates, quoting, etc, is fruitless. That person is not on this thread. You may have misinterpreted. I, for one, don’t want to seek out old posts to verify. </p>

<p>I am sorry, but this thread, at times, is freaking fixated on MIT in an era now past. It’s fine to draw a line to the past, but, for me, not to mire us in it. Jones, Jones, Jones, Jones is now being replaced with the drumbeat of that interviewer. You are NOT critiquing the attitude when you repeatedly name the person. And then act surprised we don’t line up. </p>

<p>Sorry, folks. I am going back to my work, for a while. If someone had a comment directed at me, I’ll pick up my part of the convo later.</p>

1071

<p>Well, it is a little silly for any college to claim that it has ensured that every admissions decision is “correct,” no matter how you define correct. If they said that they have a set of policies and criteria, and that they apply them consistently to the very best of their ability, it might be a bit more palatable.</p>

<p>One graduate school my son applied to–which he thought was a safe school–never indicated at all whether he received an interview. I can’t completely dismiss the possibility that there was a clerical error.</p>

1072

<p>lookingforward, I apologized for the statement about that Mollie had a B or two in high school. However, I quoted her statement on the MIT thread, and you can see how I might have been led to that mistaken conclusion, I would guess. I quoted it in response to the claim that the statement that MIT admits students with B’s in science/math is an urban legend.</p>

<p>I assume that “Mikalye” is just a user name. If not, the entire Mech family is horrified that I have referred to him!</p>

<p>To say that multiple interviewees are “only vaguely human” makes me angry, actually. You may not like to hear my opinion repeated, but I would hope that there are others who think this is not really an acceptable statement to make, even in jest.</p>

<p>Is the era past? Institutions change slowly in my experience, especially when there is considerable overlap in personnel.</p>

<p>Also I get to quote Faulkner (yay!): “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”</p>

1073

<p>Will try to respond to Hunt’s question in #1069 in full later on, but (sorry to reiterate) I consider every human being whom I have ever met to be fully human. I do not believe that there exists any person who is merely “vaguely human.” I take the phrase for an exaggeration, a joke–but for me, it lies outside the bounds of appropriate discourse.</p>

<p>Will come back later, to reply to Hunt’s question about the re-worded statement.</p>

1074

<p>Blossom: I am very sorry.</p>

<p>Noble Prize = <em>joke</em> and trying to build off the following:</p>

<h1>548

</p>

<p>A really bad joke, obviously : (</p>

<p>Since my snowflakes consider my lack of humor to have been a huge parenting deficit, I’ve been trying to work on this before grandchildren arrive. I promise to go back to practicing knock-knock jokes with three year olds.</p>

1075

<p>Sometimes it becomes crystal clear to me I’m reading a completely different thread than everyone else even though QM is now graciously limiting her quotes to the few authors I have read. And since Faulkner came up again…</p>

<p>I am going to back up to PG’s comments about Southern gentlemen, presentation, service - all pages and pages back and I don’t have time to go look it up. If you are just joining the discussion, don’t bother to read further.</p>

<p>I was raised by Southern Ladies and Gentlemen (don’t have time to deconstruct those terms for modern times at the moment) No adult in my extended family ever said anything negative about anyone. Ever. Just Not Done. And my father, unless in golfing or hunting clothes never went out in public without a coat and tie. Seersucker was invented for August in the deep south. In the mid 70s I returned home from college for an engagement party my parents were hosting for the daughter of family friends. Fancy. Dark suits for men and what we used to call cocktail dresses for women. The future groom arrived in shirt sleeves sans tie. My father caught the eye of my brothers and they all discreetly left the room, returning moments later without coat or tie. I don’t believe I had ever even seen my father with that top button undone. The only thing ever said about the incident was by my mother over coffee the next morning. Very sternly she announced to me “When you have guests in your home, you make them comfortable”</p>

<p>My point?</p>

<p>MIT’s applicants are MIT’s “guests” and they don’t seem to be treated very well at all.</p>

1076

<p>

</p>

<p>Yes, like the older SAT, which had g-loaded sections such as analogies. The fact that admissions officers at HYPSM have not requested this shows their deplorable lack of interest in finding the very smartest kids, or at least their desire to do so based on their untested hunches rather than objective instruments. Raw scores on AP exams could also be used – a 5 on many AP exams corresponds to a wide raw score range. SAT scores from 7th grade (or earlier) talent searches could be used to find the brightest, since very few hit the ceiling at that age.</p>

1077

<p>QM: your thoughts on momchil?</p>

1078

<p>

</p>

<p>Finishing your quart of consolatory ice cream* and moving on isn’t necessarily the only model for dealing with rejections in life or when one is trying to engender change. </p>

<p>Why if some who rejected that very advice actually followed through with it, the Goths, Huns, Vandals, and other barbarian groups wouldn’t have been able to turn their rejection from being accepted into the Roman Empire into overrunning it, causing the Western Half to collapse, and to contribute to the process which made the Western World into what it is today. </p>

<p>Moreover, contrary to many anguished latter-day classicists decrying the very fall of that empire, many folks…even some Romans actually welcomed those Barbarian groups as liberators because the Roman state had become so despotic, tyrannical, divided, incompetent, and more. </p>

<p>Hence, sometimes holding grudges and using it as a motivating force can be the catalyst for changing the world and turning one’s group/self from rejects into top dogs. </p>

<p>Now whether such changes are good or bad is up for fruitful debate and an altogether separate discussion.</p>

<ul>
<li>This also presupposes that ice cream was actually available/affordable for some groups. :D</li>
</ul>

1079

<p>I just don’t think we should confuse the issue of whether MIT should be nicer in its communications with the question of whether MIT should be taking a different mix of applicants. Harping on one person’s use of the term “vaguely human” doesn’t really get to what even that person was expressing: that MIT doesn’t want too many students who aren’t well socialized, and that aren’t willing or able to engage with others. It’s my opinion that you can get a pretty good view of whether a person is like this from his or her high school record, recommendations, and an interview. While people can grow and change, colleges want to admit a lot of students who don’t need to grow and change in certain areas.</p>

1080

<p>“You left out the smiley face in the quote, texaspg.”</p>

<p>It is not relevant for my question though. I am still curious if the expectation is that people getting a B should be filtered out of the augustus admissions process that MIT or whoever has because, darn it, they are above everyone else and no kid who has a bad morning should ever be admitted.</p>