<p>Jonri, there are adults, geniuses and giants in their fields who are still like that. A certain very well known conductor cannot be left unattended. He has walked out of concerts at the break and then had to be picked up at the police station for jumping a streetcar or subway without paying for a ticket and then not having any real idea of where to go. </p>
<p>My friend’s husband always mumbles, can’t look you in the face, refuses to socialize and …looks odd and uncomfortable in any social gathering unless his wife or children are right there. But watch him walking in the hospital, (he is a top surgeon) and wow, he is in his element. Stands erect, looks imperious and walks with purpose. Incredible transformation.</p>
<p>I think it’s sad if a student would write “I find my classmates trivial.”</p>
<p>I don’t have any objection to standards of character for applicants (as opposed to personality). No doubt there would be a lot of discussion about what constitutes character, but I suspect that could handle the issue that jonri raised.</p>
<p>The issue of applicants who have what used to be called Asperger’s syndrome (maybe still is) is a rather tricky one, I think. If they otherwise function well in society, do they have a disability that is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act? Are private universities covered by that act? Would the student have to be admitted first, before the act applied?</p>
<p>If you were an adcom, and said kid was objectively brilliant, would you find that a deal-breaker? Depending on the whole picture, I might. Because I’m trying to build a community, and if I have someone who is going to reject all other people and not try to learn from them, I don’t really want them around.</p>
<p>“It’s my observation that selective colleges may want a sizable number of people like this.”</p>
<p>Agreed. It doesn’t mean you have to be a loudmouth jerk. But assertive self-advocates are exactly who’s going to shine at Harvard and get the most out of the experience. (This won’t be so true at, say, Williams.) As a career coach, I tell a lot of my clients that they may be attorneys, consultants, professors, etc., but as far as their own futures are concerned, they are in SALES. People who are good at sales are more likely to rise to the top of almost any field, whether they are opera singers or computer programmers.</p>
<p>“If you were an adcom, and said kid was objectively brilliant, would you find that a deal-breaker?”</p>
<p>I would. I see the “my classmates are trivial” theme in early essay drafts all the time. It must be slashed with a machete. It’s the kiss of death.</p>
<p>So the real problem with the “my classmates are trivial” applicant is that he didn’t have the benefit of a college counselor/proofreader to come behind him to make sure that he wasn’t sending the wrong message. If Hanna “sees it all the time”, it must mean there are plenty of kids who feel this way, yet aren’t being authentic in an effort to portray a certain image. This is why essays are a sham.</p>
<p>The essays are only a “sham” bogibogi if the university is an entity which exists in a vacuum in which it is not important to be able to communicate with the outside world.</p>
<p>Let me put it in an academic framework: There is a grammar of interpersonal relationships, just as there is a grammar to writing a paper on aerospace engineering. If you do not know know where to put the commas and when to start a new paragraph in a social interaction, you are not effective. Science and math in the world are collaborative activities. If you do not understand the grammar of collaboration, it makes little difference how wonderful your vocabulary is.</p>
<p>As a very extreme example: see “A Beautiful Mind.”</p>
<p>Maybe he should have been screened out of the mock CIA interrogations the Harvard psychology department subjected him to as part of an experiment.</p>
<p>I assume they don’t do that anymore to the students.</p>
<p>So if a student wrote in a college admissions essay, “I find quite a few of my classmates only vaguely human,” how would you react, lookingforward?</p>
<p>I would reject the applicant fast enough to make everyone’s head spin, no matter what other qualifications he (probably not she) had. Are you with me on this, Pizzagirl?</p>
<p>No, the real problem is that there are multiple intelligences that are of importance, and the kid who is academically brilliant but doesn’t recognize that “I find my classmates to be trivial” is a problematic thing to say (and an even more problematic way to be) is demonstrating that he is not emotionally intelligent. Why should MIT want someone who doesn’t have the basics of emotional intelligence, social skills or graces? I’m not talking life-of-the-party here, but the basic humanity of being able to value, work with and learn from others.</p>
<p>Unless it had been done in such a way as to be clearly humorous in nature and intent, yeah, that phrase would likely cause me to auto-reject. Thank you for making me reflect, QM.</p>
<p>You are very welcome, Pizzagirl. Thanks for your gracious reply, and for the opportunity to illustrate in another way why I reacted as strongly as I did.</p>
<p>Bogi does have a point that good advice can help a kid filter the message
But I believe kids should get good advice along the way. I’m generally against those who charge big, rewrite or pretend to know more than they do. But these are 17 yo’s who have rarely put together a smart list of activities, resume or answered these sorts of questions. Some nice advice can benefit. When I see a kid who makes a silly inexperienced error, I do sometimes react : why didn’t he seek some 2nd opinion? Just as one would do with any important project.</p>
<p>Wow Quantmech, I had no idea that happened to kryzinski when he was 16. Is this a well publicized fact that I missed? Admittedly I didn’t follow the unibomber thing very closely, but that’s pretty amazing. Sorry, off topic.</p>
<p>So, back to Hunt’s excellent post, and let’s remove the red herring of “vaguely human” and substitute kinder language such as “poorly socialized” (as a description of the student’s demeanor, perhaps observed by a teacher or by an interviewer) or “finds classmates trivial” (as how the student describes others, perhaps in an essay or to an interviewer).</p>
<p>Is it wrong for MIT to limit the number of students fitting this description, even if they are objectively brilliant? Why or why not?</p>