<p>QM, You said earlier that viewpoints change over time. I can imagine alot of people who made posts in a 3 year old thread would not necessarily want that thread dredged up 3 years later . That may be one of the reasons why a poster felt it was in “poor taste” to revive that thread.</p>
<p>^ and it also goes back to resources. You want kids who will engage with each other, as well as take advantage of opportunities, join clubs, go to games or performances, etc- add to the vibrancy. Not just those who may have classroom strengths. It’s a four year experience. Someone once refererred to it as 360°.</p>
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<p>I was responding to the question of whether someone deficient in communication and collaboration added any value just because he is “brilliant”. Based on your misinterpretation of my response, I guess I did not express myself well. I was trying to say that my son can communicate and collaborate when in the company of people who share his interest and passion. I believe that that can be the case for many kids who are accused of lacking in social skills; they just have not met their “people” yet.</p>
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<p>I’d expect that both high school ECs and high school grades and test scores predict extracurricular involvement in college, since the smartest and best-prepared kids will be able to complete their coursework in less time and therefore have more time for extracurriculars.</p>
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<p>Studies have not found that SAT scores underpredict the grades of URMs or of low-income students (two groups of students who are more likely to attend schools with limited curricula), so there is little reason to believe that the scholastic aptitudes of applicants from bad schools
are understated by their test scores.</p>
<p>^ yes. But not just that they dispatch the work easily. It includes he choices they make, what they do with the available time.</p>
<p>Bel, the feeling at my place is that the selections they make are successful. They track certain kids or groups. They are not looking for college grade performance exclusively. And you are assuming about their scores. And what class variety is offered, either at the hs or thru DE.</p>
<p>LG:
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<p>This is a public internet forum… not any kind of “official” college site. Nowhere that I know of does it say any information we read is “true” and I always take everything very sceptically. If someone wants the official scoop on MIT, it would make sense that they were reading an official MIT site. If they want the unofficial scoop, they can read here. No one forces them to read here. No one forces them to read any particular poster’s posts. I am sure lots of readers automatically skip over mine. No problem.</p>
<p>If any reader out there is using CC as their only authority on colleges and college admissions - please stop!!!</p>
<p>Also, when readers find threads uninteresting and without anything to offer - they die. When readers find posters full of BS, they quit reading those posters after a while. After fussing with them for a while first though. We seem to all like a good fuss.</p>
<p>It’s America. We can post and read all the garbage we want as long as some site on the internet is willing to sponsor it. If our language and ideas are offensive enough and criticized enough, we may be intimidated into leaving a thread or the site. I love CC. I am not leaving this thread until QM is done.</p>
<p>Of course, you can keep fussing at me all you want. Your absolute right.</p>
<p>Lookingforward, I appreciate that you may want to maintain some anonymity, but could you clarify what your role in admissions is? From my recollection, I thought you said you don’t work in admissions, but you do read applications for an ivy. If that’s correct, does that mean you help out during the admissions cycle or something and have another role at that university in the off-time?</p>
<p>Alh, you find this to be the unofficial “scoop” on MIT? I find much speculation here. And yes, am uncomfortable when assumptions are built upon speculation or anecdotes. Sorry. But none of us regular posters have the scoop. </p>
<p>CA, I am one of a team of additional readers, during the cycle. I speak for my own experience and observations only. Or refer to info from the adcoms- eg the remark that they and the U are satisfied with performance and success of kids they support and track. Yes, another role at the U also, with some grad stu. And prior in another dept. I am no special big shot.</p>
<p>LF: In response to your criticisms, I posted my reasons for being on the thread - my motivation. What are yours? </p>
<p>Do you really think this thread has the potential to damage either MIT or any potential applicant? </p>
<p>Again - no one should be using this board as their sole source of college admissions information. It is not official information. It may all even be <em>wrong</em></p>
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My fault bogibogi, I’m just one of those “average” people who are too stupid to comprehend the posts of others. 
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<p>I don’t know why, sometimes, people start talking about why other people are on threads, or whether or not threads are useful, or whatnot. Clearly, threads run their course and this is a place where people go to discuss college admissions. Yes, of course there is speculation and chit-chat. The fact is, the colleges are free to make their process as transparent or as opaque as they want to make it. The more confusing and opaque, the more speculation there will be on a board dedicated to the ins and outs of college admissions.</p>
<p>This is simply why the site exists.</p>
<p>And, obviously, admissions is doing their job well when every single “affinity group” as Canuck guy calls them is unsatisfied with the process. In the end, of course, it’s just a scarcity of resources, or an overvaluation of certain specific resources. Just depends on your opinion. </p>
<p>Me, I just think: Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, Georgia Tech, Colorado School of Mines, UChicago, Cornell, Princeton, UMich, UIllinois, Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley. There are a myriad of really excellent places where a talented student can get an excellent education in the STEM fields and then move on to either graduate work or a career in those fields, as well.</p>
<p>sevmom, you make a good point about views changing over time. Mine have evolved on CC, and even within the span of this thread. However, I pretty much stand by what I have written since joining, and I try not to leave a thread without apologizing in any case where I recognize that I have written something unfortunate, that I would not have written had I been better informed/taken more time for reflection.</p>
<p>With regard to the MIT interviewer, I seem to have fallen into the trap of a cultural stereotype that is out there, I believe. I had envisioned an Indian student who had taken a combination train/bus/motorized rickshaw ride from Kolkata to Mumbai for an MIT interview, and could not afford a hotel; or perhaps a student in China who had cycled 200+ miles for his interview (since I have heard of a Chinese student who made a similar trip to take a standardized test). Then in my thinking, I threw in the fact that the interview was probably largely in English, which was probably not the student’s native language. I thought of how little of my personality I can communicate in any language other than English. I thought of how much time students in India spend preparing for the IIT exams and how hard they are. I thought about Chinese students preparing for the Gakoao. So I felt extraordinarily sorry for them if they faced an unsympathetic interviewer.</p>
<p>Turns out I had that completely wrong. Mea culpa!</p>
<p>Alh, the quote had a context at the time. I was responding to something. In the interim, others have had their say. </p>
<p>Gee poetgrl, I had written out a nice bit on why I’m here. I’ll scrap it. CC is what it is.</p>
<p>Maybe some of this should be done via PM.</p>
<p>The part I don’t get about the interviews is this, though: I have interacted with many students from the U.K. and some colleagues here who hail from the U.K. Not too many are mathematicians, but there is not a single person among them who could not converse circles around me! I have never met anyone in England who had a problem with social interactions, actually. </p>
<p>I did observe that some of the college-age students in England seemed to an American to be less cautious about each other’s feelings than most Americans are. For example, I once heard a student who had BBC pronunciation (to my ears, at least) imitating a student with a strong Yorkshire accent, directly in response to a comment by the student with the accent (and after he knew what the first student’s normal mode of speech was). I don’t see anything similar happening in the U.S. The student from Yorkshire seemed to actually enjoy the exchange–it wasn’t the stereotypical British stiff upper lip reaction, it was a warm response.</p>
<p>I think the British public schools (meaning private) have mellowed quite a bit over time, so the kind of mistreatment that Alan Turing apparently endured happens relatively rarely now. Clearly, the kind of experiences that Turing had could distort a sensitive personality.</p>
<p>Earlier, I did not name people of the U.K. among those where the stereotypes are utterly incompatible with being robotic. It’s just very hard for me to conceive–perhaps not quite as hard as a hypothetical robotic Frenchman, but very far out there.</p>
<p>Those conversations usually come up when legacy or affirmative action is a factor in admission</p>
<p>I do have one more comment before leaving the thread. We have discussed the admissions situation of students who may have some difficulty with social interaction.</p>
<p>However, this may leave the impression among the contingent out there with 2400/2400/4.0 UW, strong EC’s, strong recommendations, and strong essays that they are likely to be admitted, because they do not have the deficits that people have pointed out here and elsewhere. They have lots of friends, get along easily in social situations, and are very considerate of others. Their essays and other answers are consistent with these aspects of their personality, and they are genuinely interested in one or more academic subjects, which they have pursued in depth.</p>
<p>These applicants still cannot feel confident of admissions. This does not hold for the applicants who have the total-knock-your-socks-off package, but there are scarcely enough of those to fill Caltech’s class numerically, let alone the classes at other universities. </p>
<p>I do not like the “blame the applicant” school of thought (i.e. the claims that anti-social tendencies were revealed in the essay, or that the student was hampered by a poor, but unseen recommendation).</p>
<p>I think that it is mathematically impossible for HYPSM+C to have the yields they do have, without turning down some applicants whom they guess will be admitted elsewhere in the same challenge league (and Chicago if they have applied there, and some other universities, depending on major). For most of the applicants, this happens. For a small number of truly “top” applicants, maybe 5-10%, the odds are that they will not wind up being admitted anywhere in that same league. In all honesty, I think that the roll of the die ran against them–not that the outcome is explicable in terms of any non-super-ness in the applications.</p>
<p>So, please count me as off this thread now, alh.</p>