<p>I made my living as a professional interviewer and I now do political consulting. You bet we will be going over interview techniques before spring break. I don’t see the harm in this. It’s not like I’ll be putting words in her mouth. She’s a BWRK who speaks her mind and has her own voice. But she’s 17 and has had limited opportunities for interviews.</p>
<p>Even if they were perfectly prepped for certain answers, they could pause and pretend they just thought of the answer. When D1 was interviewing for jobs, she had over 10 interviews in one week. She memorized few current events by heart, she referenced those events many times (didn’t matter what they asked, very similar to SAT writing) and told the same joke over and over. I think because she well prepared, she was very relaxed at her interviews, and she did well.</p>
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<p>Easier said than done, Oldfort.</p>
<p>"Some people have high IQ and some people have high EQ. Both are important in order to succeed in life. "</p>
<p>I think that is the crux of the discussion - whether, if someone’s IQ is high enough (SAT, AP, USAMO, substitute your own favorite marker), it should overwhelm deficits in EQ. When QM has said that she thinks certain levels of intellect / achievement should be auto-admits into MIT, that’s part of what she is saying - that MIT “owes” itself to high IQ people on the basis of intellect and nothing else because they’re going to discover the future blah blah blah.</p>
<p>oldfort, I am glad that you were there for that young lady. I can only hope that many such kids benefit from the kindness of others. (It does take a village). However, I don’t think that you can say for sure that parents do not try to help their own kids in social areas. Maybe this young lady struggled all her life socially, but her time to blossom was now (not to take anything away from what you did). I see that my own son is developing in ways that I never could have imagined just 2 years ago. Anyway, I agree that all kids should be encouraged to develop their EQ.</p>
<p>Yes, it is hard to develop EQ. It’s also hard to learn how to play the violin or do differential equations. If someone wants something badly enough, they will give it their best shot.</p>
<p>I have an employee I’m coaching on this. When we work with her, she gives no response other than “Sure,” “yes,” “okay.” She doesn’t ask questions to validate her understanding of an assignment, she doesn’t show intellectual curiosity in what we do, and she doesn’t offer any fresh interpretations or new ideas. I have to be very patient with her.</p>
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<p>I have to agree with QM on this point. I’m not saying that MIT should *only * admit these kind of students, but why waste this brilliance?</p>
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<p>I don’t disagree Pizzagirl.</p>
<p>Of course, so are a lot of things in life. D2 likes a lot of quiet time and not very social. We had a lot of discussions (fights) when she was in high school to try to get her to communicate more. I’ve had to push her harder to join activities in school. She’ll call me sometimes to try to figure out how to handle difficult meetings when she is in the leadership position. I think if I’ve let D2 to do what she wanted to do, she would prefer to sit in her room to read books all day (living in her imaginary world).</p>
<p>bogibogi - I got pretty close to this young lady, so I know a little bit of how she grew up. I am in no way saying that’s why some kids are not as social.</p>
<p>It was brutally hard for my dyslexic to learn to read. But, should she have been accepted to an elite college if she hadn’t learned to read? </p>
<p>I think, for me, the crux of the argument is: If someone has won X award, they should automatically be admitted, even with massive EQ deficits. These same people will say EQ geniuses are “taking a spot” from this “award winner.”</p>
<p>But, what kind of campus do you have if nobody knows how to have a conversation?</p>
<p>I have a profoundly gifted sibling who has struggled with EQ her entire life. She has developed a decent level of social skills to get through an interview. Where she fails is maintaining her skills during extended conversations or any type of conflict.</p>
<p>Our son suffers from some of the same issues and we have worked with him from an early age. But it’s difficult for him at times, especially now that he’s a teenager.</p>
<p>Not the kind of campus MIT wants, obviously. And see, MIT’s opinion on what MIT’s mission, values and vision are or should be is kind of the most important, no? As long as MIT isn’t discriminatory (in the sense of refusing to admit black females or Indian males or whatever), I don’t see how anyone has much right to say they “should” do things differently. MIT may be the only game in town for a few certain fanboys and girls, but it’s not the only game in town in the real world.</p>
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That is exactly what happened at one of my son’s HYP interview as he related it to me. He went to the interviewer’s office and for some reason the lights flickered. The interviewer then started talking about Hurricane Sandy when we lost power for three days and according to my son, they spent the next twenty minutes discussing preparations for a situation like that and a response to it. Certainly not an interview scenario that you can prepare for but a great way to gauge a candidate’s ability to improvise, adapt and think on his feet. Three weeks from now I can tell you whether it was positive or not.</p>
<p>Hi
It might be not relevant but when Aaron Swartz died I did not even know who he was.
I have seen videos since, and the way he presented himself, and spoke gave me strange feeling. His eyes set ears perked, strings of words would come out without a pause.
To think what MIT have done to him, it is all not that clearcut, as some posters here are trying to communicate.</p>
<p>Yes, part of this is presuming to tell MIT what they should do, based on one’s opinions or anecdotes. And, when we are underinformed about what it is they actually do.</p>
<p>As I recall, the main argument that started the other thread was these brilliant kids, as measured by testing, should all be admitted. On the other thread, there was some formula thrown out by one poster, guessing what number of kids this would be. And then the arguments put forth that it would be easily done. yada yada.</p>
<p>And, yes, brilliance of the MIT sort should be sought. But it is simply not their only point or purpose. Like it or not, agree or not. </p>
<p>It’s not all about stats. And, far more great kids apply than there are seats for. So, we’re back to square one.</p>
<p>We aren’t talking about some cinder block buildings built simply to house brilliant kids doing calculations. Nor online. Nor underground bunkers for top secret research. Nor a special occasion convening just to work out problem sets or run lab experiments.</p>
<p>It will drive you nuts to think about such things, and it will be a very unproductive use of your time, as you will never really know for sure. So put your mind to work on something else.</p>
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<p>Even parents whose IQs are only moderately above average are more likely to have highly gifted children than parents of average IQ, since the whole distribution of their children’s IQs is shifted toward the right.</p>
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<p>Beliavsky – can you explain further? Not sure what you mean by shifting toward the right.</p>
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<p>If h is the heritability of intelligence, the expected IQ of the child is </p>
<p>h<em>avg<em>IQ</em>of_parents + (1-h)</em>avg<em>IQ</em>of_population</p>
<p>If the heritability of IQ is 0.75 (consistent with [Heritability</a> of IQ - Wikipedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ]Heritability”>Heritability of IQ - Wikipedia)) the predicted IQ of the child with two parents of IQ 130 (gifted but not highly gifted) is</p>
<p>0.75 * 130 + 0.25 * 100 = 122.5</p>
<p>In a group with average IQ of 122.5, a much higher fraction of people have IQ of 145 (highly gifted) than in a group with average IQ of 100. Technically this is because the normal distribution is thin-tailed.</p>