My question is two-part, kind of.
Do admissions officers understand that participation in USAMO is an achievement in itself? If not, would an AIME score suffice instead of “Participated in USAMO”? Also, do they know that Science Olympiad is a team effort and it depends on everyone doing well to make it to nationals? These two are specific examples and it would be great if somebody who knows could answer them, but the general idea is that I want to know how much they know about academic competitions/awards, etc.
If you are asking about the major math and science awards, and you’re worried about Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, MIT, Cal Tech, RPI, WPI, Stanford- stop worrying. Adcom’s know more than you do.
If you are asking about a local or regional competition, and you’re applying to a small college 1500 miles away that does not get a lot of applicants from your region- then that gets a maybe.
But anything national in scope? I counseled a kid who was worried that U Chicago and Stanford didn’t know what RSI was. They get PAID to know.
Just with regard to the major math competitions, for the schools that matter to USAMO qualifiers, yes the admissions officers know that just qualifying is a big deal. On the other hand, do those same admissions officers know enough to infer that an applicant qualified based on provided AMC12 (or AMC10 for JMO) and AIME scores? Doubtful. They are just not that involved in the process.
If you qualified USA(J)MO but did not participate for some reason - or don’t want to provide your score - make sure that somewhere in your application you make clear explicitly that you qualified USA(J)MO.
^^^ This
I am sure MIT, Stanford, HYP, AO’s are quite familiar with the prestigious Natl/Intl academic competitions. MIT is the only school, that I know of, which explicitly asks for your AIME and AMC scores.
Just to be on the safe side, you can describe as “USAMO Qualifier Top x%” in International Awards category, or something like that.
Good question - it is something I wondered about, knowing that most of the AO’s are recent grads of the same school, and may have different majors/interests, to be familiar with all academic competitions.
And just to add to what @NCKris said about MIT, yes USAMO qualification is a huge tip for admissions at MIT. They will never admit it, but among competition math kids and national-level coaches (at MOP and IMO level), the lore has always been that MIT accepts about 75-85% of USAMO qualifiers who apply. MIT isn’t at the top of the leaderboard in the top 15 Putnam year after year because high school math competitions are “just another EC”!
Agree with blossom. Adcoms at top colleges know. And continue to state that more than stats and awards matters. Something can impress without being “a huge tip,” when other important factors are missing or flawed.
The AO’s at the top schools are fully aware of the entire AMC/AIME/(J)AMO/MOP/IMO chain, what HR and DHR are, where a 120 or an 8 or a 33 would fall in the score distributions, etc. They do this stuff for a living.
Same with all of the major national competitions in other disciplines.
Would you say the UC schools are “top schools”?
It won’t hurt to explain any competition you are in…
(making this up)
Participated in United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) by having a top 5%tile score on the American Invitational Mathematics Examination - AIME.
"Would you say the UC schools are “top schools”? "
They’re top schools, and they absolutely, without a doubt, know about the competitions.
"Something can impress without being “a huge tip,” when other important factors are missing or flawed. "
You keep bringing up flawed for these Olympiad and Intel science fair winners, but what kind of flaws are these? non-stem weaknesses - these kids take apush, aplac, write well and score 800 on the verbal SATs as well as math. Intellectual curiosity? no, this is exactly the stretch and curiosity schools like Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Harvard want. This doesn’t mean they’re automatically in, but 25% of ISEF winners are at Harvard, that’s an excellent number for unhooked kids. The 75% at MIT and Cal Tech is probably right, I would say 50% are accepted at Stanford, and that’s because Stanford can’t accept all 10 or so USAMO winners, they accept 3 or 4, waitlist the others. To a place like Stanford, if you can show you’re one of the 50 math students in the country, that’s like being one of the top football players in the country that has the grades to get in.
My point has always been that kids and families focus too much on the hierarchical aspects- best at this, some award, higher that, more of something…and miss the holistic aspects. Write a crappy essay or come across as less likeable, and your chances are affected. Simple as that.
Intellectual curiosity is far, far more than entering contests in your primary interest area. And stretch includes breadth, not limited to contests. Not all these kids take the right balanced core rigor in hs, many (CC and real life) create themselves as unilateral, misunderstanding what it takes.
A well rounded kid who has stretched in the right ways and comes across as real is wonderful to find. But far fewer can present that successfully than enter contests and do well.
The attitude on CC is often that winning something or placing are some magic. They are very valid, yes. But there is a whole app/supp required. No top college takes the list of “winners” and recruits them without any other supporting info. It’s NOT like the hook of recruited athlete, where other factors can slip to the side.
“A well rounded kid who has stretched in the right ways and comes across as real is wonderful to find. But far fewer can present that successfully than enter contests and do well.”
Stanford does not look for well rounded kids, they look for a well rounded class with kids that excel in their discipline, which means winning a lot, whether it’s hs football games, swim meets, essay contests, math/science olympiads, or art/music competitions. I’m not saying they take bad kids, but they don’t take the well rounded kids you describe.
You betcha Stanford wants well rounded. It’s a myth from the sidelines that it’s only the overall class that needs this. (Supporteed by a few anecdotes that CC clings to. And often, those are from parents, recalling their own admits, decades ago, when the scene was different.)
The quallity of top kids, the ones most likely to gain an admit, is so high that they ARE presenting the right rounding, in both academics and ECs. (It’s an overlooked advantage.) Remember what MIT says about not being unilateral. No matter how much CC talks about stresses, the truly top kids are more than their record in one area. And there are plenty of those applicants. Enough to cherry pick among them.
If you check enough “what we look for” comments from top colleges, you’ll see this is not simply hierarchical.
Adding: the right sort of rounding isn’t about scattered, small efforts or accumulating hours or some title. It has a lot to do with the right choices, that show a tippy top the sort of awareness and thinking they want, perspective and more. Not just filling time, not just a bump on a log. Not just excellence in one area or limited to only what the kids pre-determine interests them.
Regarding “pointiness” and “holistic,” a while ago I compiled a list of the USAMO winners from 2013 through 2016.
The USAMO is a single 9-hour test with 6 questions. Each year, there are 12 named winners, although because some kids repeat, there were only 36 unique individuals for those 4 years.
Four were still in high school when I looked at college outcomes, so we are down to 32 kids. Here is where they went:
MIT - 17 kids
Harvard - 11
CMU - 2 (both full ride Knaster-McWilliams + Goldwater scholars)
Princeton - 1
Ohio State - 1 (full ride merit)
I can’t speak to other than the math competitions, but it has been a while since Stanford was a top choice for the very best math kids.
I know that the two CMU students above were also admitted to Harvard and MIT. I will leave to the reader as exercises to deduce how “holistic” MIT and Harvard really are, and to conjecture which other admitting universities were turned down by this group.
Even if all 32 were admitted to MIT, it does not mean that’s the sole criteria, above all others. We have a record on CC threads of arguing back that causation and correlation are not equivalent. Anyone really think tippy tops don’t read a kid’s full app, just stop at some math award?
We know H has a number of slots based on pure achievement. Those are an exception. And certainly not a rubber stamp.
Dropbox, you are assuming that winning is an application factor completely divorced from anything else. I had a math kid at MIT who was not a competition math kid-- but he knew several of them. In a few instances, their USAMO win was probably the LEAST interesting thing about them. They had intellectual interests which ranged from Civil War history to very high musical talent (not just local youth orchestra), to creative writing and modern architecture.
MIT doesn’t need to apologize for admitting competition math winners, but I think it would be very unusual if the ONLY thing those kids had going for them was the prize. Some of these kids are off the charts in multiple ways (i.e. holistic). My son claims that the “dumbest” guy he knew at MIT was the first classmate to take a startup public. So was that the guy with the borderline stats but who had everything else?
That’s why it’s holistic.
And to the OP- adcom’s understand how these things work.
If you look at some chance me write ups, you can (rarely) see a student who is too humble and another with the same EC’s (or even lesser) who comes across as being a real jerk ( just from the write up). This has to do with how the applicant presents themselves and likely is mirrored in the application process.
Ad Coms know the major ( and minor) contests IN EVERY field. It is up to the applicant to spell out his/her wins and also a critical mass in particular areas. I wholeheartedly agree with Blossom, it’s going to be a very rare kid at MIT who does just one thing. But schools like MIT and many others realize that talent in the outer levels of achievement is rare. The “outliers” in any field are rare and valuable. I have seen coaches stick around at national events to see younger kids. Are they making mental notes? My bet is yes. And in the academic world being able to say you won a major title is, well, in fact-major. Schools don’t have time or inclination to see if you are well rounded. They want people who are achievers in multiple fields, related or not who are likely to have impact.
Parents who have kids who do things on a very high level know that their kids get access to workshops, coaches, internships and other things than many kids in the US don’t even know about. Pretending that a USAMO winner or Junior Olympian or Global winner of some major event/thing isn’t going to be in the more likely pile is naive. Candidates at these places aren’t competing against others in their county or state, they are competing against candidates from across the world. The AO’s also know which schools in which countries turn out the best candidates. So you will find many folks coming from the same places or with “wins” in the same events.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I don’t recall the OP asking if Stanford wants well-rounded students or if MIT/Harvard really practices holistic admissions or if there are USAMO cross-admits. Particularly when a HS student is asking a question, posts should stick fairly closely to the request posed and not going OT/derailing.