<p>I really think the moral of this thing for sciencegirl should be more like:</p>
<p>“Get off CC, and get on Art of Problem Solving…” :D</p>
<p>In other words, stop worrying, and start doing things.</p>
<p>I see two parallel interests here: one base, and one genuine and lofty.</p>
<p>The base one is all about competition, about proving your worth through others’ evaluations of you, about “getting in” while others are rejected.</p>
<p>The genuine and lofty interest is in learning, about finding other people who want to run very fast with you because it is more fun than running alone, about satisfying a hunger for understanding.</p>
<p>In my world, and maybe I live in my own little bubble, I hear the desire for a lot of the latter, and very little of the first. I run into kids all the time who are asking me about ways to learn more, who are honestly curious and want to stretch themselves intellectually because that’s just how they are made. And it makes me sad how often they are discouraged. Schools by and large seem built to say “no” to anything different. It is hard to find real opportunities where their talents are taken seriously. So when a kid says “how can I prepare for studying physics at MIT?” because Feynman! Einstein! I hear a real honest question.</p>
<p>sciencegirl9 > I can’t say what advice would work for you - I’m only a high school senior. But looking back and wondering what single advice I would give to my 8th grade self, I’d have told myself to pick up a few undergraduate texts on electromagnetism… advanced calculus, or even Apostol’s calculus textbooks… to experience defeat. Not some college admissions preparatory book. It’s really an epiphanic experience. I began to really explore physics and math after that.</p>
<p>I think the posters are right on pursuing what genuinely interests you. To elaborate, present day physics is not as romantic as Einstein/Feynman’s time. It’s getting more difficult to be the one or two persons to unearth an entire field; to be sitting down on your own at a table with pen and paper and expect to find something. Very few tenured posts with respect to PhDs awarded - and MIT’s not even the place which produces the highest number of tenured professors when I last checked, although I didn’t manipulate the statistics enough to figure out if I made the entirely correct interpretation. I think these are more pertinent concerns to your interest than whether you can make it to MIT. If you’ve considered them and can still disregard them and head out, and continue to “play with physics”, I believe you’re already on the right track (at least you’d be a better candidate than me). </p>
<p>Oh, and I found this particularly useful in inculcating my interest, I wish I had read it at grade 8… [ZapperZ’s</a> “So you want to be a Physicist?”](<a href=“So You Want to Be a Physicist: A 22 Part Guide”>So You Want to Be a Physicist: A 22 Part Guide)</p>
<p>I don’t recommend Goss’s book to serve as a reference for a high school course. She doesn’t give a mathematically rigorous treatment of the subject and begins her text by developing a strange notion and leaves the proof/disproof to the reader…</p>
<p>Page 1, sentence 1: “In order to succeed at the insanely competitive college admissions game…”
[Amazon.com:</a> What High Schools Don’t Tell You: 300+ Secrets to Make Your Kid Irresistible to Colleges by Senior Year (9781594630378): Elizabeth Wissner-Gross: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/reader/1594630372?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=sib_dp_bod_toc&page=15#reader_1594630372]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/reader/1594630372?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=sib_dp_bod_toc&page=15#reader_1594630372)</p>
<p>Off-topic (will be wonderful if I don’t have to start a separate thread): Can I indicate a double major on the “which course… most…” short answer? And I’m quite confused about the phrasing - it asks for “which course… at MIT” - am I supposed to talk about the beauty of that field per se, or the quality of that program at MIT specifically?</p>
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<p>Well, it sounds like you are an excellent interviewer. Hopefully, the rest of the admissions staff have a good BS detector on hand.</p>