<p>^^agree with all that :)</p>
<p>alhâI know for a fact that he was denied because of his lack of social skills/interview. He is who he is and it is frustrating for his parents. The colleges he was working with to augment his high school classes wanted him to enroll as a freshman in high school, his parents would not let him because he was no where near socially ready for that academically it would have been a breeze. They had huge concerns with him going off to school as an 18 year old let alone a 14 year old. They made sure he was involved with a lot of high school activities but the fact of the matter was, he just could not relate to kids his age. I donât think most uber smart people, in general, lack social skills, infact I think just the opposite. The following year we had an amazing young man graduate from our high school, top scores on ACT/SAT, top AP test scores, etc. as well, was accepted at Brown, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Notre Dame and a few othersâyes I saw the acceptance letters. He was every schoolâs âdream studentââand what every father would want for a future son-in-law. :).</p>
<p>My two cents. If you canât take a joke, stop reading now.</p>
<p>Dartmouth â still holding a grudge against the Dartmouth Review crowd
Harvard â reasons too numerous to name
Princeton â as my undergraduate Dean said, ârinky dinkâ
Notre Dame â Papists? Not in my lifetime
Yale â see Princeton above
Arizona and Arizona State â never should have been admitted to the Pac-8 Conference
UWashington â the bureaucracy would make George Orwell shudder
Baylor â No dancing? Really?
Montana Tech â my broadminded and intellectually curious kid would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb
Ole Miss, Auburn and Howard â see Montana Tech above</p>
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<p>Itâs really funny because IMEâŠit is the evangelical conformists in the US who see nothing wrong with prioritize the spending of school budgets for their football team over what one would consider to be important basics like teachers, books, science labs, co-curricular activities, and classrooms or the bullying of high academic achieversâŠmuch less the actual Nerds/Geeks* or those who donât share the same interests in popular sports like football. And then we AmericansâŠincluding those conformist parents wonder why mainstream US K-12 education is so screwed upâŠ</p>
<p>Then againâŠweâre also the same nation who elected someone twice partly because he affected a âcommon manâ persona with a southern-like accent and thusâŠâsomeone one could have a relaxing beer withââŠ</p>
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<li>Iâd prefer identifying myself with them even though Iâm probably too extroverted and academically underachieving in high school to be eligible. HeckâŠmy high school grades is comparable to the undergrad records of one recent two-term president, the current VP, and a presidential candidate who lost a recent election.</li>
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<p>This I agree with!!</p>
<p>cobrat,</p>
<p>I spent my formative years in an environment resembling the one you describe (in a rural area in southern Texas), and I have to take issue with your characterization of the people inhabiting it. As one who suffered from repeated bullying at the hands of roughs, I must report that students recognized as evangelicals or whose parents fit that label were never the perpetrators (Note: I am not biased in favor of evangelicals as I have been agnostic since I was a young child). The ârednecksâ were the bullies, and they were a distinctly different group from the evangelicals. Also, the evangelicals generally supported education, though they had their own quirky ideas about what that education should consist of, and so they often toyed with the idea of home schooling. The rednecks were the ones who valued footballs over books and athletic stadiums over libraries. </p>
<p>As for Bush, in his political career in Texas he appealed to both groups but in different ways and with different messages.</p>
<p>absweetmarie, pizzagirl, and now mncollegemom:</p>
<p>I think you 3 should read this NYTimes OpEd;</p>
<p>âI Had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.â</p>
<p>"The biggest single problem with the diagnostic criteria applied to me is this: You can be highly perceptive with regard to social interaction, as a child or adolescent, and still be a spectacular social failure. This is particularly true if youâre bad at sports or nervous or weird-looking. </p>
<p><a href=âhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/opinion/i-had-asperger-syndrome-briefly.html[/url]â>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/opinion/i-had-asperger-syndrome-briefly.html</a></p>
<p>Now, I have know 4 uber smart kids, including my own, who did have âaspergersâ like tendencies when he was young and like the young man in the OP ed, has âoutgrown themâ -none of them ever had difficulty in gaining acceptances to top colleges. College interviews are normally done by college educated adults-who uber smart kids usually gravitate to because they usually dont look down on smart kids. Interviews are also NOT important factors in making admissions decisions at most top colleges. I think you may be making an assumption about the reason this young man was declined at top schools. ON the other hand, he could have gotten very so-so recommendation letters from his teachers/ college counselor if his behavior was disruptive in class or if he did not do the work cause it wastoo easy for him. Iâve seen that too.</p>
<p>^ ^</p>
<p>I was using the term evangelical to signal their strong insistence others conform to their beliefs or worldview and intolerance for any dissent. </p>
<p>That usage comes from my experiences dealing with intolerant evangelical Christians who insist on evangelizing even after one indicated no interest and when I or other friends cut them off insistently after theyâre just not "getting the message, they angrily say âYouâre gonna go to hell!â or otherwise exhibit bitter angry attitudes. They also seem to feel a strong entitlement to my time and attentionâŠsomething which I find to be quite obnoxious and revolting. Even friends who are Protestant Christians find them off-putting.</p>
<p>My quibble with what cobrat wrote is that I think is meant is not really âevangelicalâ but âfundamentalist.â Evangelicals come in several stripesâincluding an awful lot of Protestant Christians. Most evangelicals do believe in evangelism of one kind or another, but many donât exhibit that kind of âyouâre going to hellâ behavior.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>I found many evangelicals to be the same way. However, in comparison with the rednecks I had to coexist with who valued human beings completely on the basis of physical prowess and as a result physically attacked others in an attempt to prove that they were superior and deserved to be accorded higher social status, I just cannot find the evangelicals to be that threatening.</p>
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<p>Bingo. A bright/brilliant driven student whoâs already fulfilled lower division requirements can place out of those courses and move on. If a student like that is complaining that his/her college science courses are too easy, that tells me that this student wants to take things a bit easier. Or maybe they want to protect their GPA for med school admissions purposes. Or maybe they want to be quite sure that they understand the material thoroughly. All perfectly reasonable attitudes. It doesnât mean that the university doesnât offer a challenge.</p>
<p>menloparkmomâthank you for that information. It does not apply to the ONE student I referenced.</p>
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<p>Also, if a given school is too easy for a given student and they exhausted all their options, they could do what dozens of similarly situated high school classmates didâŠvote with their feet and âtransfer upâ to more challenging schools including Cornell, Columbia, CMU, and Reed.</p>
<p>True, cobrat, but Iâd think that it would be difficult for an entering undergrad to âexhaust their optionsâ when they attend a university that offers a PhD degree in their major.</p>
<p>I read cobratâs use of was using the word âevangelicalâ metaphorically to describe people whose passion for spreading the gospel of, in this case, conformity matched that of people who are spreading the gospel in the more literal sense.</p>
<p>menloparkmom: Interesting article. Squares with my own sense of how this diagnosis may occasionally be relied on too much. </p>
<p>I just want to say, again, that I truly do not believe that uber-smart people are scary or socially inept. I know many who are quite the opposite. I donât think there are as many out there as many people on this thread would have us believe, and I thank god for the ones we do have, because we need them! I do get weary of the recitation of SAT stats and the like. Itâs so dull and so very juvenile.</p>
<h1>451 & 454 ^^this has been pointed out to annasdad by several posters repeatedly and sometimes he acknowledges it is true. However, he soon once again posts about this recent grad of the magnet HS who is currently in a MD/PhD program and whose father reported that her science classes at Northwestern were not as difficult as those in HS.</h1>
<p>As far as I can tell it is some kind of endless loop.</p>
<p>I have problems with the idea the Northwestern science curriculum lacks an acceptable degree of rigor but, at the same time, a student can get an amazing education at 3,000 colleges.</p>
<p>If it is all about Northwestern isnât worth $50,000 per year that is a completely different discussion imho.</p>
<p>If someone has a personal opinion that only MIT and Caltech are worth paying full price for a science education, that is a different discussion - again imho.</p>
<p>However if someone is going to assume that there are an almost unlimited number of schools offering a science education equal to Northwestern⊠I am skeptical.</p>
<p>If a family counts as full-pay but canât afford to be full-pay, or just doesnât wish to be full pay, finding an affordable & appropriate school for a future science major seems to be a quest with which this board could really help.
:)</p>
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<p>If a given universityâs graduate program is taught at a low enough levelâŠitâs possible the graduate-level coursework may not match those of an upper-division, intermediate, or sometimes even the introductory level of a more respectable/elite university/LAC. Iâve seen this when visiting lower-tiered universities and even from sitting in on a few graduate-level classes at an Ivy. </p>
<p>Thereâs also the possibility that a given university prioritizes remedial education, has so much red tape, and obstructionist bureaucrats that it effectively precludes students from taking more advanced coursework even if theyâre more than ready.</p>
<p>Grad classes at a research U that are easier than college intro level classes? :eek: Iâd love to hear more about this. Especially if in your case it was a STEM field, since that coursework is generally highly sequential (well, unless youâre Richard Friedman taking a biology course ;)). Iâve been somewhat nonplussed to hear from D1 about undergrads, even freshmen, taking non-STEM grad courses at highly respectable universities.</p>
<p>Skimmed some posts- boy, lighten some people!!!</p>
<p>No strong Greek prescence, ie dominating the social scene, makes my list because the independents would be excluded. Doesnât matter if they are off in their world and most of the campus doesnât need to notice. Therefore matters if that 20% or more someone mentioned.</p>
<p>Some public flagships have better science programs than many schools ranked higher. UW-Madison has at least 3 different general Chemistry course sequences for freshmen, including Honors- unlike some schools where everyone has to take the same course. Likewise Physics and Calculus. Some Honors courses are truly better than those at NU and have a higher caliber student. Opportunities to work in top grad school labs during undergrad courses. AP courses are comparable to average college courses, not the better/more rigorous ones. Overall ratings donât account for having a few top programs for a minority of students. Going to any top HS in the country doesnât mean better lab facilities and possible courses than many colleges. The truly gifted will often go early to college.</p>
<p>Enough of a sermon. Letâs continue without disecting, etc. Diversity is great.</p>
<p>Maybe a science major said so. :rolleyes:
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