My idea in post #264 was that the hypothetical student was not nearly a good fit for MIT, but thought he was, based on the information available to him. Maybe MIT would actually go for a student like that.
Whether the problem sets at MIT are HARD or not, whether the education is “drinking from a firehose” or not, whether it’s a “pressure cooker” or not, depends on the ability of the student (at the specific point in time–ability can grow, but it takes time). If my admissions philosophy were followed (ha, ha, likelihood very low), there would be more students for whom the problem sets were not so hard, more students who could give good advice to the students who needed help, and less benefit to being an extravert. (In the words of Carl Jung, who introduced the term, “extrovert” is “just bad Latin.”)