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OMG!! Sprayed the computer reading that one, stradmom!! Good thing its not a Tandy ;)</p>
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<p>Believe it or not, a lot of that stuff is public information. Often institutions or individuals give out more info than they intended. For someone like siserune, who has the interest and the analytical mind to match, figuring out the numbers is downright easy. He has written extensively on the topic in the past. You can do a search on your own, but here is the specific thread I quoted from (#66 in particular):</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/890382-any-hope-admission-white-male-5.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/890382-any-hope-admission-white-male-5.html</a></p>
<p>BTW, his debates with fabrizio are some of the very best posts on CC. They have given me endless pleasure over the years. I highly recommend it.</p>
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<p>So you are a philosophical relativist? Do you not know the difference between descriptive vs. prescriptive? Can you not see that I am simply describing what I see? The scientific method, no?</p>
<p>BTW, the best description of elite admission is by Jerome Karabel, as reported by The Economist:</p>
<p>the concept of meritocracy itself is strategic and flexible, and often in outright conflict with egalitarian aims. “Those who are able to define ‘merit’,” he writes, “will almost invariably possess more of it, and those with greater resources–cultural, economic, and social–will generally be able to ensure that the educational system will deem their children more meritorious.” </p>
<p>For a relativist, that must tickle you pink, as it did me.</p>
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<p>Did it ever occur to you that some people choose an elite because of grade inflation? Some others do so hoping to marry up? Some do so to get into investment banking and consulting? Still others do so to rub shoulders with the rich and famous? To suggest students go there only for the education is a strange position for a relativist to take, dont you think?</p>
<p>Arent you the poster that loves diversity but would not live in diversity, and tell other posters they dont have to go to an elite but send your own to one? As a relativist, can you not resolve the problem by simply redefining diversity and elite?</p>
<p>I’ve enjoyed Pizzagirl’s posts over the years, Canuckguy, and so I’m having trouble following yours above. I’m struggling to comprehend this:
Can’t we send our children to elite schools, yet see that they are not for everyone, and for a variety of reasons - academic, financial, geographic, social? What’s “relativist” about that? Is it relativist now to understand that, depending upon our own circumstances, our choices will be individual ones?</p>
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You know, I must have missed where PG made any such assertion. As a realist, I would certainly concede that people choose elite schools for those reasons, though none of them is a sure thing. These are 18 year-old people making the choice, after all. But they’re not admitted based on their reasons for wanting to attend.</p>
<p>Canuck, in that context, that poster is presenting a position, not authority. And, I believe, assuming based on a focus on the elements he chose to review. Does he see applications, have a role in sorting? Or is he presuming to pull disparate pieces of info together? Forcing it to make sense, by viewing a later stage or later results? Quoting sources, one of whom clearly states his/their study is not representative?</p>
<p>There’s “detail” or some level of proof- and there’s a tactic I call “wall of words,” which, roughly equates to gamesmanship. (As a term, decribing competitions, including the one for “voice of authority.”) Throwing in quotes no “reasonable” person could dismiss. Convoluting wording so no reasonable disagreer could possibly respond effectively. </p>
<p>I can tell you all day long what Ivy apps really look like, what positions senior adcoms’ comments reflect, what sorts of “top performers,” by any measure, come across as nincompoops-- and it won’t matter. Because “someone else said” or “I read it somewhere.”</p>
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<p>Why should it? Seriously LF, aside from your vague claims of inside information, nobody has any idea who you are, or why your pronouncements should matter any more than any other poster’s. Not meant to be nasty, just a fact. (And it pains me to even appear to be on Canuckguy’s side on any issue 
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<p>That’s his point - that canuckguy is treating some post by siserune as the direct word of God. Siserune’s just some guy on CC, that’s all, just like the rest of us.</p>
<p>I’d like to add some comments about what I think is the real subject of this thread, which is the role of the “gut” (easy) course at elite schools like Harvard.</p>
<p>At Yale, the school I know the most about, there are well-known gut courses. They change over time, but they tend to be intro-level science courses–often with giveaway names, like “Our Changing Planet.” My experience is that most students will take at least one or two of these over four years. The reason is usually that the student is taking a number of much more challenging courses in a semester AND needs to satisfy a distributional requirement. So if you’re taking four courses with heavy reading and writing requirements, you might throw in a fifth “gut” course that satisfies the science or quantitative reasoning requirement. A student might also want an easy course on the schedule if he is heavily invested in ECs–and in particular, in varsity sports. This is simply time management–some course have very large workloads, and you can’t take five of them at one time and also commit a lot of time to other activities. This can also be an issue for majors in the sciences, who have to devote a huge amount of time to labs–they may sometimes need a humanities or social sciences class without a huge workload.</p>
<p>I should also add that a “gut” course isn’t necessarily a bad course–it’s just easy in terms of the workload. In my day, there were several easy courses that were nevertheless known for having interesting and worthwhile lectures. People flock to those. But as noted above, the courses that people REALLY flocked to in my day were the lecture courses by the truly outstanding profs, like Vince Scully, Jaroslav Pelikan, Thomas Pangle, and others. Those courses weren’t easy, because they had lots of reading and papers.</p>
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As far as I know siserune has never claimed to have inside information from some unknown source, or to be in some position to see information nobody else can view. Whether you agree with his analysis or not, I think it is all based on his interpretation of public data.</p>
<p>I am often puzzled by threads on CC, but rarely confused by them. In this case, I’m confused, though. The quotations cited by Canuckguy in post #183 read to me as though they were comments made by Pizzagirl, and in fact they were. (I can tell I’ve been on CC too long when I can identify the poster by an unattributed paragraph of the post.) </p>
<p>I didn’t find a post by siserune on this thread–was it deleted? Does everyone else know that siserune is the author of the piece in The Economist? Actually, this seems unlikely to me.</p>
<p>The last paragraph of Canuckguy’s post #183 seems like an ad hominem argument, in my opinion. The other parts of it are worth responding to, though, if you disagree.</p>
<p>The issue I have with lookingforward and also with epiphany, assuming that they are admissions officials at highly ranked colleges, is that they must know there is no point in asking most of us for data that could provide any level of proof. We have other jobs, and have no access to those data. For the most part, we have “data” consisting of admissions outcomes in a few places, of < 100 people that we know well. Some of those results could be rare outliers; or they may reflect actual admissions philosophies. </p>
<p>When the only people who have access to the actual data also support admissions philosophies that some of us question, it makes the discussion difficult. Support for the admissions philosophy coming from “satisfied customers” is not entirely persuasive.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl frequently argues that people who don’t like Harvard’s admissions philosophy should not apply there, because the student group will not conform to their ideas of academic excellence. This reflects one view of the college experience. However, it does not seem to me to take into account the possibility that the student is applying to Harvard to study with its faculty–a limited viewpoint, perhaps, but it could still be a compelling reason.</p>
<p>Re post #185: I’ll bite. I am very curious what sorts of “top performers” come across as nincompoops. This information could be helpful for this year’s applicants, and those in the future.</p>
<p>To add in response to Hunt’s comment, post #188, the comment that the easy courses change over time is an important one. It seemed to me that both times QMP tried to select a comparatively easy class as the 5th class, the faculty had just become fed up with the course’s reputation as “easy,” and the course demands ramped up.</p>
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This may be an element of the Harvard cheating scandal as well.</p>
<p>Tip to gut-seekers: focus more on the workload than on the professor’s rep as an easy grader. The syllabus won’t change mid-course, but the prof might get fed up.</p>
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<p>Good point. </p>
<p>However, there’s a plausible argument to be made that if a course’s workload, content, and rigor falls too far on the light side, that the course is a waste of time for the student and money for the parents/taxpayer/scholarship committees. </p>
<p>Then again, the definition of “gut” courses can also vary depending on the talents/skillsets of individual students. </p>
<p>Some “gut” courses as perceived by those with strong STEM/humanities/social science backgrounds would be considered so hard by most of their classmates that there be much screaming and strong urges to throttle by the latter towards the former type students. </p>
<p>IME, it’s not wise for one with a strong STEM background to openly state that a STEM course he/she’s breezing through with A/A+ is a “gut” course when the vast majority of classmates are struggling to get C-level grades. </p>
<p>Likewise, it’s not wise for someone with a strong humanities/social science background to openly state to classmates who aren’t used to/hate 300 page weekly reading loads that such a course is a “gut” or even reasonable given the course/academic program…even if said complaint is from a classmate enrolled in grad school.*</p>
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<li>Taken from an account of a college classmate enrolled in an elite graduate program in International Relations.</li>
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<p>Siserune last posted on CC about four months ago.</p>
<p>There is an interesting anecdote about professors and grading (not sure if it has ever been verified as a real story or where it happened and most people may have seen it before).</p>
<p>A professor at a well known university gave everyone an A as long as they attended his lectures. Students enjoyed the class, there was no pressure to perform etc but they did the work and knew ahead of time about a guaranteed A. One semester he gave everyone a B. The students are shocked since this has never happened. When they asked the professor told them I believe if I have taught you to the best of my ability, you have learnt the material from me and that means you deserved an A but this semester I did not give you my best.</p>
<p>It sounds like people agree that there are some classes at the elite institutions where a good grade is almost guaranteed. The question is should that be the case based on their prestige or should all classes at the top schools be graded on a curve?</p>
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<p>“Not wise”? Why, what’s going to happen? This is where you always lose everybody, cobrat - your posts about how everyone takes everyone else’s opinion so very seriously. If I’m struggling through a course, what difference does it make to me if someone else finds it easy? Great, I’m not them. If I find a course easy, what difference does that make to someone else who is struggling?</p>
<p>^^PG why jump in with a personal attack on cobrat’s post? The thread was finally taking a turn towards more productive discussion, and I don’t think everyone was as lost by that post as you might have assumed…</p>
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<p>From what I’ve heard from classmates and colleagues who knew of or were themselves the types who openly declared a course to be easy when many/most of their classmates were struggling in that very course…it tends to have a demoralizing effect on most struggling students. </p>
<p>Especially considering what the former type student does if/when he/she openly says he/she’s breezing through a course many/most find difficult could easily be taken as a form of insensitive obnoxious bragging that is offputting to many/most latter type students. </p>
<p>From what my classmates and I seen reactions tend to range from being regarded as an “insensitive jerk” at best to causing the struggling students to feel inclined to break down in tears/anger against the former type students.* </p>
<p>This is especially the case if one attends a school with a campus culture that views competing on basis of grades as a bad thing as it was at my undergrad. </p>
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<li>Saw both reactions when some classmates from a summer Harvard Stats course for Econ majors found out some of the folks who received As. A reason why I felt it would be very prudent and tactful to avoid disclosing my final grade. Just said I did fine and that was that.</li>
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<p>Pizzagirl makes a valid point, I think, that it can be debilitating to care too much about how other people will react, and that it is empowering to simply decide for oneself.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I understand cobrat’s point of view, and have spent much of my life in circles where people do care about what other people think. (This is quite common in the middle class, Pizzagirl.) From a position of privilege, one often need not concern oneself with what other people think. Alternatively, from a position like Thoreau’s, one often need not concern oneself with what other people think. Quite a few of us live in the middle ground, where we do pay attention to what other people think.</p>
<p>I recall a thermodynamics exam I took (ages ago), which one of the other undergraduates left in tears. I couldn’t imagine hearing about her reaction and responding, “Oh, I thought it was easy.”</p>
<p>I don’t know about “unwise,” but it’s pretty stupid to say something is a gut when it isn’t. That’s not going to win you many friends. It’s not a bad warning to issue on CC, where it’s not unusal to see students saying stuff like “AP Calc B/C is laughably easy,” etc.</p>
<p>I think gut-seeking is to a large extent a product of distributional requirements. I’d be interested in knowing if there are a lot of guts at Brown, where there are no such requirements.</p>