<p>In the realm of university education, no one is going to give a **** whether or not you solved 87/90 or 90/90 basic algebra problems correctly on a timed, multiple choice test. Seriously. They wont care.</p>
<p>If you got a 2400, that’s awesome. If you got a 2200, that’s also awesome. There’s no difference. The only people that award merit to the 200 points in between are folks that are still in high school (who, furthermore, choose to ignore the ridiculously frequent statements from admissions officers).</p>
<p>Really, after going through the whole SAT thing (might have to again - wanna improve CR score ^_^) I’m gonna say ‘SAT’ should be expanded to ‘SAT Aptitude Test’. I have found that scoring greater than 2200 or such on the SAT is more about knowing the SAT itself well than anything else. All you need to do is prepare for a few months with only the SAT in mind, supposedly (I’m not mocking people with 2400 - to the contrary I’m gonna say ‘congratulations, well done!’, I want to meet you in person ). But, I’d rather spend that time doing something else myself - like working on computer games. :P</p>
<p>Speaking as someone who turned down a waitlist acceptance from MIT two years ago:</p>
<p>I worked 35 hours a week all through high school, first-generation, I’m broke as *<strong><em>, had 5s on 14 AP tests, a 2380, stellar ECs, national awards, athletics, and recommendations. Every single student from my area (Texas) who got into MIT was an URM with money. They all took SAT prep classes, still scored lower than everyone else I know who applied, and had parents with excellent jobs (one owns a restaurant chain, one was a dean at UTSA). One of these kids, I *</em></strong> you not, cheated off of me at academic competitions. And when I figured it out he started plugging **** into his calculator, until I made someone clear his and he bombed every test after that. </p>
<p>Don’t tell me I wouldn’t have gotten in on the first round if I had been hispanic, because that’s <strong><em>ing </em></strong><strong><em>. And don’t tell me that I was less disadvantaged than the loaded </em></strong> who had a “professional” practically write her applications for her. But - what I realized after I got into Stanford, 20k a year in merit scholarships to Cornell and Columbia, in addition to a full ride to Rice, is that if MIT wanted these people instead of me, I didn’t want to be there, and I sent the school a big "*** you" letter when they decided they wanted me after all.</p>
<p>So yes. I was bitter about it, but I think that bitterness was merited. There’s no solution to this problem, so long as their admissions council keeps up these antics - other than to excel where you are. Do something in your next for years and whatever other stellar university you get into.</p>
<p>Helped. I realized that I had higher standards for performance than the only university that rejected me, and if they wanted the ******bag who cheated his way through high school instead of me, they could have him. I’m going to Rice for free and they fly me around the world to do awesome stuff. It’s great.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to post that as a general blanket statement, just to share my experience. Hopefully someone out there feels less slighted when they see that this sort of thing is the rule and not the exception.</p>
<p>MIT has a much smaller student population than all of those schools, which makes a very big difference. The other schools can afford to take the Olympiad kids while still practicing heavy affirmative action policies without having to turn down the “academic super stars” or whatever the code word is now, and everyone reaps the benefits - MIT can’t. MIT has a very specialized set of resources AND a very small undergrad population. It’s a different story here than at Cornell; more people feel that some sort of injustice has taken place.</p>
<p>Quote:
“MITChris,
If this is MIT’s selection philosophy, it can explain why MIT is in the decline. My company (a world leading high tech company) went to recruit at MIT a while back and did not find any one we’d like to hire.”</p>
<p>Maybe what failed your son are not his scores/grades/ECs, but the personality/attitude shown through his application, inherited from his parent:</p>
<p>“Children watch how their parents handle things when they’re frustrated. They pay closer attention to what we do than to what we say when we’re under stress. Some children who are sore losers have parents who are sore losers, who teach through their actions that getting angry is the best way to handle frustration. The example set by parents may be subtle or blatant. Parents who never talk about their own disappointments or failures give their children an impossibly high standard to live up to. The implications of making mistakes or losing are blown out of proportion.”</p>
<p>Silentsailor: I think that the person mentioned may be too bitter. Such a habit will eventually prevent him from being successful in this society. Setback, treated unjustly (at least how he feels) and discrimination occur every day. A Stanford education will be just as good as any institute in the country. Being furious on being waitlisted suggests a disproportion of his egos and reflects poorly on this individual. Perhaps MIT made a right decision waitlisting him after all, particularly if the goal of MIT is to educate future leaders in science and technology. This individual has no chance to be so. </p>
<p>However, I disagreed with MIT’s practice of selection of students based on scarcity of a race in certain area. For example, MITchris claims that potential black candidates interested in physics will get a break in admission when competing with students of other races. In reality, there are only good physicists versus bad physicists. There are no yellow physicists, black physicists or white physicists. The practice of racial balancing as such, even though by all well meanings, will drag not just MIT, but also all other elite institutes from this country into mediocrity. There is no affirmative action in grant reviews from major funding agencies such as NIH, NSF, DOD or DOE. There is no affirmative action in innovation or bidding a contract (mostly). Only the best and the fittest will survive. Race should have no place in the selection process. We are OK right now because of the abundance of foreign talents (even though we may have screwed up the talent pools already). But this will not last forever. Once foreigners stop coming or going back to their countries, the inadequacy of talent pools will show.</p>
<p>If you are referring to the MITchris post in the stats thread, you are misinterpreting the comment. He was saying that overall, culturally, black students are less encouraged to become physicists than white students. So when they get an application from a black student who really wants to become a physicist, chances are higher that he really means it, since he is less likely to choose to study physics on a whim due to the expectations of parents or teachers. And MITchris wasn’t saying that black physicists get a ‘break in admissions’ because of this, he was saying it is likely part of the reason for the discrepancy between percentage of URM applicants versus percentage of URM admits; URM scientists are maybe a little more self-selective.</p>
<p>“So when they get an application from a black student who really wants to become a physicist, chances are higher that he really means it, since he is less likely to choose to study physics on a whim due to the expectations of parents or teachers.”</p>
<p>Even from your statement, Blackness is an important factor in considering admission. What is the difference from my paraphrase? Worst of all, your statement injects certain stereotype that kids from other races are more likely forced by parents to study physics. I doubt that this is true. I hope that you produce some evidence for it.</p>
<p>“MIT has a much smaller student population than all of those schools, which makes a very big difference. The other schools can afford to take the Olympiad kids while still practicing heavy affirmative action policies without having to turn down the “academic super stars” or whatever the code word is now, and everyone reaps the benefits - MIT can’t. MIT has a very specialized set of resources AND a very small undergrad population. It’s a different story here than at Cornell; more people feel that some sort of injustice has taken place.”</p>
<p>Actually that premise is faulty. While MIT is much smaller than most of the other schools cited, it is also more focused. For example, it’s absurd to compare Cornell’s total undergrad population spread over an assortment of private and state colleges to MIT’s when contemplating comparable opportunities for the “academic superstars” that want to spend 4 years at the intersection of Mass Ave and Memorial Drive. One should look at Cornell’s 2800 engineering undergrads and roughly 2K science undergrads, not the 14K total enrollment. There aren’t many math and science superstars looking to major in sociology or hotel management. When looked at properly, MIT is not small at all. </p>
<p>As a Cornell alum I also have no trouble admitting that the real difference in admission is that a massive percentage of such superstars (however defined and I think many of the metrics referenced here do not do the term justice) want to attend MIT. A smaller percentage of those premier students wish to go to school in Ithaca and, of those, many see Cornell as a second or third choice. So those that do apply are overwhelmingly admitted, albeit with a far lower yield than MIT’s. Perhaps more to the point, many of the students maligned here as being unworthy of MIT admission (by those that usually know little or nothing about them), are mainstream admits to outstanding engineering and science programs like Cornell and Columbia. MIT’s mainstream admits, many of whom will ultimately prove to be as talented or more so than their “superstar” brethren, are the upper tier at many premier schools.</p>
<p>Many many many universities practice “social engineering” when selecting their classes. </p>
<p>I am thrilled that my son will have the opportunity (yeah…accepted) to study with many types of people from many different backgrounds. College should be a time of great personal growth. Being among a talented AND diverse group of students will be a great experience for him and allow him to grow in ways that he otherwise would not.</p>
<p>how do u tell if a white/asian person really wants to be a physicist then?
i get your point totally, but wouldnt it be true to say that by favoring URMs because some of them are more passionate, MIT is also discriminating against the non-URMs? </p>
<p>often one suffers discrimination even though one is an overrepresented minority, and it is often hard to express everything in the short essays MIT requests for.</p>
). But, I’d rather spend that time doing something else myself - like working on computer games. :P</p>