Living a Lie

[Kelowna]

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@Northstarmom

Doing an excellent job on a web page and doing it on one’s own initiative – as did the Harvard applicant that I mentioned – takes more work than does doing well on math contests in which there are weekly meetings and an advisor guiding the students in what they do.</p>

<p>In the small city where I live, there are several high schools that each year have nationally ranked math teams, and have students who get regional and national awards for those teams. There’s such an excellent system in place for producing these kind of stars that it isn’t that difficult for smart students to do well at it, and it doesn’t make them stand out here in college admissions for top colleges.

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<p>My experience points to the contrary.
I can’t believe that one can perform extremely well in math competitions after weekly meetings with an advisor. If you want to be a good runner, you have to run a lot. A weekly run is not going to produce a top result. Same with math. You have to strugle with a mountain of questions, weekly meeting aren’t going to acomplish this.</p>

<p>You write : There’s such an excellent system in place for producing these kind of stars that it isn’t that difficult for smart students to do well at it</p>

<p>Hey, would love to find out about that “system”
There is a school district in Texas that every year brings its top students to National Mathcounts competition (the most prestigious math comp. for middle school).
Their “system” is mathcounts practice every single weekday for 3-4 hours after school (kids go home to eat, then come back to school ) plus more on weekends. Even after that much practice it is still not very easy to become stars ;)</p>

<p>It is actually quite scary that someone who interviews for a top college holds this kind of an opinion.</p>