<p>Midmo, you're right that it is not your role to change the system at many high schools that have abdicated their entire curriculum to this boondoggle of a program named AP. Rather than elevate the level of instruction at our high school, the AP program is one of the greatest contributors to the segregation and dumbing down. There are no better testament to this abject image than seeing a school that can't crack 900 on the SAT but offer more than 40 AP classes, and seeing AP students in English who are barely literate. </p>
<p>The issue is not that one takes all the classes available to him. The issue is that the process of collecting AP scalps should NEVER have become a criterion in admissions. Taking AP should be a number of "right" reasons, be it joy of learning or because it is the most appropriate class for one's level, but it should not be for admission purposes.</p>
<p>If padding an admission's resume was not the sole purpose, then nobody should complain when this element is eliminated or severally restricted.</p>
<p>Wow, midmo. You nailed it. (I always read the post first, author second & I've been enjoying your way with a phrase.)</p>
<p>The "dumbed-down, do whatever you want curriculum taught by grads of open-enrollment schools of ed" is what my town h.s. offers. If kids have difficulty analyzing Shakespeare's sonnets, just have them build a model of the Globe Theatre. Good enough, right? State curriculum requirement filled. Move along. Motivated kids need AP so they don't go crazy. But too often the AP has to be self-taught because the class slows down for the mayor's son & the assemblyman's daughter. Not ideal, but better than no AP at all. At least the kid has some standard presented to him by the College Board.</p>
<p>symphonymom: The weakest teachers in my district often earn six figure salaries. In these parts, public school teachers are well paid & have no accountability.</p>
<p>
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There are many things you can do in your own household to raise kids who are skilled (nobody wins an Olympics for being able to bake bread but it's a life skill; ditto for fixing a vacuum cleaner) and interested in many things and capable and self-confident.
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</p>
<p>I have never baked bread in my life and do not consider it a life skill.<br>
I disagree as well with much of the rest of the post.</p>
<p>Anitaw, in 1991, I believe I was only involved in whatever activities were offered at the YMCA at Northaven. The parents who embarked on the rewarding and well-paid career of coaching the three feet tall never mentioned college. I joined one the most competitive select soccer team because they ... had tryouts in front of my house and I thought it was a pick up game at my school. My parents had never even heard of the term select soccer. Except for a couple of tournaments, the time demands never exceeded 3 hours of practice a week and about 20-25 weekend games a year. </p>
<p>Things have changed with the addition of soccer academies and open recruiting at 7-8 year old, but it really was not that bad for us kids who loved to play with a ball or swim in a pool. Now, I could tell you about the poor kids who were forced in the back of the ubiquitous Suburban in a never ending quest for "intellectual" activities.</p>
<p>PS As far as fixing vacuum cleaners ... thank God for Mr. Dyson!</p>
<p>This comment goes back to anitaw's tongue in cheek comment on MIT info sessions. (#248)</p>
<p>We went to an MIT session quite recently. anita, you are correct, and you don't need to pretend to be kidding. What's so special about a school whose ad rep tells everybody they can assume their 650s on SAT "make them competitive" and "don't give a second thought to those Bs". Give me a break. Either the admissions office is not being straightforward, or MIT has really slipped. I would have preferred to hear "650s are OK if you are an URM, and the occasional B in a super-hard course will be overlooked if there is a compensating factor, but we are still the place where you can find the most exciting research in the world, and we are looking for students who can be an active part of that. " And then show some examples of what is going on. Nothing of the sort occurred. I was disappointed; son was neutral, definitely not gushing with enthusiasm. If the idea was to reduce stress a la M. Jones's new marching orders, I supposed they succeeded, but mostly they just reduced excitement.</p>
<p>Maybe we really need to conclude that the highest ranked elite schools are only likely to take the most exceptional kids. At schools like MIT, almost every student had a math SAT of 800 or very close and almost all were ranked in the top 1%. Really good students who are smart, work hard and excel in all sorts of activities are still likely to fall short. Trying harder, worrying about the wording of teacher recs and participating in more sports and activities can create a lot of stress without much success. As it becomes harder and harder to reach the levels needed for admission into the elite schools, it makes sense to look elsewhere. Schools like MIT need to decide if they want to have a student body made up of only very exceptional kids or if they would also like some diversity. I guess MIT is looking for at least some diversity - about 70 kids out of a 1000. I would bet those 70 kids are still in the top 2% or so as compared to the majority of MIT students who are in the top 0.2% or so.</p>
<p>midmo and edad, I recommend you take a closer look at the MIT admissions statistics before you make such assumptions. (Mollie, I'm tossing the baton to you here, if you're still here to pick it up.) </p>
<p>The most recent year for which the Common Data Set is available (2005 entry) shows that 32% of the incoming class had verbal SAT scores below 700 (1/3 of the class: imagine that!) and 11% had math SATs below 700. Granted, everyone was in the top 25% of their class or above, but there's no reason why MIT shouldn't be looking for students in that category. My experience with current MIT students (which is not as immediate as Mollie's of course!) is that there is a remarkable diversity of thought, approach, experience, background, interest, and ethnicity.</p>
<p>edad, regarding your last post:
Just a piece of anecdotal info demonstrating that the below-2% are still getting into MIT....
MIT-admit, class of '09, from D's school, was probably more like top 12%, but then that's a "cruel" statistic for a tiny class. What she had going for her was:
--only applicant to MIT from class in rigorous private school (or there may have been two, but she would have definitely the higher GPA)
--female
--applied EA
--spent an entire summer, + 2 weeks in an earlier summer, attending series of engineering workshops -- most with some fee forgiveness, undoubtedly, as family is not rich.</p>
<p>Family is middle income but still needed, needs aid. She applied EA to compare financials & because she had heard MIT was looking for females.</p>
<p>She had one very strong e.c. in personal accomplishment (non-academic), and another very strong co-curricular with some national recognition. No Intel, etc. or other science entries/distinctions, but did win school prize for accomplishment in the sciences -- although too late for the MIT app.</p>
<p>At this school industriousness is rewarded, & she had a reputation for that. (Don't anyone laugh: winning the prize for Diligence, which is not considered a pejorative there.) She was not always the highest grade in the class, but often the hardest worker.</p>
<p>Xiggi, you miss my point. Doesn't matter if the kid is 6 or 16; if you're dragging the kid around from one activity to another you're the one in charge, not some adcom. Get a grip on how you want to raise your kids.</p>
<p>Marite, doesn't matter if you bake bread (it was a metaphor, for god's sake). It strikes me in my town that the people who gripe the most about the stressful state of admissions are the one's who do the most chauffering and SAT tutoring and hiring of counselors and all that jazz. Meanwhile, plenty of self-confident kids who "wasted" their childhoods doing childish things end up as exceptional young adults in a range of top schools-- both elite privates and top publics. Don't buy into the "oh my god you have to cure cancer" mania and then complain that the "system" forces you to send your 8 year old to science camp kicking and screaming since she'd rather be playing kickball. </p>
<p>Anitaw, you're still my vote for CC parent of the month. Xiggi, I raised my kids in the way you are quick to disparage.... now grads of "top 5 schools" as defined by Princeton review if that means anything....so don't lecture me on how many accomplishments kids need to get into elite schools. If you raise your kids to believe they are nothing more than the sum of the lines on their resume, you've got bigger problems than if your kid ends up at Kenyon or Harvard.</p>
<p>Over 25% of MIT students had math SATs of 800 with all but 25% at 740 or higher. Over 50% of students ranked in the top 5% and 97% in the top 10%. Clearly the majority of MIT students have exceptional academic statistics.</p>
<p>Mootmom, 11 % below 700 for Math SAT. In what way is my assumption incorrect? I'm not in a real PC mood lately, so let me ask you how many of that 11% was not URM? The audience was white and Asian, and telling us that 650 on math was good enough to be competitive did not sound honest. I don't dispute that I may be wrong. What I am indisputably right about is that although the info session was far better than some I've been to, it failed to inspire the potential student sitting next to me. He, at least, did not drive several hours to have his nerves calmed. He wanted to know why MIT might be better than the "Life of the Mind" promised by another institution.</p>
<p>"He wanted to know why MIT might be better than the "Life of the Mind" promised by another institution."</p>
<p>I am looking at a number of e-mails from a current MIT freshman that would go a long way to answering that question for a student truly interested in learning and being in a situation that pushes you to think and test the limits of your ability in a very non competitive way. The % above or below a certain SAT score is irrelevant to this pursuit. The real question is who exactly will thrive and benefit the most from the atmosphere at MIT. Looking at only one data point, I see a match.</p>
<p>akdaddy, I'm sorry but I'm a little dense today, perhaps because I am trying to do something else at the same time as follow this thread. Spell it out for me. I am interested in what people with experience at MIT (or the other place) have to say.</p>
<p>From the Even though I know No One's Listening department... ;)</p>
<p>Forgot to add to the profile of the fairly recent MIT admit in my post #270 or so, that the candidate is Caucasian Anglo. Because of the tight race at the top, & the near-ties at the top of the class, she might have barely missed the cut-off for top 10% (as I said, more like 12% from a very small class), but that's splitting hairs. I know that she did not earn an 800 on either SAT section (obviously "old" SAT), but was somewhere in the 700's for each.</p>
<p>Continue the lively debate...:) This is just a coffee break.</p>
<p>"The real question is who exactly will thrive and benefit the most from the atmosphere at MIT."</p>
<p>I see what you are saying. That IS the question, but it brings up two other questions: how does the admissions staff figure that out (the point of this whole thread) and how does a student get an idea of exactly what the atmosphere at MIT currently is? Unfortunately, the info session we attended did not do a good enough job answering that. Maybe it can't be done in that format. (And I'm done with that complaint now. Thank you for your patience.)</p>
<p>
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I'm not in a real PC mood lately, so let me ask you how many of that 11% was not URM?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well that's the million dollar question isn't it? I hope some of them were "only" disadvantage economically. </p>
<p>Our newspaper did a series of articles about the college admissions process. They had a nice mix of kids of all abilities - only the URMs in their group got into Ivy League colleges. It was a little worrisome as it often seemed like the only kids who I heard about getting into Ivy League schools from our high school also seemed to be URM. But once I got to know the school better, I'm happy to say that while being an URM is clearly a big advantage other strong candidates also get into the top schools.</p>
<p>We must have attended the same admission information session as midmo. We certainly shared the sense of unreality when Marilee Jones talked about SAT scores in the 600s and grades that were As and Bs. We tried to think of students with multiple Bs that we knew had gotten in and failed to recall one of them.</p>
<p>It's okay to say that students should not be afraid to take challenging courses where they might not get top grades. But to just say that Bs and SATs in the 600s are okay sounded like an invitation to no-hopers to apply.</p>