MIT Admissions Have Become A Complete Joke

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>"I doubt anyone in the history of MIT ever prepped more than 5 minutes for the Math part of the SAT."</p>

<h2>what</h2>

<p>The math part is so easy that MIT-caliber students can just show up and get 800, assuming they don't make a stupid mistake or something. The person made the point that people in past MIT classes got high SAT scores because they spent so much time studying for the SAT. I just think that is absurd. Even if you did prep somewhat for the math part just to be safe, it's completely a waste of time. I mean, the questions are like "which quantity is bigger,
1/2 or 1/3?". "x^3 or x^2?" Using the Pythagorean theorem. It's a joke.</p>

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<p>I studied for the math part haha. I got an 800 on the IIc test without studying while I would keep tripping up on ye old arithmetic. l0llll, those were the days </p>

<p>:D</p>

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<p>
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I doubt anyone in the history of MIT ever prepped more than 5 minutes for the Math part of the SAT.

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<p>Quite an assumption and hardly true. You're an alum, how would you know what high school students have to go through these days? There's tremendous pressure from everything. Everyone will spend more than 5 minutes looking at the math part, no matter how smart they are. Students don't go in without knowing how the test is formatted and how its questions are formulated. And that takes more than 5 min.</p>

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Excelling in class does not indicate a lack of creativity...And having a quirky, "interesting" personality doesn't indicate any abundance of creativity.

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<p>Having a quirky personality does indicate a tendency to think differently.</p>

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They looked for the student with the A+s because that student is the one that has such passion that they try to go above and beyond what is presented in class.

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<p>Yet this is not true either. Having A+s does not indicate passion. I got a few A+s in high school and I wasn't really into the subjects. It was just a matter of doing really well. A grade does not indicate anything at all except for ability in the class. A B student could be more passionate than an A student.</p>

<p>The proposal for automatic admission with high GPA and USAMO qualification is ridiculous. What if this person had nothing interesting to say in the essays and came off as someone who did nothing but study because the person was so bent on getting high scores? It shows a lack of personality. Opportunities presented in college might go to waste because this person will perhaps still be bent on just getting a high GPA in college.</p>

<p>Someone already said it, numbers aren't the best indicators of future success. That's why MIT changed its admissions process. They now look for the context in which these numbers came from.</p>

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<p>"You're an alum, how would you know what high school students have to go through these days? There's tremendous pressure from everything. Everyone will spend more than 5 minutes looking at the math part, no matter how smart they are."</p>

<p>"Everyone"?? Ummm, wrong. S, who is currently trying to decide between MIT and another school, never gave any consideration to studying for any of the standardized tests he took in HS (except for AIME soph. year and USAMO right now). Thought it was a waste of time and money that he could spend doing fun things.</p>

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<p>So you're saying he didn't even spend a single minute looking at the SAT? Just looking at a few questions? He didn't know how the test and its questions were structured when he came in to take it?</p>

<p>Not many people (by people, I mean students admitted to schools of MIT caliber, including itself) take the SAT with no expectations for it.</p>

<p>I know there are always exception and your son may be a case. But almost everyone will spend more than 5 min.</p>

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<p>Like many/most, he took PSAT, and he took SAT in Middle school. Plus, his HS required everyone to take the ACT in Junior year. So you are correct, he became familiar with the format of the tests in advance. After those earlier exposures, he decided that preparation wasn't a good use of time. (And, yes, his parents tried to convince him otherwise . . .)</p>

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<h2>Having a quirky personality does indicate a tendency to think differently.</h2>

<p>no, not really. If you play the kazoo and wear rainbow suspenders, you could be quite a bit less creative then the serious guy wearing khaki panse every day. If these people think differently, it should come across through their recs. If you make having a quirky personality a boost for admission, people will figure it out and you'll have a flood of boring people who wear rainbow suspenders and their hair like Einstein in order to try to get admitted.</p>

<p>Also, I find it hard to believe that a person getting a "B" would get better recs than the guy getting A+s unless there was some extreme difference in the level of difficulty of the high schools involved. So if person A has worse grades AND worse recs than person B, it is very unlikely that you choose person B over A. It's very unlikely that someone could do something that would offset this, because in reality there are very few people who actually are at the level to do something really outstanding outside of class in research...Even most Intel Finalist people generally just do some research project that their mentor suggested. Also, it's probably even rarer that someone finds a new subatomic particle but can't get an "A" in basic physics or calculus. Besides, it is extremely difficult to be creative if you haven't even mastered the basic rules of a scientific or mathematical field. </p>

<p>The only reason I suggested automatic admission for USAMO qualifiers is because only 100 people in the country qualify and because the questions are extremely hard on the AIME. The guys I knew that qualified for the USAMO were uniformly brilliant and went on to do great things. Even though you can learn contest math, it seems nearly impossible to do at that level without a great deal of problem-solving ability. I only threw in that caveat about GPA so that people that are really good at math but totally lazy wouldn't get in. </p>

<p>With the issue of grades, what is wrong with taking people that do things the way they were meant to be done. With the exception of english, which can be subjective to writing style, if you know what you are talking about in math and science you should be able to get an "A". Especially when you are talking about such a basic level of math and science like high school classes.</p>

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Even though you can learn contest math, it seems nearly impossible to do at that level without a great deal of problem-solving ability

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<p>However, it's highly probable that there are people who have such problem-solving ability who just haven't qualified for the USAMO. You may be underestimating the number of people with such exceptional ability.</p>

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Also, I find it hard to believe that a person getting a "B" would get better recs than the guy getting A+s unless there was some extreme difference in the level of difficulty of the high schools involved. So if person A has worse grades AND worse recs than person B, it is very unlikely that you choose person B over A. It's very unlikely that someone could do something that would offset this, because in reality there are very few people who actually are at the level to do something really outstanding outside of class in research...Even most Intel Finalist people generally just do some research project that their mentor suggested. Also, it's probably even rarer that someone finds a new subatomic particle but can't get an "A" in basic physics or calculus. Besides, it is extremely difficult to be creative if you haven't even mastered the basic rules of a scientific or mathematical field.

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<p>Busywork. While busywork is a part of every profession, busywork in school is pointless busywork towards a figure with fiat value. Moreover, time in school is limited and valuable, and can be much better invested in a high school research project or competition. Sometimes, the grade for a class is overwhelmingly determined by a single exam (and then the person may just have been sick that day). Also, some students make mistakes and study exactly the wrong things and proceed to bomb the exam. As long as the mistakes are not consistent, they're fine. There are USAMO qualifiers who make the occasional B in an advanced math course (Caltech 2006 admissions thread).</p>

<p>Nonetheless, most of the rejectees and admits do have near-straight A's for their high school careers. It's just that some of the rejectees have more APs, extracurricular math/science activities, and post-calculus math classes than the admits. And the fact is, APs, extracurricular math/science activities, and post-calculus math classes are highly dependent on the school of the person and the nitpickiness of the student's counsolers (some refuse to let people place out of a higher level class), more so than the student's intrinsic aptitude.</p>

<p>I don't think that MIT is making all of the right decisions, but there are people with near perfect SAT scores, lots of APs, Calculus BC in 10th grade, and AIME qualification who nonetheless still struggle with theoretical mathematics courses (I know some). All of the abovementioned exams have absolutely nothing to do with the difficulty of college courses.</p>

<p>It may help to remind everyone that a B is context dependent. As I (jocularly) said in another thread:
I think we should all start a mass campaign to convince every Intel Semifinalist, every USAMO qualifier, every person with "insane stats", to get a B. That will make a B look less severe.</p>

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<h1>1 If you are looking at two people from the same high school, and one of them has better grades, test scores, recommendations, and awards then the other; then I think you should take that person regardless of whose personality the admissions staff likes better or who told a quirky, funny story in their essay. While this may seem obvious, most top schools don't even pretend to practice this policy.</h1>

<h1>2 Subjective evaluations of who is better are fine in the hands of the right person. I just don't have that much faith in Marilee Jones and her staff. They seem pretty flaky to me. I would rather have a scientist/mathematician making these decisions rather than people from the business school (Jones is a Sloan MBA.) If one of the professors at MIT was making these subjective decisions, I wouldn't have as much a problem with it. They know what goes into excelling at science and math at the highest level.</h1>

<h1>3 Jones claims she is lessening the stress of high school applicants by making the objective standards less stringent. I think making the criteria more vague makes the process more stressful. I know I didn't stress out at all over my MIT application.</h1>

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<p>At least three of the current MIT admissions officers are MIT alums, and presumably have as much knowledge of what it takes to survive at MIT as does any alum wanking on the internet.</p>

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<p>Mollie -- that's cool, I didn't know there were three. Marilee Jones, Matt McGann, and who's the third?</p>

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<p>Mikey Yang -- he's a friend of one of my friends and graduated in '05.</p>

<p>Alia Burton ('05) was an admissions officer until this August, but I believe she's in graduate school now. I am under the impression that the person who replaced Alia is an MIT alum, but since I am totally blanking on her name, I can't look her up.</p>

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<h2>At least three of the current MIT admissions officers are MIT alums, and presumably have as much knowledge of what it takes to survive at MIT as does any alum wanking on the internet.</h2>

<p>I'm sorry to insult your friend since you seem to know Jones, but Marilee Jones is not exactly sensitive to people's feelings herself. ""In Daniel Golden's The Price of Admissions, MIT Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones said, "It's possible that Henry Park looked like a thousand other Korean kids with the exact same profile of grades and activities and temperament--yet another textureless math grind."" </p>

<p>I think it's totally inappropriate for a person in a leadership position to play up a stereotype like that.</p>

<p>If she feels compelled to share her negative view of Asians to the world, then I don't feel so bad about pointing out that I don't think a MIT Business school alum knows what it takes to succeed as an undergrad at MIT.</p>

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<p>Alia was replaced by Marisa, who is also an alum. In fact, their position is especially reserved for alums- every year admissions hires a recent grad (recent as in that same year) or two to sit on the admissions committees and keep the office's view of MIT in touch with current times. They stick around for a year or two and sometimes get hired into a more "permanent" position in the office, or sometimes move on to other things and are replaced by another recent grad. So at any point in time, there are at least two alums working in admissions, and usually quite a few more than that.</p>

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<p>I have so, so many problems with this mindset.</p>

<p>First, while pointless busywork certainly exists in abundance in most high school environment, it is not accurate to classify all assignments in high school as busywork. You seem to be expressing the view (which I've seen more than once in this thread and others) that any time a supposedly intelligent student gets a bad grade it's because they were too busy with research/other lofty, high-minded pursuits to be bothered with doing their homework. Even if this is true, I don't believe that high school students, genius-level or not, always have enough experience and maturity to be able to correctly judge when work is pointless. Many times in basic chem I felt that the textbook assignments were pointless and repetitive, but looking back I can tell that doing them helped me become a lot more competent at the subject.</p>

<p>Also, you then proceed to give more excuses for admits with bad grades that go completely against the prior argument. If a class is graded mostly on one or two tests (like, hmm, many university courses are), then busywork can't possibly be a factor in a student doing poorly. High schools are not filled with unreasonable teachers who fail sick students, and when people say they studied the wrong thing it usually means they didn't study at all.</p>

<p>The issue with this mentality of excusing student performance for some ethereal reasons about their quirkiness or personality is that it wrongs every student who grit his teeth and worked hard to get good grades and good scores. If MIT is looking for hard-working students who can survive in a tough science/math-oriented atmosphere, I don't know why they (or you) are making so many excuses for people who frankly seem unreliable and flaky. Maybe some excuses actually have reasons behind them, but I can't accept that it's a good policy to ignore hard-working, obviously intelligent students in favor of gut feelings.</p>

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<p>As an applicant still waiting on a decision, I can confirm that this is definitely true. I submitted my application in October, and I won't get a decision until mid/late May. I don't understand how that helps me to relax and enjoy my senior year.</p>

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<p>
[quote]

1 If you are looking at two people from the same high school, and one of them has better grades, test scores, recommendations, and awards then the other; then I think you should take that person regardless of whose personality the admissions staff likes better or who told a quirky, funny story in their essay. While this may seem obvious, most top schools don't even pretend to practice this policy.

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<p>The thing is, your ideal scenario there leaves no room for those of us that got poor grades because we didn't see the point in tapping our potential in high school. I spent high school educating myself, and it worked out pretty damn well, in terms of what I know. What was the point of caring about AP US History? The entire reason I took that class was because I'd already be bored to death in a regular history class, so I might as well be bored to death and mildly challenging myself.</p>

<p>I honestly put high school on the backburner, got a job in an accounting office, as an IT technician, did freelance graphical art work, played in poker tournaments, snagged a research internship, continued to teach myself physics and math. In the meanwhile, my grades suffered. Why care? To impress a college? That's a horrible reason.</p>

<p>Again, I'm biased, but if my options were (a) learn to do research and mindless busywork or (b) learn to do research and at the same time deal with real-life social structures and hold a job, I think (b) is a far, far, more valuable use of my time. And I know people are already turning this into an intellect vs. ability to work social games issue, and insisting MIT should favor the former and that the latter is left for Harvahd to deal with. But why not favor those who possess both?</p>

<p>Like people have been saying, it's about potential, but more importantly, it's about the potential to USE RESOURCES. Why would you even go to a private college if you're not going to make use of the resources they have available? I promise you, science and engineering don't change because of your location. You can pick up any number of extremely intense books on science and engineering and educate yourself if you're dedicated enough. What you can't do is have access to those resources available only at an upper level institution. </p>

<p>What do grades really indicate? That some bright students were really able to keep themselves from going comatose taking 13 AP classes and trying to get all A's despite the fact they don't really care about the material but are worried to death that their favorite college won't accept them? Grades do not, and never will, equate to intellect. They'll reflect mainly on a person's willingness to do the work presented to them, and they definitely WILL NOT reflect on a person's ability to make use of exterior resources and opportunities. The thing is, the work presented in high school cannot compare to the work presented at MIT. If you can prove you can work hard enough to pass your GIRs and then give everything you have to your favored field of study-- your *passion<a href="and%20I%20know%20many%20people%20hate%20this%20word">/i</a>, then why NOT admit someone? Just so MIT can keep up it's appearance of consisting of "geniuses", based on statistics of grade point averages?</p>

<p>I think some odd twenty+ people from my high school applied to MIT. Five of us got in, and I was almost definitely at the bottom of those twenty, looking at GPA. I REALLY wasn't high up there in high school grades. Yet, in my second semester here, I'm grading for 8.022, I've had dinner with numerous professors, I've received various UROP offers (which I've had the privilege of declining), and all while kicking ass in class.</p>

<p>You all can keep your numerocentric admissions philosophies. The people who do well at MIT aren't the people with the highest grades or best SAT scores, they're the ones who fit best for MIT. Fit involves far more than grades and awards and mathematical aptitude. It involves a desire to learn, ability to work together, etc. etc. Grades/awards/scores are a <em>representation</em> of these ideals, and often COME with them, but you can't make the mistake of assuming they're the <em>only</em> measure of these things, or even the BEST measure. You can't apply a cookie cutter standard to everyone and take the people who make the best cookies. If grades and the like are sufficient to determine a student's potential to succeed at MIT, then great. But there are <em>other ways</em> of determining that potential to succeed, and it varies for each student. That's the point of a holistic process, that's what it recognizes that the more traditional system fails to do so.</p>

<p>Hey guys check this out: admissions made easy.


Student thisStudent = applicants.first();</p>

<p>while (admittedStudents.size() < TARGET_NUMBER) {
    if (thisStudent.hasUSAMO() || 
       (highestSATScorers.contains(thisStudent) &&
        highestGPAs.contains(thisStudent) &&
        (thisStudent.getHighestAwardLevel >= AWARDS.national)))
       admittedStudents.add(thisStudent);
       thisStudent = applicants.next();
}

</p>

<p>Implement with hash tables and merge sort and you've got an upper bound of linear logarithmic time for large data sets. Not bad. I figure this algorithm would be enough to put Marilee and Ben out of work, though. Sorry, Ben.</p>

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3 Jones claims she is lessening the stress of high school applicants by making the objective standards less stringent. I think making the criteria more vague makes the process more stressful. I know I didn't stress out at all over my MIT application.

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<p>I can imagine it would be less stressful for someone who spent their entire high school career doing nothing but trying to get into college. It's important to realize that most people do not fall into this category (and I do not mean to imply you do), and some of us are drastically oppose to it. It personally made me very happy to know my application was not treated as algorithmically as you'd have it be. You do take into consideration recommendations, but these things alone can never be enough to determine whether or not an applicant should be at MIT. </p>

<p>I know a few other people like me here. I admit that we may be "the exceptions to the rule", my my entire point is that if there are exceptions, then clearly the rule isn't that good. </p>

<p>If any of this seems hostile in any way, I apologize sincerely, and I do not mean it to be so. I've just had a lot to say and haven't been saying it for a while. With that, I'm bowing out of this discussion.</p>

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<p>Well, it's nice for you that you were able to move through your high school years doing apparently whatever you wanted and still get into MIT. Apparently, you don't place that much stock in it.</p>

<p>Does this mean that those of us who have set going to MIT as our goal and do value the college experience there above other pursuits should be punished for trying to do what should have gotten us admitted, except for the apologist revisions to the admissions process at MIT? It's disgusting that this seems to be the case.</p>

<p>You set up an immense logical fallacy (which the admissions office seems to buy into as well) in assuming that the only two choices for a high school student are doing busywork or ditching school and going into the "real world" and self-studying. Could I have gone to a bookstore and purchased an entire undergraduate physics curriculum to teach myself? Of course. However, perhaps I thought that I would be better off to actually engage in being taught by a competent professional.</p>

<p>I shudder to think of what MIT's graduating class will look like in a decade if they continue on your illustrated path of admitting students who ignore teachers and work and don't care about getting into college.</p>

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<p>Also, this is just a ridiculous statement to make.</p>

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<p>Olo, did you make that block of code? if so, that's sweet.</p>

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<p>The problem here is that you feel like you should have gotten admitted. There is nothing that should have gotten you admitted. The applicant pool is so selective; you're not guaranteed anything.</p>

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<p>The thing is, what I <em>wanted</em> was apparently characteristic of people who do well at MIT. I'm playing my own flute here a bit, but admissions didn't make a mistake in that regard.</p>

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<p>Please go back and re-read my post. I stated clearly that if grades/scores/tests etc ARE enough to determine whether or not a student does well at MIT, then by all means, admit him. But it's a mistake to use them as the ONLY criteria, which implies that they are the ONLY indicators of such. The fallacy you commit is claiming to know what should have gotten you admitted. Rather than thinking in terms of numbers, ask yourself: why do we typically trust those numbers? What are they indicative of? Is there any other thing which might serve as a good indicator of those same qualities?</p>

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<p>Not at all. In fact, I explicitly state otherwise:


</p>

<p>See? I'm saying you should realize that grades are a good way of determining whether or not a student should be at MIT, but are not the only way or even the best way. The holistic approach acknowledges this, and acknowledges the power of grades in determining good applicants, but realizes there are other measures to judge a candidate by. The numerocentric approach fails to recognize the entire latter category.</p>

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Also, this is just a ridiculous statement to make.

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<p>Yes. Let's just admit people based on heuristics, rather than actually acknowledging that human beings are individuals and differ from each other significantly.</p>

<p>Also: in the future, please try actually reading what I write rather than stating I made assumptions and fallacies I explicitly addressed.</p>

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<p>Yes, though thinking again, I should have done it in Scheme.</p>

<p>EDIT: I just noticed that block of code has a typo. Ironically, omitted parentheses. Curse you Scheme! Also removed prior edit...</p>