<p>
[quote]
And SAT scores don't mean anything.. I mean whos smarter: A) a person who makes a couple of mistakes (maybe because he stayed up late the night before researching a computer algorithm that interests him), like 2+3=6 or something equally trivial, and ends up with a 760 on his SAT Math section,
or
B) a person who spends months taking SAT prep classes, retaking the tests over and over again until he is able to get 800 every time?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think most college admissions officers would want students to find a happy medium between the two extremes of "preparation." SAT scores provide a standard yardstick and are most useful if every student does his/her best, gets sufficient sleep the night before, and perhaps studies a moderate amount for the test. Even if you're much more interested in other things (which you probably should be :-), the SAT should be respected as one important part of the college application and I don't think it's TOO much to ask students to study a few hours per week a month or two before the test. (Note that I haven't mentioned SAT prep classes - they're expensive and unnecessary; books are widely available and economical.) I think the MIT website says it best:</p>
<p>
[quote]
While your scores are only one component of your application, they are important, and you should make sure you're prepared for the testing process.
<p>MIT math is good but not the top. Besides, there are about 200 students at MIT math departmen each year and about 20 in harvard math department ( &Caltech). Still, the very top 1st places are dominated by Harvard, Caltech teams. MIT comes after Harvard Caltech, Princeton.</p>
<p>There may be more students intereted in Math at MIT, but the very top mathematicians are always from Harvard, Caltech, & Princeton. That is why no one from MIT ever won Fields medal even though MIT math is 10 times bigger.</p>
<p>You will find that the top placings in the Putnam are dominated by MIT people. The reason MIT only got 3rd is that the team competition is based on combined score of a 3-person team whose composition is determined before the competition. 3 of the top 5 individuals on the Putnam are from MIT, but only 1 of those was designated as being on the official team. The winning Princeton team only had one guy in the top 5.</p>
<p>Before 2000, Harvard had more people in the top 50 on the Putnam than MIT but things have changed since then. There was a top American math guy in the early 2000s who was really more interested in computer sciene. He worked in the MIT media lab since the age of 10 and decided to come to MIT. Since then, it seems that it has become in vogue to go to MIT for the top math people in the U.S. I don't know if this is what started the ball rolling, but the math people all know each other from the math olympics camps in high school so this may have been the cause. Prior to 2000, MIT had 1 or 2 in the top 10 every year but generally all of the top math people were from foreign countries. </p>
<p>Also, I don't know where you get your numbers, but there are more than 20 math majors at Harvard. (Do you mean there are 20 math majors graduating every year? Because if you do mean that, then there are way less than 200 math majors graduating every year at MIT. The most popular major at MIT, EECS, has about 250 people graduating every year. About 5 years ago, it was more like 600 per year in EECS. With a graduating class of 1000, there's no way MIT has 200 math majors graduating per year.)</p>
<p>As for the Fields medal, Harvard has had 2 undergrads go on to win the Fields Medal and Princeton has had one. CalTech and MIT have had zero. I don't think that means anything. Most of the American Fields Medal winners went to mediocre colleges for undergrad.</p>
<p>Obviously MIT is becoming more Harvard-like and silly in its admissions. They still admit the very top academic superstars to sweep the Putnam, but also admit a whole bunch of academically weak students (by Caltech standards) for balance reasons. That's not bad but it's true. Let's swallow that and get over it. In between those academically weak admitted students and the Putnam superstars, there are lots of good and sometimes even superb kids who get rejected while academically weaker kids get in. That makes people mad and drives threads like this one.</p>
<p>To pebbles -- it is possible to rank people at least coarsely by intelligence in a way that splits MIT students into a few distinct groups. Take off the debating hat for a second -- do you really disagree with me? Do you think the average URM admit is intellectually at the level of the Putnam winners?</p>
<p>Ben...I wasn't trying to make any point about the quality of the student body or justifying the admissions process--just that that MIT has been getting more of the Putnam superstars than any other college lately. Poxpox was asserting otherwise.</p>
<p>There is something to be said for this 'silly' admissions process at MIT. All students admitted to MIT, even the so-called "academically weak", are more than capable of thriving at MIT and going on to do amazing things later in life.</p>
<p>The fact that MIT adcoms make sacrifices by not admitting <em>every</em> academic superstar in the interests of enriching the undergraduate experience by building a more diverse student body is yet another reason why MIT is better than Caltech.</p>
<p>I think labeling their admissions process as silly based on anecdotes from your school is not very reliable. Two people were accepted from my school last year ( i believe they were numbers 1 and 5 in the class) and they were both THE best math and science students in the school, hands down. they were both also varsity athletes(and involved in the school otherwise as well). i am confident they were admitted because a) they were great math/science students and b) they were the total package. (also, both were white, so no AA taking place either).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Do you think the average URM admit is intellectually at the level of the Putnam winners?
[/quote]
I don't think the average MIT admit in general is intellectually at the level of the Putnam winners, so I think that's a loaded comparison.</p>
<p>I do happen to think that the average URM admit is intellectually at the level of the average non-URM admit, or at least will be after a semester or two of GIRs. That is to say, I think the URM and the non-URM admit pools have approximately the same level of potential, even if not the same level of academic preparation.</p>
<p>its true that SATs aren't entirely fair
but still it gives a fairly accurate ballpark indicator of what a student's abilities are</p>
<p>i highly doubt students with 1800 SATs can handle MIT core courses, especially math and science, barring some kind of extreme personal circumstance</p>
<p>"I do happen to think that the average URM admit is intellectually at the level of the average non-URM admit, or at least will be after a semester or two of GIRs"
judging by the stats and extra-curriculars i've seen in the admit threads, i also doubt this</p>
<p>Actually, the very best top math superstars are NOT at MIT, there are more Putham math winners from MIT simply bacause there are more math students from MIT ( MIT math is about 10 times bigger than Harvard, Princeton, Caltech)</p>
<p>The very best top math student usually go to Harvard, Caltech, Caltech. That is why 1st place winning team is usually Harvard or Caltech or Princeton. That is why no one from MIT has ever won Fields Medal even though there are more MIT math graduates than Harvard, Caltech, Princeton, Yale , Columbia and Stanford combined. Most of the Fields medal winner are graduates of Harvard, Princeton & Caltech.</p>
<p>Obviously MIT is becoming more Harvard-like and silly in its admissions. They still admit the very top academic superstars to sweep the Putnam, but also admit a whole bunch of academically weak students (by Caltech standards) for balance reasons. That's not bad but it's true. Let's swallow that and get over it. In between those academically weak admitted students and the Putnam superstars, there are lots of good and sometimes even superb kids who get rejected while academically weaker kids get in. That makes people mad and drives threads like this one.
</p>
<p>The problem I have with this system is that the MIT admissions office keeps claiming they're trying to "demystify the application process," "take the pressure off students in their senior year," etc. This is the opposite of the truth. I would really like to know exactly what MIT is looking for when they read an application; saying "the match" is one of the most deliberately vague statements I've ever seen.</p>
<p>I submitted my application in October for Early Action and was deferred. I updated my application before regular decisions were made with an essay-length letter describing my activities, awards, etc. since I had first submitted. I'm now on the waitlist, and probably won't receive a decision until late May. That's a seven-month turnover for my application. I would really like to know how that is supposed to relieve my anxiety and help me relax during my senior year.</p>
<p>As I've stated in other threads: I am still in love with MIT as a school, but I have no good feelings left for their admissions office.</p>
In terms of 'capable of thriving at MIT', I wonder if that could have more to do with easing the graduation requirements than all students equally thriving regardless of academic background: the reason, for example, that Caltech can't do it's admissions like MIT is because if people, on average, had any less academic preparation, the curriculum would need to be dumbed down quite a bit so that a large fraction wouldn't fail out.</p>
<p>Oh please, that tired old line is the same thing you people keep coming here with. Yes there are ways to get through with less difficult classes, yet I think you'd find most of our engineering classes have not been "dumbed down". I believe the only people saying otherwise have not actually attended MIT.</p>
<p>The fact that all those "academic superstars sweeping the Putnam" <em>chose</em> to come to MIT over Caltech says a LOT.</p>
Then you should be all the more able to refute it if it didn't have some validity!</p>
<p>
I have no doubt that's quite true as I'm a physics major. I also doubt that you're at all familiar with Caltech's engineering classes to be able to assess the level of difficulty between them and MIT's (I'm not saying Caltech's are more difficult, just that you saying that your classes are hard doesn't really provide any insight into the comparison.)</p>
<p>I don't think the comparison is valid if you make it too general. Are you comparing general institute reqs, or all majors? I don't believe there is really an 'easy' way through course VI, or its equivalent at Caltech.</p>
<p>Other majors may have ways to get them by taking easy classes. Is that not at all true for any major at Caltech?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Most of the Fields medal winner are graduates of Harvard, Princeton & Caltech.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Are you sure? Most are actually graduates of international universities. There are 48 recipients total. 16 of which got a degree in the U.S. Here's a list of them:</p>
<p>2006: Terence Tao Ph.D '96 Princeton University
2002: Vladimir Voevodsky Ph.D '92 Harvard University
1998: Curtis T. McMullen Ph.D '85 Harvard University
1990: Edward Written Ph.D '76 Princeton University
1986: Michael Freedman Ph.D '73 Princeton University
1982: William Thurston Ph.D '72 University of California, Berkeley, Shing-Tung Yau Ph.D '71 University of California, Berkeley
1978: Charles Fefferman Ph.D '69 Princeton Univeristy, Daniel Quillen Ph.D '64 Harvard University
1974: David Mumford Ph.D '61 Harvard University
1970: Heisuke Hironaka Ph.D '70 Harvard University, John G. Thompson Ph.D '59 University of Chicago
1966: Paul Cohen Ph.D '58 University of Chicago, Stephen Smale Ph.D '57 University of Michigan
1962: John Milnor Ph.D '54 Princeton University
1936: Jesse Douglas Ph.D '20 Columbia University</p>
<p>There're 5 from Harvard, 5 from Princeton, 2 from Berkeley, 2 from Chicago, 1 from Michigan, and 1 from Columbia.</p>
<p>That's hardly most.</p>
<p>As for Putnam, 3 of the top 5 scorers are from MIT. Only one of which was on the MIT team.</p>
<p>look, if i were doing theoretical math and harvard accepted me, hell, I'd go, too. I dont see how that has to do with the MIT undergrad admissions policies though :/</p>
<p>this is a silly thread. I'm glad all of you are so concerned about the academic merits of the students you go to school with, but I'll take MIT admissions over Caltech admissions any day.</p>