<p>I have friends like that. And I really appreciate that. We have heavy scheduled caste/scheduled tribe reservation in India, but some people just wanna play it totally fair :)</p>
<p>Writing your cedit card number in public is stupid; but using someone else’s number
is fraud, for which you can go to jail.</p>
<p>Revealing identifiable information may be imprudent, but linking to personal websites is
against the terms of service here.</p>
<p>Ignorance of the laws/ rules is no excuse.</p>
<p>Help me out here please…
What’s wrong with his expectation of the MIT admission? If he is your son or brother, what would you expect? Should he be happy about the MIT decision and say “thank you”?</p>
<p>Come on, be a real human!</p>
<p>Obviously, MIT read differently from his piece, too bad…</p>
<p>Wow, accepted at MIT but waitlisted at Duke.
Not what I would have expected at all…</p>
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<p>Expecting rejection is not the same as being happy with rejection. It’s ok to be upset, but to be offended and angry indicates that you felt like your right was taken away from you - and no one has a “right” to go to MIT, no matter how good you think your application is. Most of MIT’s applicants are academically qualified - meaning there are absolutely no guarantees.</p>
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If you didn’t understand why a teacher liked you so much, would you refuse to ask them for a rec? If you got a perfect SAT but guessed on ten questions, would you send in a bad score instead?
Even if you think the practice is wrong, not putting your race won’t change the policy and might keep you out of your favorite school.</p>
<p>You know better than anyone that admissions is an unfair crapshoot.</p>
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<p>MIT makes a few of these w tf decisions every year. Perhaps it’s just random, and perhaps they want to show that they don’t take everyone who might appear to be shoo-ins. Too bad, because I think that any institution would really benefit from having such accomplished/intelligent people studying there. These people go to Harvard or other great colleges. Of course, nobody has a “right” to go to MIT, but if i were him I’d be offended and angry as well. I do think that a lot of people i know who got in over him were NOT more qualified, were NOT more passionate, and do NOT deserve it more. (yours truly, for one.) As for me, I really would have liked to go to college with him since he does sound quite amazing. |:</p>
<p>Heh… so it is. Touche.</p>
<p>WaitingforGodot: I understand and sympathize with your disappointment and the others who were rejected this year, but you are in great company. Looking at the results for the last few years, MIT is the hardest to predict. There may be a method to their madness, but it’s hard to see.</p>
<p>Last year, my son was accepted to all of the schools he applied to, including HYPS, Dartmouth, Cornell, Wharton and waitlisted at MIT. He received likely letters from several of those schools. His extremely well qualified friends were outright rejected. This year another friend with exceptional qualifications was rejected from MIT, but accepted many other places. If you look around on this site, you will see many other examples.</p>
<p>An MIT rejection or waitlist means nothing for your chances at other schools, it might actually be a positive indicator if you are too well qualified. MIT seems very concerned about their yield.</p>
<p>^^Well, that is unfortunate that MIT is getting that reputation. I’m not convinced that HYPS admissions is more merit based, though. My high school class had 6 USAMO winners, and only 2 got into H and S. This was back when USAMO only had ~100 qualifiers per year, so they were probably in the top 50 in math of those applying to college that year. And Stanford admitted something like 15 people from our school, so they admitted a lot–just mostly not the top students. Harvard admitted only 4 or 5, but only 50% were really top students. </p>
<p>I doubt admissions to the other top places have become more predictable, or to use a stronger word, logical. I think it’s partly easier for them to hide behind the fact that they admit for other types of excellence. Even though this is true, I don’t think who they select for their science & engineering majors makes a lot of sense, either. To use another measure, the sets of people from my school who got into Caltech and HPS didn’t have a very large overlap at all (probably 1 in 5 Caltech admittees could get into HPS as well.)</p>
<p>Maybe it’s statements like these that make people who went to RSI getting rejected so surprising, at least to me -</p>
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<p>HYPS are more consistent and more merit based as far as you can judge merit from a college application. It is just odd that students who are “one reader admits” at other schools are rejected from MIT. Obviously, MIT has its own criteria. Only time will tell if it makes sense.</p>
<p>The students I am referring to, that were rejected from MIT, were stellar in humanities AND math/science with perfect scores. They also got into Caltech as well as HYPS. My son did as well. Caltech does not seem to care about yield and simply admits the best students.</p>
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<p>Well, I have no doubt that is what happened in your son’s school. But my experience was the opposite. Guys that were a shoe-in at Caltech and also humanities stars got shut out of HP & S. For example, one of our USAMO qualifiers was so talented at music that he ended up becoming a professional violinist in a major orchestra–he got shut out of HP & S. </p>
<p>I agree with you that MIT is making weird decisions these days, although I question whether yield is the reason. Generally, RSI people do get in, so it’s kind of silly that MIT would reject an RSI guy who applied early to MIT (in Godot’s case.) If anything, applying early demonstrates that they are more likely to accept an admissions offer.</p>
<p>I will make a caveat that RSI may be big enough that a person will become an auto-admit at Harvard. MOSP used to carry that kind of weight, too, although the increase in qualifiers may have reduced its influence. But USAMO + academic performance worthy than Caltech certainly doesn’t make you a “one-read admit” at HYPS.</p>
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Well, that has been proven wrong before (even in the last couple years), so Harvard is not so much more predictable either.</p>
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lol, love the last option. :O</p>
<p>No one thing guarantees admittance anywhere. Not USAMO, RSI or IMO. It’s the whole picture seen in context. The context is critical and the context I am referring to is very different from yours, collegealum314. I am in awe that you had 6 USAMO winners in your class. My son’s classmates have never heard of USAMO and RSI. He and his friends (from different schools) were remarkable because they had done amazing things without school support. Their perfect scores showed that they could keep up with the ivy crowd.</p>
<p>HYPS recognize outstanding achievements by students from backgrounds that do not usually send students to highly selective colleges. I have not seen that effort from MIT, but I may have missed it. I have nothing against MIT, but I am concerned that their admission policies seem very capricious and needlessly break the hearts of students who should have been admitted, like WaitingForGodot. My son is not among that number; MIT was far down his list and he is now at his dream school.</p>
<p>However, as an American, I have a vested interest in seeing MIT remain one of the top math/science colleges in the world and I wonder if they have deserted that goal for some other mission.</p>
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MIT certainly admits a larger percentage of students from public high schools, and has a larger number of students on financial aid, than do its peer schools. And WaitingforGodot goes to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which is one of the top feeder schools to the nation’s top colleges – certainly not a “background that [does] not usually send students to highly selective colleges.”</p>
<p>In some sense, you can’t have it both ways – either MIT admits outstanding students from highly privileged and opportunity-laden backgrounds, or they admit students who may not be as outstanding on paper, but who make the best of meager high school resources. MIT tries to strike a balance between these two extremes, and while it’s possible to argue that they don’t do it perfectly, it’s disingenuous to argue that they don’t do it at all.</p>
<p>Honestly, we should stop dissing MIT all the time about their admission. I mean, compared to gazillion other top privates out there, MIT admission is still 100! (factorial) times more meritocratic than HYPS. Honestly. HYPS makes much more controversial decisions (especially with URMs) but we don’t start whining, while MIT makes fewer weird decisions and everyone starts complaining. I mean if people on the Stanford forum had the same attitude, there would have been at least 50 threads like this during SCEA season (the famous massacre).</p>
<p>2009 USAMO list just released and TJHSST has 18 qualifiers this year. For the class of 2010 now has 10 students total who would most likely all apply for MIT, obviously, some of them could be “killed” again by MIT next year.
This is one of the disvantages of attending a super high school.</p>