<p>The 1869-1870 is much easier than 1876 and probably for obvious reasons. It makes you kind of think though, did the formula for the area of a circle just get discovered in 1869 or something. Even on the SAT's you'd never see a question asked so explicitly.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Now my side of the story for Karabel is that: I think US gives an applicant a chance to show each and every sphere where one is good at. NOw in the Indian Institute of Technology Exam (the IITJEE) I have to just write a stupid Phy/Chem/Math entrance test to enter and then I'd be given an Engg. Now I want to do Comp Sci/Engg but the test never really checks my knowledge of computers so dont you think its just unfair that I dont get a chance to prove myself in my field of interest. Whereas in the US admission process I can show all my olympiads, competition victories and research work. Now what is fair is for you to judge.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. So let's say you show all your olympiads and all your competition victories and all that other stuff. And then you STILL get rejected because the school would rather admit a football star. Or a legacy. Or a prince of some foreign royal family. Or the child of somebody who's willing to donate a million dollars. Sure, you might say that your performance on a phy/chem/math test might have nothing to do with your computer knowledge. However, I think we can all agree that your ability to throw a football REALLY has nothing to do with your computer knowledge. The fact that your father is king of some country REALLY has nothing to do with your computer knowledge.</p>
<p>I think that's the point that Karabel was making. Whenever you start using the concept of well-roundedness, you open the door to massive abuse, because you can ALWAYS say that somebody is more well-rounded than another and nobody can ever really challenge you, because you can always redefine "well-roundedness" in any way that you want. Hence, in the old days, colleges used to use the concept of well-roundedness as an excuse to exclude Jews. Nowadays, schools can and do use the concept of well-roundedness to admit children of wealthy donors or famous people. Or people that will help the school win a sports championship.</p>
<p>True, MIT may not stretch its admissions very much to accomodate a sports star or the children of the rich and famous. However, we would be kidding ourselves if we said that it didn't happen at all. More to the point, this happens extensively at that 'other' school in town. It happens also rather extensively at a certain school in Palo Alto.</p>
<p>So the other schools are the big H and the S. And it is true abt them. From India they took a big money thrower too.</p>
<p>Well I get your point sakky. I misunderstood before then it seems. Yes there is a damn good chance of abuse of that. Also in my opinion the biggest crappiest thing which happened to colleges was reservation or as you people call it affirmative action.</p>
<p>On the Harvard decision thread--at least, I think it was there--a number of rather annoying Phillips Exeter students with (honestly) unimpressive qualifications were lecturing everyone else on how the secret to admissions is "uniqueness". The implication was that all the other students didn't get in because they were "cookie-cutter" applicants from public schools.</p>
<p>The irony, of course, is that elite prep schools like Exeter devote enormous resources to crafting carefully packaged applications for elite universities. Public school students, on the other hand, often have to navigate college admissions by themselves. The regular admission of the former kind of student doesn't make me too happy.</p>
<p>I got into Harvard EA as a public school student, so I should probably stop blasting admissions at elite universities. Since we're on the MIT forum, however, it's worth noting that MIT's practices appear much more egalitarian.</p>
<p>... would we be allowed to use the ti-89 or just the 83?</p>
<p>Hee, I think for this test you would be allowed to use the TI-your brain. ;)</p>
<p>randomperson, do you have a link to the posts?</p>
<p>most exeter kids would not make that implication. amazing people are going to be amazing in any environment... public school, private school, whatever!</p>
<p>i don't think that smoke and mirrors do (or even could) get us in to college.
we write our applications by ourselves... our teachers write our recs by themselves. we work for our own scores & transcripts. maybe our counselor recs attempt to carefully package us, but the other components of our applications are more important, right?</p>
<p>I wouldn't call it 'smoke-and-mirrors'. I would call it good old fashioned 'marketing'. </p>
<p>The truth is, there is a component of marketing that goes on when it comes to admission to top schools. For example, it's not just a matter of doing well academically and then simply hoping for the best. It has to do with the teachers knowing exactly what they have to write in their rec's to maximize your chances of getting into a particular school, as certain schools emphasize certain things. It's about providing 'hints' about what to write about in your essays so that you will write about the things that the schools like to read about and that accentuate your strengths. It's about the prep school developing the 'institutional capital' of having sent a lot of kids to Harvard before and so knowing what does and does not work. It's about prepping you for the interviews so that you know what you're supposed to say and what you're not. </p>
<p>I'm not saying that any of these things are decisive by themselves. But when you're talking about trying to get into Harvard, every little edge helps. Often times, admissions decisions come down to miniscule differences in perceived quality. Hence, every little bit of extra marketing muscle you can get might prove to be the difference betwee admission and rejection. And the truth is, PE kids get that extra edge that public school kids don't.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For example, in 1876, most states of the US had not yet enacted compulsory education laws. As a result, many children did not go to any school at all, and only a tiny percentage of Americans had actually attended high school, never mind actually graduating from high school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But one should remember that merely attending a school doesn't mean one is well educated (as indeed other posts in this thread have pointed out). Because MIT is located in Massachusetts, I feel constrained to point out that Horace Mann's estimate of English-language literacy in Massachusetts BEFORE compulsory school attendance was above 90 percent, even including the many recent immigrants from starving Ireland. His rationale for compulsory school attendance had more to do with making people more uniform in their social outlook than with raising their level of literacy. Everyone in my family (originating from various countries) has been literate since the 1870s or so, and many of my ancestors were literate in the early 1600s, as can be shown by books that we still own. Homeschoolers today are only part of a long line of people of many different ethnic groups who achieved effective literacy without a government-established compulsory school system. </p>
<p>It IS hard to know, always, how much of a test score is enough. It is a very rare entrance exam, whether in the United States, India, or Japan, that really requires a perfect score for entrance into the most desirable college. As with the AMC mathematics tests, a tough, subject-matter-based entrance exam probably distinguishes applicants at the yeah-I-know-that level of knowledge from applicants at the mastery level of knowledge. Whether that works well to distinguish applicants who will do the best in a college program probably depends on how much opportunity each applicant has had to learn the specific items tested on the test. A grade-school graduate who reads avidly might very well do better on the test--and continue to be a better college student--than a high school graduate who reads only what is assigned.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who would have totally failed the arithmetic test?
I rely so much on my calculator..it's terrible.</p>
<p>Reminds me of the Chinese college placement exams for my home province (Liaoning) this year. That was an hour-and-a-half test with 24 questions, the last 3 being of USAMO difficulty. I took it and humiliated myself.</p>
<p>That's the type of entrance exam we need.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Because MIT is located in Massachusetts, I feel constrained to point out that Horace Mann's estimate of English-language literacy in Massachusetts BEFORE compulsory school attendance was above 90 percent, even including the many recent immigrants from starving Ireland.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, but that's in Massachusetts, which has always been historically one of the most highly educated states in the country. Keep in mind that Massachusetts was founded by Puritan religious dissidents for which Bible reading (and thus literacy) was a cornerstone of their lifestyle. </p>
<p>To contrast, while educational levels in the state of Massachusetts in the 1870's, there were numerous states in which a significant part of the population, including arguably most of the population in certain states, not only never went to school, but didn't even know how to read. I refer, of course, to former slaves of the old Confederacy, almost all of which were completely illiterate and uneducated. Combine that with poor uneducated white farmers in those same states and it is quite likely that most of the adult population in many Southern states never had a day of schooling in their whole lives. While some abolitionists groups, notably the Freedman's Bureau, did attempt to provide basic education to former slaves, it was a long and slow process. Even by the turn of the century, as discussed by Thomas Sowell, the majority of African-Americans in the country still did not know how to read. </p>
<p>Even decades after slavery was banned, the issue of compulsary education was still a bone of contention among many US states, notably the ones in the South. And no, it's not because residents of those states were getting educated through 'home-schooling' or other such private means. Plenty of Americans, again notably former slaves, chose not to educate their children at all because they didn't see the value of doing so. That was one pernicious consequence of slavery - it denigrated the value of education among the people. Slavery may have ended, but the attitudes that slavery taught endured. </p>
<p>To be fair, these attitudes were not simpily a consequence of slavery only, but were part of the 'Southern' way of life.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Because MIT is located in Massachusetts, I feel constrained to point out that Horace Mann's estimate of English-language literacy in Massachusetts BEFORE compulsory school attendance was above 90 percent, even including the many recent immigrants from starving Ireland.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, but that's in Massachusetts, which has always been historically one of the most highly educated states in the country. Keep in mind that Massachusetts was founded by Puritan religious dissidents for which Bible reading (and thus literacy) was a cornerstone of their lifestyle. </p>
<p>To contrast, while educational levels in the state of Massachusetts in the 1870's, there were numerous states in which a significant part of the population, including arguably most of the population in certain states, not only never went to school, but didn't even know how to read. I refer, of course, to former slaves of the old Confederacy, almost all of which were completely illiterate and uneducated. Combine that with poor uneducated white farmers in those same states and it is quite likely that most of the adult population in many Southern states never had a day of schooling in their whole lives. While some abolitionists groups, notably the Freedman's Bureau, did attempt to provide basic education to former slaves, it was a long and slow process. Even by the turn of the century, as discussed by Thomas Sowell, the majority of African-Americans in the country still did not know how to read. </p>
<p>Even decades after slavery was banned, the issue of compulsary education was still a bone of contention among many US states, notably the ones in the South. And no, it's not because residents of those states were getting educated through 'home-schooling' or other such private means. Plenty of Americans, again notably former slaves, chose not to educate their children at all because they didn't see the value of doing so. That was one pernicious consequence of slavery - it denigrated the value of education among the people. Slavery may have ended, but the attitudes that slavery taught endured. </p>
<p>To be fair, these attitudes were not simpily a consequence of slavery only, but were part of the 'Southern' way of life. As Sowell once wrote: "Illiteracy was far more common among whites in the antebellum South than among whites in the North". (<a href="http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell050505.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell050505.asp</a>) Simple cultural attitudes within various regions of the country affected the level of education, either encouraging it (in the case of the Northeast) or discouraging it (in the case of the South and the rural West). It's not like most rural Southerners were secretly homeschooling their children in lieu of sending them to public schools. Most Southern rural children were not getting any education of any kind because their communities did not think it was important for them to do so. Even to this day, educational attainment levels remain extremely low in the Mississippi River Delta region and in rural Appalachia. Not coincidentally, these regions are among the two most enduring pockets of dire poverty in the country for both white and black Americans. </p>
<p>The point that I am attempting to impart is that widespread education is only a recent phenomenoma in history. It wasn't that long ago when a large fraction of Americans were completely uneducated, either because they were deliberately excluded (i.e. African-Americans) or because they had cultural predelictions against education (many rural Americans). Compulsary education was not only a means with which to standardize education, but also a way to break cultural habits and encourage education amongst people who never valued it before. </p>
<p>I'll put it to you this way. I think we can all agree that a African-American kid today is far far more likely to get admitted to MIT than an African-American kid of 1876 would be able to pass that MIT entrance exam of that year. Heck, that kid of 1876 probably doesn't even know how to write his own name. Again, this is a consequence of African-Americans only having been freed from slavery only about a decade ago. It took only 1892 for MIT to award a degree to its first black graduate.</p>
<p>"The first black student to graduate from MIT was Robert Taylor, in 1892."Essentially, his community thought it was a useless situation to come to a place like MIT to get a degree and his was in architecture because at that time there was nothing that a black person could do with a degree," </p>
<p>I STILL THINK THOSE QUESTIONS WERE HARD!!! lolz.</p>
<p>sakky opened an interesting thread, and I'll reply briefly to him to say that the historical evidence (which he hasn't exactly disputed in his last reply) shows that MAINSTREAM, MAJORITY culture in America has been literate for a long time, since well before the era of compulsory school attendance. My rural ancestors were just as literate in English as my urban ancestors. (I didn't have any urban ancestors until three generations ago.) The Union defeated the insurrectionists in the Civil War in large part because the north was the better-educated region of the country--as all historians agree--and also because it was by far the more populous region. The sales figures of Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, of the Federalist papers, and of James Fenimore Cooper's novels show that there were plenty of literate Americans in early nineteenth century America, when school attendance was common but in all cases optional. The reading level of all those writings suggests that many Americans could read quite challenging material before reading was displaced by less intellectually stimulating forms of entertainment. In other words, there were plenty of Americans literate enough to read, and perhaps to correctly answer, the early versions of MIT's entrance exam. </p>
<p>Many of the persons who could have turned up to take MIT's entrance exam were perhaps taking entrance exams for other universities of that time that had technical courses. I'm not sure when the Big Ten universities started offering technical degrees, but certainly most of those were founded before the date of MIT's founding. It would be an interesting historical investigation to compare the entrance exams of those schools with those of MIT in the era, and to compare enrollment numbers in engineering courses across different schools over the last century and a half. Especially interesting for me would be to find out what factors contributed to MIT reaching its current standing as the second-to-none engineering school in the world. </p>
<p>But I'll let sakky have the last word on this subject, if he cares to have it in a thread he originated, while I respond to a thread hijack here with my next reply. ;) Have a happy New Year.</p>
<p>
[quote]
On the Harvard decision thread--at least, I think it was there--a number of rather annoying Phillips Exeter students with (honestly) unimpressive qualifications were lecturing everyone else on how the secret to admissions is "uniqueness".
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I would like to join sarahcampbellsoup's request for a link to the thread in question. Perhaps I will have more to say on this issue after checking the facts. I see the poster of that statement is posting elsewhere on CC today, and I hope the link will be provided (I tried CC searching and Googling myself to look for such a thread) so that we can be clear just what was said by whom.</p>
<p>I admit I don't have the facts about the US illiteracy rates in 1870's. If I had to guess, it would probably be about 1/4 1/3 of the population. That figure would include the vast majority of all African-Americans at the time, along with many poor rural whites and most Native Americans. It would also include a lot of women, for whom education was largely useless because in those days relatively few employers wanted to hire women for educated work, and women weren't even guaranteed the universal right to vote (i.e. in all states of the country) until 1920. </p>
<p>In any case, I think there is no dispute that literacy rates back then were far far higher than they are today, and that's the real point I was making. It must also mean that high school graduation was a far rarer event than it is today. </p>
<p>What I am getting at is that clearly the competition for admissions spots was a lot less 'intense' back then as it is today. Far fewer people even finished high school, and of those who did, relatively few were interested in going to college. Back in those days, higher education was mainly the preserve of the rich and privileged. The Ivy League schools were basically gentlemen's finishing clubs whose primary purpose was to teach its students proper social graces and maybe meet a debutante from one of the Seven Sisters to later marry. Education was simply not seen as the stepping stone to social mobility as it is today.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I would like to join sarahcampbellsoup's request for a link to the thread in question. Perhaps I will have more to say on this issue after checking the facts. I see the poster of that statement is posting elsewhere on CC today, and I hope the link will be provided (I tried CC searching and Googling myself to look for such a thread) so that we can be clear just what was said by whom.
[/quote]
Ah, thanks. I didn't notice the request when it was first posted, but tokenadult has pmed me and called this thread to my attention.</p>
<p>First, I've done some research to see exactly what the posts I mentioned were. I referenced the "Harvard decision thread" (pinned on the Harvard board), where there was indeed one post (page 10) by a Phillips Exeter student--DiamondT--who has provided some rather objectionable posts in the past. However, his post on that thread in particular was relatively reasonable, so my best guess is that I confused the Harvard thread with other places I'd seen him make statements. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure about the correct thread at the time, which is why I included a disclaimer: "at least, I think it was there."</p>
<p>Before I move on, I should also probably note that I referred to "students" in my post earlier on this thread. I do have a strong recollection that there were two Phillips Exeter students--somewhere on CC, at least--that were making such statements, but I can only find one now. My memory may be playing tricks on me, in which case I apologize for using the plural inappropriately.</p>
<p>Now that I've pointed out these apprarent mistakes in my post, I'll head to the other posts (by DiamondT) on which it was based. </p>
<p>
[quote]
fewfdsagdsag</p>
<p>are you delusional, you know absolutely nothing about college admissions, period.</p>
<p>Being an asian male in no way decreases your chances. I know several asians with 2000's who got into harvard, yale and princeton. You know what was different about them? They were unique. They were not the stereotypical asian pre-med nerd who has the same EC's as thousand other asian applicants: math, math, classical music, piano, violin, math club, a second math club, no athletics, no "unique" activiities.</p>
<p>These kids were unique. They were varsity captains. Some hated math and science but were a humanities powerhouse.</p>
<p>Don't blame anyone else cause your application looked the same as a billion others. Maybe you should step out under the control and will of your parents and become your own person. Colleges see that, and it will show.
[/quote]
<p>I thought this post was objectionable for several reasons. First of all, it rudely dismissed any possibility of discrimination--conscious or subconscious--against Asians, and did so in a profoundly illogical way. DiamondT assailed the other poster for knowing "nothing about college admissions," but himself used purely anecdotal evidence: a few Asian students with low SATs being admitted.</p>
<p>Secondly, it obsesses over a stereotype of Asian students that is hardly accurate. DiamondT does have a point: the college admission value of some activities, like classical piano and violin, has vanished for all but extraordinary talents, simply because so many applicants participate in them. But he goes too far, and his implication is that these students are merely robots obeying the will of their parents. This may be true for a very small segment of the population, but I've hardly met anyone who is really a "robot," or who doesn't possess a remarkable amount of depth and personal strength.</p>
<p>(I'll continue in a follow-up post)</p>
<p>In fact, he labels almost anyone a stereotypical Asian:</p>
<p>
[quote]
It seems to me that a likely reason that you got deffered because you probably resemble the "stereotypical" asian applicant with the same ec's as most asians: math and classical music.</p>
<p>You didnt differentiate yourself. Columbia probably received hundreds of apps that looked the same as yours.
[/quote]
<p>In fact, while the original poster on that thread wasn't a unique applicant, his activities were certainly not all stereotypically Asian. Some other posters objected, noting this.</p>
<p>I've seen statements from this poster that have bothered me for some time. For instance (this is from several months ago):</p>
<p>
[quote]
At Phillips Exeter, there is a minimum (look here minimum) of 100 graduating seniors who are going to ivy league-mit-stanford and top 3 lacs, and believe me not all of them got over a 1400 on their sats. Me personally know at least 10 who got under 1400 and you know what theyre going to the best schools. People on CC really dont get the picture sometimes, schools look at more your standardized test scores in evaluating how youll contribute to their school. Colleges dont like losers who study their arses off for the SAT while having no good EC's or involvement(ashernm) and they get rejected, period. And many of these people are, no offense, asians who think theyll get into top colleges solely on their SAT scores, and then when they dont get in they blame it on the URM's.. OMG OMG "ARE YOU AN ASIAN MALE WITH A 1600 WHO DIDNT GET INTO HARVARD" OMG OMG.
[/quote]
<p>There's some truth in this rant, of course, but lambasting score-obsessed applicants who study day and night for the SAT is a bit ironic for him:</p>
<p>
[quote]
You guys misread the diagram. Fortunately, Ive already takin 15 SAT's (including practice tests) so I dont fall for college board's stupid traps any more
[/quote]
<p>15?? I think I've taken about 3, including practice tests. Yet I'm probably the kind of person who DiamondT would stereotype as a score-centric applicant without passion.</p>
<p>I just thought that there was something incredibly arrogant about wandering around and telling students that they don't have real passion (while he supposedly does). It's also somewhat bizarre, since I normally don't envision truly passionate people bragging about their passions and extolling them as keys to college admission.</p>
<p>I'm afraid that my explanatory posts have degenerated into discussing the statements of one other person. There are some interesting issues here, and I'll invited DiamondT by PM to this thread in case he wants to respond.</p>
<p>People interested in literacy rates for various areas could check census records. Beginning in 1850, the census recorded whether each person could read or write. Full census records are made public 72 years after they are taken, so all census records through 1930 are currently available to the public. Finding your parents or grandparents' census record can be fun! </p>
<p>Census microfilms are available at many public libraries, at national archive branches, and through subscription on-line services. The entire 1880 census is available free at the LDS' familysearch.org site.</p>