Hey guys, when I was looking through the 2019 EA and RD results thread, I noticed some trends between what an applicant put down for Major Awards and whether or not they were admitted.
First off, most of the admits have no major awards. The ones that do, however, have incredible awards, like USAMO perfect index, or IMO gold medal.
I also noticed that those with impressive (but not insanely impressive) awards, such as a USPhO medal, USACO medalist, etc… were mostly deferred/rejected. In other words, most people with major awards that weren’t international awards were rejected.
In conclusion, I found that most people who were admitted to MIT either had no major awards, or had incredible awards. What does this mean? Obviously this is just a correlation and these trends do not imply causation, but could this mean awards such as USPhO or USNCO are in a sense, anti-hooks? Of course essays, interviews, and recs have to be taken into consideration in admissions, but what do you guys think?
This correlation you speak of is probably very weak. The CCers who posted their admissions decisions are probably not very representative of the population of MIT applicants (I doubt many MOP or IMO participants would create CC accounts just to brag, “Hey I got in!”). Likewise, the IMO medalist that got rejected might just feel they have to rant about it on CC. Whatever it is, there are probably many other factors involved.
Additionally, I’d probably fall into the “major awards that weren’t international awards” and I know a few MIT accepted students that would fall into that category.
So no, I don’t think the olympiads are anti-hooks in a sense. Just like the last Redskins home game before the presidential election doesn’t/shouldn’t influence election results.
Yeah this is why, in my class on web research, I require my students to include a section on what their data are probably missing / misrepresenting.
The accepted students with notable IMO/IOI awards probably did get in largely because of those awards. Conversely the accepted students who did not list those awards probably got in due to some other amazing aspect of their application.