<p>okay so everyone says "do what you like and not to pad your resume. colleges would rather you explore your interests"
what if i spent a lot of time trying to study for a big competition or trying to organize something complicated and failed. wouldn't it look like i just spent all my time doing nothing? then i'd either look lazy for not doing anything or stupid for spending all my time studying for school or whatnot.
aw this sux.</p>
<p>Hmm..can you be more specific? What was this competition or this “failed” project? The reason I ask is because College Admissions is a GAME. Or a really competative TV station where you want to get a job as a journalist. And so you have to sell it, give the hook, embellish, etc. There may be ways of twisting or engineering your failed attempts to make it a success because as impossible as it may seem, everything is perspective and there may be one tiny, mininscule, trivial iota of SOMETHING that can lead to great insight and AH-HA! moment thing. </p>
<p>Rambles but please, could you provide a more specific account?</p>
<p>well, I spent a lot of time studying math for the USAMO (like, 5 hours a day for a few months) but I still ended up not making it. I dont think I was even close 
the cutoff was a 204 and i was 30 points, or 3 aime questions away lol. Although I have my 6 AIME and 114 AMC12…like, huge improvement from my like 50 AMC10 score last year ^___^ </p>
<p>I hope it doesn’t look like I just spent all my time doing nothing!</p>
<p>That is a difficult position to be in. I need more time to think about it but the thing is, it really is a difficult thing to get into so Congrats on almost making it! Or being so close! That is an achievement in of itself. BUT unfortunately those stupid college monkeys wont see it soo…you have to make it into something else.</p>
<p>Maybe all those math skills go into tutoring young kids and maybe even preparing a class where you "open their eyes to the world of opportunities in the mathematics/science field through interactive simulations, math competitions( prepping kids or teaching them about that local math competition here or holding one of your own or teaching them about..ahem..USAMO…), field trips, speakers, etc.,etc. SO MANY THINGS you can do, i think. This could be like your summer project or something. </p>
<p>Just don’t let all that studying lie( i always forget which tense of that word to use…damnit) dormant. You’re obviously interested in math? You want to go into that field or science or something related to that?</p>
<p>Sounds to me like you’ve got a great subject for an essay that really lets the reader get to know the person, not the list of achievements. Why did you spend so much time working on it; how did the results affect you. Sounds like you’re (legitimately) pleased with your improvement. Express yourself! Let the person reading your essay appreciate the effort. Since I have no clue what USAMO and AIME are, I can’t be specific, but I’m betting you set goals, learned alot about organizing your time, and (given the time you put in on something that was by no means a sure thing) you clearly cared about what you were working on.<br>
Good luck
Alison</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Did you study math just only to try to get the prestige of placing in the USAMO? Then perhaps that is lamentable indeed. Or did you try to get a place in the competition also to have a shot at affirming your aptitude in math? Surely there was some utility to the stuff you studied? Surely then, there are other ways of demonstrating what you did learn … not necessarily through competition.</p>
<p>“what if i spent a lot of time trying to study for a big competition or trying to organize something complicated and failed.”</p>
<p>You don’t have to win or succeed in your plans to impress colleges. What you learned when studying for the competition can be impressive. What you learn could range from realizing that a particular subject area isn’t one of your strengths or interests or you could learn more effective study methods.</p>
<p>By trying to organize something, you learn a lot: about yourself, about others, and about how to organize things. Any of these aspects could be good fodder for an essay or to discuss in an interview. All of those things will help you become more effective in the future including in your extracurriculars in college, and in jobs and your career.</p>
<p>If you had tried to organize something and it went very smoothly, either you weren’t really doing the work or you set your goals too low. There always are glitches while organizing things.</p>
<p>Way too many posts on CC …wonder where you find the time for anything else…</p>
<p>…a word of caution…making USAMO does not mean as much as you are
making it out to be…</p>
<p>making the MOSP yes, USAMO no.</p>
<p>Well, even if you didn’t make the USAMO, you still have an AIME score of 6 which you can list, which is still pretty good considering the mean score on that test is usually around a 2 or a 3.</p>
<p>And regarding the post above mine, where in her post did she seem to be making a big deal about the USAMO? Without getting into a debate about the correlation between success in competition math and “real” math in college, qualifying for the USAMO still requires a considerable amount of effort and ability, much moreso in my humble opinion compared to a lot (not all) of those science research projects that still manage to get semifinalist status at Intel, Siemens, etc. and yet never seem to get any flak on these forums – it’s always the math competitions.</p>
<p>Narcissa, you post on the MIT forum pretty often. This seems like a reasonable subject for MIT’s typical “Talk about a time you failed” essay (it’s worded differently from year to year, but always a question), if you do it right.</p>
<p>And you improved your performance a bunch, it sounds like. That’s not “nothing”.</p>
<p>hey thanks for the comments and ur help.. And yes, I really do love math =D</p>
<p>Haha jessie you’re rite about the MIT essay. However, saying that failing a test is the end of the world…would that seem a bit…whiny?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you do it poorly, yes. If you do it well, no. It’s all in the presentation and attitude (and to some extent, the wording of the question - it’s not always written as “end of the world”).</p>
<p>However, kudos to you for considering whether it would be whiny. A lot of MIT applicants every year make a terrible impression because they clearly <em>don’t</em> consider that before they write that essay.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is the number of siemens semis are
way less than the number of students qualifying to take the USAMO.
The same is true about the Intel STS. </p>
<p>Advice I would have for the OP or any Junior in a similar situation
[ul]
[li]participate in HcSiiM and math focused competitions it would create the strong supporting flavor of a person with Math aptitude reaching out to enrichen themselves intellectually. </p>[/li]
<p>[li] If you accept the premise that * you are not going to fool the admissions[/li]officers * and padding si pointless then find out what makes you happy- math and art, math and
music, math and ?? and spend time blogging about it/creating small presentations and presenting at Science fairs etc. </p>
<p>[li] USABO and USAPO have more bang for the buck (Semis are down to the hundreds rather than he thousands as in USAMO) switch your prep time to these.</p>[/li]
<p>[li] Look up work done on anti-terrorism- an outstanding demonstration of [/li]existing math by a CC poster. Google any of the Numb3rs math stuff discussed by real mathematicians who point out the real math. You will get plenty of ideas.</p>
<p>[li] Highlighting your aptitude for communication will make you relatively more succesful as long as you frame your achievements in a formal way. Spend less time on CC and more time formalizing your public presentations[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>Arwen15, you should really check your facts about these competitions.</p>
<p>Each year, only 500 people qualify for the USAMO, and this is from ALL grades, with the qualifying procedure designed so that the number of upper and underclassmen qualifying are about the same. So each year, there are probably around 120/130 seniors who qualify for the USAMO. Now some people may qualify for the USAMO in earlier years, and not their senior year, so the count of kids in one grade who qualified for USAMO at some point will probably be around 200 or maybe 300 (I think this is a very generous estimate). Compare this to the 300/400 Siemens/Intel semifinalists each year who are all seniors.</p>
<p>Also, the AMC series is taken by far more students – over 100,000 kids each year, so about 30,000 per grade. Granted, the vast majority of students who take it don’t do any prep for it, but the AMC tests probably reach far more students who would have a serious interest in the material than the science research competitions do of reaching kids who are interested in research. And as a result, competition at the top is much stiffer since a greater number of the kids who have the aptitude/interest are actually in the competition. If I remember correctly, the Siemens and Intel competitions each had around 1200 entries this year, which tells me that the barriers for entry into these competitions (whether real or imagined, lack of a lab, a project, etc..) are still pretty high.</p>
<p>Despite all this, I still think the whole high school research experience is a great thing for kids to be exposed to, and the competitions certainly do a great job of generating excitement/publicity for it. So hopefully no one takes this post as a bashing of it.</p>
<p>You are correct about the USAMO being 500 as well, the thousand I referred
to was AIME not USAMO… My bad.</p>
<p>However the ~ 500 USAMO still >> 300 STS in any case.
Also the Intel STS allows group entries from non-seniors. So it is not just
seniors competing. (My turn to go “Whiteboy you should really check your
facts about these competitions” :p)</p>
<p>You are also correct about the numbers taking the exam. However this is
exactly the point. A Whole slew of metro-neighborhoods have students
cramming for AMC/AIME with the past 10 year exams. You cannot do that
kind of thing (cramming) in the Siemens or STS.</p>
<p>An USAMOer who demonstrates social interaction and ECs that
are anti-loner would be received better any day than one who
is sitting in a room redoing 10 years worth of exams for the
12th time…? For that matter a non-USAMOer would fare
equally well if not better provided they showed a penchant
for intellectual pursuit in a communication oriented framework? </p>
<p>I love my school topper pins and nick nacks I have received over the
years as much as any other person, so nothing against the AMC ;). The
original point was that “making it to the USAMO” is not the bright silver
lining in the sky that it is made out to be- given the non-socical nature
of the prep work.</p>
<p>Arwen, no, that’s not true. Intel STS does NOT allow group entries from non-seniors. In fact, it does not allow underclassmen at all. You are confusing that with Intel ISEF.</p>
<p>I think it’s the Siemens competition that allows group projects from underclassmen. But the group submissions form a small number of the 400 people who reach at least semifinalist status – they have the weird procedure of simultaneously naming 100 or so regional finalists and 300 semifinalists who know then that they have not advanced. In any event, 200 or so USAMO qualifiers in a given year is less than that number for both Siemens and Intel.</p>
<p>Also, for USAMO each grade has about 100 people while intel sts it is 300 from the same grade</p>