Different students prefer different criteria in colleges. Some students may prefer SJSU and some students may prefer University of Toronto. If you want to work in Silicon Valley, I’d expect SJSU to a have a variety of advantages over University of Toronto due to location. This contributes to why Apple employs more SJSU alumni than any other college. In contrast, if you want to work in the Toronto area or Canada in general, I"d expect UToronto to have various advantages.
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Admission to UofT Engineering is no longer grades-only based and requires a supplemental application + video interview (because like the selective private universities in the US they get far more highly qualified applicants than they have available spots). Waterloo and most other of the highly selective admit universities for Engineering also do the same. The application process however is not quite as convoluted as what generally constitutes “holistic admissions” to top US privates. While there is no standardized test score requirement (at least for domestic applicants) these schools do take EC’s into consideration.
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Do you even know what I am saying? I guess not
Final time
They would have gotten in even if these criteria were not there and they are in even tho these criteria are there. But they did thimgs which they didnt even care about.
When i said how can someone do 10-12 ECs… i mean do 12 ECs and do justice to them? You cannot. You are checking off a box! My. Replies to you are over. And yes… teachers always do not know thie kids. My kids got stellar recommendations that is why they were able to get in. But many kids who were not smart also got in because of recommendations at the cost of some other teuely deserving kid.
You can cheat the system by showing youraelf to be who you are not. But you cannot cheat the syatem by getting good grades all the time if you are not smart in that subject
Mic drop Matter over. Read it a few times to really understand what I am saying please! Good bye! Sayonara!
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It’s been a while since I was at MIT, but that’s really not how it goes.
Students who gpt a solid grounding in algenra, trig and analytic geometry had little trouble with 18.01. However, students who got a light disting of this so they could take calculus in their senior year really struggled with 18.02.
Rankings made families and students believe that the only way they can achieve success is to attend a highly ranked school. Nevermind the fact that there are no objective measures of success, no objective measures at all, for engineering in the ranking, but I digress.
As a result, far too many kids are applying to far too few slots. The bulk of them do not get in, not because they aren’t impressive. It’s simply a numbers game. As a result, they complain.
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Every year we find these threads that in actuality are really only focusing on about 50 or so schools. I feel like many of these discussions seem to stem from those who applied to these schools with perfect scores and thought they were a shoo-in only to be rejected and frustrated that kids who worked through high school or got an SAT score 300 points lower were somehow less qualified. Stats are still the main focus for engineering programs, but once they’ve reached a certain threshold SOME schools want to focus on more than the stats. That’s their prerogative, just as many schools find it easier and cheaper to use straight stats. That doesn’t mean the schools outside those 50 schools are producing less qualified engineers, and that’s why corporations are hiring internationally. That’s simply not the case. Anecdotal, but my brother is desperate for young engineers for his project at Boeing. They aren’t having much success, why? My take: 1) Salary levels/benefits reality vs. demands of young engineers 2) location and relo, as well as many want to WFH. That doesn’t work for his type of project. DH’s corp is having the same issue. For the short-term, corporations will need to decide how they’re going to handle the hiring shortfalls: increase the package to meet demands of younger workers or possibly hire internationally. This isn’t the case for all companies; IME it’s often the case for companies that deal heavily in government contracts. There’s also an increased need for more engineers, but the issue isn’t a shortfall of the quality of US educated engineers.
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Indeed, that can attribute to the projects or companies outsourcing overseas as well while people arguing about the ranking and fairness.
Perhaps a better phrase would be “Salary levels/benefits at Boeing vs. other options for young engineers”
I have a good friend who is a Chief Engineer at Boeing. He took the job after “unretirement” to keep his mind busy. He had briefly “retired” after having made a silly amount of money in a startup and bought a house on a beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But if had to live on his salary alone, he would have difficulty buying even a small house anywhere near his work, even as a Chief Engineer. I suspect that young engineers are looking at their pay package relative to the local cost of living and struggling to see how it makes sense.
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I don’t agree the right kind of ECs have to be aligned with STEM. I’d say a student with 800s on her subject tests and 5s on her BC Calc exam and 5 on her AP Physics test and a 36 ACT but ALSO who is selected as president of her class each year, captain of her sports team, chosen among 100 to produce the school play, selected by her debate team to be captain is MORE appealing to me than a student with same grades/tests scores but who participated on the math team without being the top scorer or captain, who also was a “participant” in science Olympiad. The first student is obviously showing some amazing leadership skills and extraordinary like-ability that can make her an extremely effective team member and probably leader in my company, whereas student #2 is also clearly smart, but may be lacking some personal traits that may make it harder for her to contribute as much. Although honestly, they’re probably both pretty good!
the public schools in CA (UC’s and CSU’s) have dropped standardized testing (“test blind”) in college admissions, due to inequity ("race and socioeconomic status).
I wonder if Calc 101 at MIT teaches the nuts and bolts of differential calculus – all the dy/dx stuff – or if they just skip to teaching them the Power Rule.
(Probably the former, but man, when I learned the Power Rule I was a bit miffed at having had to waste pen upon pen writing out the longhand solutions to differentials and integral equations.)
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This is terrible, how come his parents are not worried about his mental and physical health…
so how do they determine the STEM-fit?
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Regarding Boeing, I suspect effects from COVID are a key factor. Boeing , like many travel related industries, suffered during the pandemic. They laid off huge numbers of employees and struggled financially – laying off in the neighborhood of 20% of the company’s employees in a single year. Now that the pandemic is slowing down and travel is returning, they need to do a lot of hiring – far more than in a typical year. They can’t simply rehire the previous employees because many have moved on to other companies or retired. There is a high demand for certain Boeing engineering positions and limited supply of persons to fill it. Several other aerospace companies are facing similar challenges. Many have increased salary/benefits. Perhaps Boeing has as well. It’s also possible that this specific position has different supply/demand effects than Boeing in general. Glassdoor suggests Boeing historically has typical salary/benefits for non-CS engineer new grads – not abnormally high or abnormally low.
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The short answer is that they don’t. Many/most STEM wannabes admitted to UC are not admitted by major. Kids interested in math, bio, chem*, physics and the like are generally admitted the College of Letters adn Science which do not admit by intended major. Engineering students however, are admitted by major, and "applicants should use their application to highlight their interest and capacity for success in STEM subjects and mathematics in particular. " (from UCLA Engineering)
*Note, Berkeley offers two chem degrees, one in the College of Letters and Science and one in Cal’s College of Chemistry (CoC). The latter application requires demonstration of interest in Chem, four years of math, prefer Calc, and prefer AP Chem. The CoC also offers a Chem-E degree.
Yep, overall they did layoff a lot. His program is newer, so they’re starting more from scratch. There are a lot of hiring nuances these days; many employees enjoyed the changes covid brought. His project is very hands-on, so it doesn’t lend itself to WFH; they’re also finding many don’t want to relo to St. Louis, or as is often the case with corporations, they only offer within their determined scale, which is often behind the current market value.
Oh, it’s real; calculus. Just faster than usual - but comparable to MIT’s normal pace.
Barbeaus’ monograph Polynomials introduces the derivative without calculus at all. It’s an interesting approach.
So rude.
Yes, I know what you’re saying:
So your kids did 10-12 ECs but didn’t do them justice and didn’t care about them. And for that you blame the system. Yet you disparage other students who do ECs to get into college and then drop them after arriving at college.
Which brings us to the point I have been making throughout our entire interchange - “top” schools - those we seem to be discussing here because they are the schools whose acceptance criteria include more than just “pure merits” still do require “good grades all the time.” If they also require additional things (e.g., ECs), that simply raises the bar - it doesn’t enable “cheating” since those who do all the other things and STILL get good grades are the ones being accepted.
Finally:
I, for one, am fine with the teachers assessing how smart and deserving the kids are and including their assessment in their recommendation - it worked for your kids (and mine, btw). I have a whole lot less confidence in unrelated parents, like you (or I) determining which kids are smart and “truly deserving”.
And, with that, I, too, am done. I’m sorry you are so dissatisfied with the entire process.
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I agree with this.
For a few superstar applicants, it may be obvious to the AOs, but in the majority of cases, most AOs would have difficult time distinguishing applicants’ academic potentials. That may be the reason why they claim many, if not most, of their applicants are qualified academically.
There need to be some automatic filters and/or application hurdles that applicants must cross.