<p>collegealum, I am grateful for your information, it will make my son's day, he didn't want MIT, his school counselor typecast him as Asian tech grind and insisted he apply early, got deferred, then rejected, and in RD waitlisted by his no 1, Princeton. It was a mess last year.</p>
<p>The IITs have an exam similar to the one suggested by the poster but no multiple retakes, one off day will destroy you. But IIT grads are very very very one dimensional, I have several cousins in the family who went there, can't have a decent conversation about literature or philos or politics, also have many friends so this is not a select sample from my family!</p>
<p>Ashwin, the GPA with the SAT is the leveller, so it calibrates for grade inflation and grade deflation. Interviews are fine, but should not have too much weight, I am also suspicious about teacher recs, they are strong tools but what if you don't get along with the teacher, of course, one answer is you don't ask him/her for the letter.</p>
<p>collegealum, so post 126 by pebbles is incorrect, it is more difficult to get into Columbia than MIT. Right? In my mind that's what selectivity means or am I missing something? Thanks.</p>
<p>The problem with with IIT-JEE style exams is that it destroys the lives of innocent high school students who actually do enjoy science/mathematics. I know because I have several students in my dorm from India who have told me the prepatory schools in India for IIT-JEE consume much of their time and they hated every minute of it.</p>
<p>IIT-JEE works in India for now because India is not in a position to try to play "fair." Right now India is trying to just get enough people that meet a certain cutoff to improve it's rankings in the world for engineering and sciences.</p>
<p>Also I think you are rubbing research projects and such the wrong way. Research projects at the high school level are not designed to produce award winning results (although they sometimes do). They are there to show eager students the other side of the fence; sitting on a lab bench, working with real cells, analyzing real world data, trying to deduce what went wrong with a REAL experiment. There is a huge world of difference between textbook problems and real world problems. At least from what I understand, the point of MIT is to teach you how to solve real world problems. Spending some time working through textbook problems is important to build up the concepts and be able to do calculations. </p>
<p>But would you rather have a kid who just grinds through integrals from a textbook mindlessly, or a kid who decides to study other things, like what kinds of integrals can be solve numerically, what alternative methods there are for solving differential equations numerically, the theory of automatic symbolic integration, etc? The kid who just uses the textbook will get really good at solving problems fro m a textbook; he's got it easy, it's right there in front of him. The other kid has it real hard; he has to search the internets for all sorts of stuff he's never even heard about! He's got to make approximations, guesses, and move forward. And often times he won't be able to consult a teacher, and often there is no correct answer. Sure MIT can train both of them to become good with real world problems. But MIT also notes that the second kid had it in him to put down the textbook and start trying to attack real stuff before he was taught, which is the same attitude he'll need later on.</p>
<p>It's okay -- I can live with being moderately ignorant. That's what being a specialist is all about, right? :)</p>
<p>I don't actually mean, re: post #131, that all of the 6000 students are equal in academic potential. I just mean that it's difficult to reliably distinguish students at that level -- it's not that they're all equal, but I don't think the tools given by the application are good enough to tell where they should fall on the scale.</p>
<p>I suggested that such a test should be used by top tech schools in place of the SAT, but I'm still in favor of extracurriculars and stuff being part of the process. The only thing I'm against is putting some students at a disadvantage in favor of increasing "diversity". You can say you're discriminating against one group but giving another a boost, but in a zero sum game those two things are essentially the same.</p>
<p>Easy to say when you haven't "lost." You're at MIT aren't you? What if you'd been rejected, and had come to learn that the admissions people had narrowed it down to you and a minority candidate(very unlikely, I know). Both of you had had near equal backgrounds and opportunities, and while you're resume was slightly stronger the adcoms chose him over you. What then? Would you still be so willing to dismiss your rejection as a learning experience?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Would you still be so willing to dismiss your rejection as a learning experience?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Many do. They get over it. But all too many others put too much importance on getting into that one college, but it's hardly the college's fault for not having enough room for everyone. If not you, then the other child, who in your words is as qualified as you are (but with a slightly weaker resume? and also is a minority? can we say that this is a little contrived?) will be disappointed. I know you're trying but I'm finding it hard to conjure up too much sympathy for someone who got rejected from Harvard but is still going to Stanford (or Columbia) and has opportunities that much of the world has never dreamed of yet still chooses to hold a grudge about the one thing in his/her life that hasn't gone as he hoped. I can't help but feel like this indignation, this inner fire, could go toward something much more productive. There are a lot bigger problems out there.</p>
<p>And as a response to</p>
<p>
[quote]
collegealum, so post 126 by pebbles is incorrect, it is more difficult to get into Columbia than MIT. Right? In my mind that's what selectivity means or am I missing something? Thanks.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It may well be that Columbia is more selective than MIT, but one study by one group certainly doesn't prove it. I think you're missing a lot of the subtlety that comes with the term "more selective". They are certainly very difficult schools to get into, but they have very different admissions procedures, ED vs EA, and application processes, College vs. School of Engineering, etc etc, so a simple look at "average" this and "average" that certainly doesn't cut it.</p>
<p>Well I have been rejected from things I have wanted far more than MIT. It's good to get a slap in the face once in a while. Reminds us all that we're not infallible.</p>
<p>Differential, I was thinking of research as in some students doing research at famous labs/univs because of parental connexions. I see you are talking about research at school, that too would be a valid measure. I do not want any measure other than SAT/ GPA /curriculum rigor/ etc to have too much weight since students at this age are still developing and may change in significant ways. There will always be responses to the market, right now SATs, SAT 2s and ECs and essays, later it may become research etc whatever the colleges want. This cannot be avoided, I guess.</p>
<p>Molliebatmit, I agree, even if the 6000 are different as I believe they are, it is going to be difficult to tease out the differences.</p>
<p>gnrfan, well said, I am troubled by the diversity quota, and quota it seems to be.</p>
<p>Pebbles, one study does not mean anything, for example UPenn ahead of MIT in US News etc. These schools are clustered so close that differences are minute. But the Consensus group's findings is not a study in that they came up with measures, they looked at quality of student body in specific objective ways (of course, did not read the essays!) and can be taken as reliable and valid.</p>
<p>No I meant also doing work at famous labs because people have parental connections. There's nothing wrong with having parents in the right places, especially if you can really take advantage of that.</p>
<p>differential, I differ with you. Kids without these connections get disadvantaged, and schools without these connections get disadvantaged. There was an article in the NY Times 2 years ago about Intel awards etc. It was found that most kids who got these awards went to schools that were near a big research University and all of them were closely mentored by profs and postdocs in ways to make the "research" laughable. Two profs were quoted as saying "kids at this age do not have the capacity to make significant contributions, they just don't know about the equipment needed or the complexity of problem solving at this level, we just show them a few things, include them in what is essentially our research" etc.</p>
<p>In my humble opinion kids doing research is the sophisticated academic equivalent of kids saving the poor in Costa Rica.</p>
<p>Agreed ramaswami. The place/parents depends on where there are research availabilities. However, I don't know about "famous" labs. Define it.
I am iin the Silicon Valley and we have Stanford right next to us. Stanford won't accept us high schooolers for research . . .</p>
<p>Ashwinsundar, I was thinking of Brookhaven in Long Island which was featured in the NY Times article along with Rockefeller Univ in NY City.</p>
<p>The whole college admissions has become like an arms race, who has higher SATs, more APs, ECs, research publications, fund raising for the tsunami victims etc etc.</p>
<p>I have the depressing feeling that most of these smart kids may be so burnt out that they may never do much more in life. I am looking toward No Name U for the next generation of rocket scientists.</p>
<p>rami: "In my humble opinion kids doing research is the sophisticated academic equivalent of kids saving the poor in Costa Rica."</p>
<p>It really depends on what field it is in and how advanced the student is. In biology, you only need a minimal background to be able to devise your own project at the level of a graduate student. (By devising their own project, I don't mean from scratch. I mean that they take can take an existing and tweak it. The professor is determining the direction of the research.) Certainly advanced high school students can be as good as undergrads. In your first research experience, a big part of it is just learning techniques, but that is valuable in itself because you use the same techniques over and over. Also, it takes time to learn how to do research and it helps to get an early start if that's what you want to do.</p>
<p>That said, at least for MIT and Caltech, it is not really necessary to do research. I went to a high school where like 95% of the people did research because we had a mentorship project. I did not do research, because I felt my time was better spent learning what people have already done. Yet I got into both Caltech and MIT (this is before Marilee Jones) because I was a superior student to those that had research. I think adcomms understand that publishing a paper as a high school student doesn't require one to be at the same intellectual level as the professor you coauthor the paper with. </p>
<p>In areas other than biology it is harder to do research as a high school student and actually know what's going on because there is so much formal background you have to master. However, there are some shockingly advanced students out there. Those people tend to be winning the math olympics, though. </p>
<p>So I would say that research is a valuable thing to do and while it doesn't imply you are particularly creative, it is more of an accomplishment than the bulk of the "save the world" projects out there. For most people, it's sort of like a non-graded college lab class; you learn standard research techniques and how you run experiments in real science.</p>
<p>rami: "Two profs were quoted as saying "kids at this age do not have the capacity to make significant contributions, they just don't know about the equipment needed or the complexity of problem solving at this level, we just show them a few things, include them in what is essentially our research" etc."</p>
<p>Trust me. Undergrads doing research aren't even better. Even new grad students tend to learn how to do a project from a postdoc or older grad student.</p>
<h2>Pebbles, one study does not mean anything, for example UPenn ahead of MIT in US News etc. These schools are clustered so close that differences are minute. But the Consensus group's findings is not a study in that they came up with measures, they looked at quality of student body in specific objective ways (of course, did not read the essays!) and can be taken as reliable and valid.</h2>
<p>The report I posted combines all of the factors (SAT scores, % admitted, etc.) together. If you want to see all of the specific components related to student quality, I suggest consulting US News.</p>
Pebbles, one study does not mean anything, for example UPenn ahead of MIT in US News etc. These schools are clustered so close that differences are minute. But the Consensus group's findings is not a study in that they came up with measures, they looked at quality of student body in specific objective ways (of course, did not read the essays!) and can be taken as reliable and valid.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The Consus group (tricky, because "consensus" implies trusted and agreed upon) is like any other group. Coming up with measures and then evaluating schools using these metrics is exactly what a "study" is. Of course it is objective. Any "scientific" investigation needs to be objective to mean anything. USNews Rankings is also objective. But in order to turn raw statistics into a measure of something like "selectivity" one needs to first define selectivity- what are its figures of merit (haha engineering)?- what criteria should we include and how do they affect the "selectivity index" of this school, respective weights, etc etc. I mean I can objectively determine UF to be more selective than Cornell if I only look at IB statistics. I think it's a fine study, but your question was if this definitively proves that Columbia is more selective than MIT, and if you're missing something. I said no, because one way of looking at something and quantifying the unquantifiable is never definitive. You asked for critique of your conclusion, and I offered it, I'm not looking for an argument about which is more selective, I can't really care less.</p>