<p>Lets say this, what if a student(let’s say valedictorian) came from a mediocre/ not-top high school, where he wan’t exposed to the science competitions and international awards, but still did some inspiring and outstanding things? Shouldn’t he be judged differently and have an advantage than the valedictorian of Stuyvesant High School, who was fully exposed to competitions, and had the oppurtunity and education to get a 2400 on the SAT?
P.S. How would MIT know how good your high school is?</p>
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Experience (they know what Stuyvesant is), guidance counselor report, etc.</p>
<p>@Stix - </p>
<p>By “point” I assume you mean the IQ tests. IQ tests are equally meaningless in the same way. We probably know something about your general intelligence if you score a 70, and probably something if you score a 200, but in between it doesn’t really mean anything. Critiques of the IQ test abound. Hell, its creator didn’t believe it measured intelligence - Binet designed the IQ test to show gaps caused by insufficient education that could be rectified by further study (i.e. not innate, “objective” intelligence - quite the contrary!) Stephen J Gould has written several critiques of it. The American Psychological Association has noted that the IQ test, like all standardized tests, is a cultural artifact, i.e. has been crafted by certain cultural presumption and ordered ways of thinking, and thus is not equal for all people who take it. </p>
<p>So if you were going to ignore the ACT/SAT example and rely on IQ tests it really, really doesn’t help your argument.</p>
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<p>But background IS important when you try to figure out what different accomplishments mean. A 4.0 by someone with strong family support means less than a 4.0 from someone who didn’t have that support. But that’s just GPA, there a whole bunch of other factors that go into making decisions, so it’s not as if someone who does have an advantaged background is disadvantaged in the admissions process.</p>
<p>@lola - </p>
<p>We care about applications in context. So if your high school didn’t offer much, but you did what you could, and you showed some initiative in your school context, then you will shine. Now, the valedictorian/ISEF winner from Stuy will still be a strong applicant, but you may be stronger than someone in the, oh, middle third of the class who just sort of took an AIME for the heck of it and did a year of the math team but didn’t really show initiative. </p>
<p>As for high schools - it never hurts to provide some school context yourself (hence the 12b) but between your guidance counselor letters, school report, and our own knowledge we usually have a pretty good sense of what the school is like!</p>
<p>seriously macmate?</p>
<p>my last post included “I really don’t want to get into iq”</p>
<p>and there you go off on a tangent I really didn’t want to go on. I thought it would be the easiest way to suggest that people with higher SAT scores are smarter, perhaps I should have said that. well, then you’d probably jump in saying that being “smarter” doesn’t actually mean anything.</p>
<p>"We probably know something about your general intelligence if you score a 70, and probably something if you score a 200, but in between it doesn’t really mean anything. "</p>
<p>absolutely, absolutely 100% false. How many idiots with 180 iqs do you know? How come nobel winners and famous scientists almost exclusively have high iqs? Why is the average iq at a school like MIT much greater than 100 if it “doesn’t really mean anything?”</p>
<p>You’ve taken some critiques of iq way too far. Sure, it might not mean that much in the end, and what it’s actually testing is debatable, but the difference between 180 and 80 so SO ABSURDLY profound that that it’s downright nonsense to say that it doesn’t show anything about intelligence.</p>
<p>This has really gotten away from the point of the thread, and we should stop. This stuff isn’t worth debating in the long run (talking about sat… iq…). I’m done :)</p>
<p>sorry for the somewhat irrelevant debates</p>
<p>Agreed to disagree. But I do stand by my initial point. Entirely too many people in this thread are obsessed with “objective” characteristics that are not actually “objective” (and, past a certain point, not very important) at all. As a white, affluent male with very high standardized test scores who was not accepted to many competitive schools, I can understand the frustration associated with competitive college applications. However, taking out that frustration (and I don’t mean you, stix, so much as the tone of the first few pages of this thread in general) on URMs or the socioeconomically disadvantaged is really a) shortsighted, b) unfair, c) missing the point. And I really felt compelled to make that argument crystal clear.</p>
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<h1>1 This is hard to determine. If family supportive becomes a negative, there will be a whole army of college admissions consultants that will try to figure out how applicants can make it appear they have none. Unless the applicant has to work and/or the parents didn’t go to college, I don’t think you can give that big a boost. And I think it is fundamentally wrong to penalize people for their parent’s success. I think we overvalue that influence: when the kid of a professional athlete is recruited at USC, we don’t think they are that good because their parents taught them to play. We attribute it to the genes. There is a big double-standard here.</h1>
<h1>2 People with family support tend to be the most successful in the long run, even after the family stops helping them. This is because their parents invested in their career and instilled certain intellectual values. I think it’s a mistake to penalize people for it.</h1>
<p>Again, if there is really an extreme situation where the applicant has obvious desire to learn and is fighting their parents. (For example, my mother was told that she shouldn’t go to college but did anyway.) And in these cases, I think we should look for some examples of star potential rather than just generally lowering the bar (e.g., maybe allow sky-high test scores or aptitude, or some achievement that came completely out of the blue, or a vast improvemen from sophomore to junior year when they became more committed to academic goals). But when we get to the point of saying that we should give points to the applicant because they don’t realize they should value learning, I think we’ve gone too far. </p>
<h1>3 “Family support” can sometimes be a crutch. Huge expectations can be paralyzing, sometimes. You can go from periods of extreme motivation to feeling like you don’t want to do anything. The case of tennis prodigy Jennifer Capriati is case-in-point.</h1>
<h1>4 Parental background and student performance can be misleading. I’d bet that the kid of a Nobel laureate probably wasn’t tutored by that parent at all. I read somewhere the best situation is if the parents are slightly unsuccessful in their career. Also, I read a book ranking the most influential people of all time. Like our president, almost all of them didn’t have a father figure in their life. I have my own theories about why this is, but I think “family support” can sometimes mean that there is a template of what is acceptable performance. When that template is absent, one starts to use their imagination of what is possible rather than just shooting for what your dad did. Or you completely flame out and end up on the street. I think saying that the lack of a father figure is a detriment is short-sighted; it may mean that the extremes are more likely in terms of career success.</h1>
<p>I think social engineering is most often a mistake, particularly because it can have absurd consequences. I think the question we should ask is: if our life depended on choosing the candidate between two people who would have a higher GPA/academic performance or would contribute more to science/technology, who would we pick?</p>
<p>Another point: The true potential of people with socioeconomic disadvantage may be a question mark. However, I still think that this fact does not justify taking people with good but not stellar records over academic superstars. If we can say for sure that a candidate is one of the top 1500 candidates, I think we should take them. Whether or not someone else with more mediocre credentials might have superstar potential is irrelevant. If you’ve got a guy who made MOSP plus made it to national level on several other olympiads (plus the usual qualifications), you KNOW that this guy is one of the top 1500. This is not a made up example; someone got rejected last year with those credentials. Also, whether or not MOSP credential mean that he is in the top 5% of MIT graduates or whether he/she wins the Nobel prize is also irrelevant. The only question to ask is: is this guy going to be one of the top 1500 in terms of GPA and/or career achievements. And it’s hard to argue otherwise.</p>
<p>After you take these superstars, then go ahead and take a chance on some borderline people.</p>
<p>MIT Chris, thank you!
However, how can you compare students from different environments?
It could be that the vale. of the mediocre school could be much smarter and have more potential than the vale. from Stuyvesant. You wouldn’t know becasue they did not have the same oppurtunities or “training”(with respect to competitions and SAT’s) than the kid from Stuyvesant. I have never even heard of the competitions these kids from top schools obliterate, however, isin’t there a possiblity that I would have obliterated those competitions if I had gone to Stuyvesant, as well?</p>
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<p>Well, if there is some disqualifying characteristic, then I guess I agree. But in my experience this almost never occurs with the super-qualified people, except for having someone be on the shy side. Strangely, the most arrogant people don’t tend to be the highest-achieving ones. </p>
<p>And while I tentatively agree, I don’t think we should grade sociability to the same degree as we do academics.</p>
<p>Only on college-confidential.</p>
<p>Just wondering, do all the applicants applying to MIT have the same stats and awards as those on college confidential?
I was told that CC represents the top of the applicant pool.</p>
<p>College confidential doesn’t necessarily represent the top applicant pool, but the admissions posts here indicate a much higher acceptance rate for those who post their acceptance/deferral.</p>
<p>But that’s confounded by the tendency to over report acceptances. There aren’t many people who would bother to day they were rejected.</p>
<p>The MIT admissions blogs seem to indicate that College Confidential is populated by crazed, neurotic folks who spread misinformation and chaos. This is mostly true for the other forums. The MIT forum is the best I’ve seen, though this thread shows that it isn’t without strange opinions.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say College Confidential represents the top of the applicant pool. If you want to look at a cross-section of the applicant pool, there are a few blogs on the admissions portal that show admitted students and their background.</p>
<p>^^what “strange opinions” do you disagree with?</p>
<p>The wrong ones.</p>
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<p>Well, I’m going to assume that slam was directed at me.</p>
<p>The bottom line is I don’t think something like “family support” is measurable unless someone is at a serious financial hardship and has to work. And for the record, I don’t know why an MIT-caliber candidate needs help to get a 4.0 in high school. High school should be a breeze. And even if it was, there seems like there is something fundamentally wrong with a guy getting in because there parent was in jail (a self-proclaimed hook on CC!) over another guy whose poor slob parents were working professionals. </p>
<p>And every time a school tries to measure something that’s unmeasurable, you end up getting strange results. Every kid is doing hundreds of community service hours because colleges value altruism. But are we really measuring it? I knew one ambitious guy that actually took over someone else’s community service project so they could put it on their resume’ that they were organized it. Sort of like a hostile takeover. When you start valuing things other than academic performance, you start letting in pushy self-promoters. And I don’t think MIT needs that. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I’m always happy to offer a few “strange ideas” lest people suffocate in all the cc cliche’s a “match”, “passion,” and the like.</p>
<p>Remember this word, “identity”
Test scores cannot really identity who you are. One thing I like MIT’ essays is that they are short and really emphasize on this.</p>
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And, I believe, a commensurate over-reporting of high-stats rejections in particular. </p>
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Perhaps, but how many true academic superstars are rejected from MIT each year? The number is nonzero, but it’s not large.</p>