4 ms·
were those offered only to undesired applicants or to everyone and somehow only the desired people knew how to solve?
by gcb0 11y ago
were those offered only to undesired applicants or to everyone and somehow only the desired people knew how to solve?
- replicant 11y agoOnly to the undesirables students. Quoting the paper, "The Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, the most prestigious mathematics school in Russia, was at that time actively trying to keep Jewish students (and other 'undesirables') from enrolling in the department. One of the methods they used for doing this was to give the unwanted students a different set of problems on their oral exam."
- alkonaut 11y agoAh. Then it makes sense. I thought first it was a set of carefully selected problems, created for the purpose of letting one group fail and another pass. Which would have been very interesting (i.e. are there problems which one group solves better than another, or problems that one group must refuse to solve for religious reasons etc). Giving a set of hard problems to an unwanted group and a separate set of problems (or no problems at all) to another is just simple discrimination. They could just as well have had a sign that told the unwanted group not to apply and it would have been no less discriminating.
- kelukelugames 11y agoWhich groups are the 'undesirables'?
- pja 11y agoThe Jewish students were regarded as the undesirables and given the 'coffin' problems in order to eliminate them - read the links up-thread.
- kelukelugames 11y agoYes, thank you. I am curious if there were other groups or it's only limited to Jewish students.
- golergka 11y agoOnly to undesirables. Entry exams at mechmath are composed of written and oral stages; these are the questions asked by examiners at oral stage of examination, one on one with potential student.