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> If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit As I mentioned, when I applied to MIT, MIT said that they didn't really weigh SAT scores all tha

> If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit As I mentioned, when I applied to MIT, MIT said that they didn't really weigh SAT scores all that heavily. MIT has graduate departments that don't even require GRE scores at all. (Or at least that was the case at times in the past if it isn't now.) I once read an interview with the head of Harvard admissions where he said that it's a misconception that Harvard's ideal student is someone who is well-rounded. He said that Harvard would much prefer to admit someone who has done something truly remarkable, even if they are lacking in other respects. I don't know about this MIT sailing guy. I attended MIT and I never met anyone who had been admitted due to athletics, but Googling reveals that MIT claims they consider athletics along with everything else. For all that's been said here, this sailing guy might have been truly remarkable at sailing, and an excellent student in other respects. MIT may have wanted a good student to help lead their sailing team, and what is wrong with that? If this guy wasn't a good student, there's no way that he'd end up graduating. It's not as if you can major in basket weaving at MIT.

akhilcacharya 7y ago
Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. I'm not really impressed by the elite staying elite at the expense of everyone else. Like I said somewhere else, I also think a lot of people would graduate from MIT if they were admitted. A 75th percentile student at my undergrad (someone the admissions committee would definitely consider consider "inherently inferior") would probably get a 3.5/5 at MIT and graduate. That's my bet at least.
- nessus42 7y ago
  > Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. You're talking about a single student admitted at a school that has an active sailing program and then making a huge extrapolation from it about MIT catering to the "elite at the expense of everyone else". Also, the sailing program at MIT is tiny little sailboats. The kind that any middle-class person can rent for reasonable rates if they live near a big enough body of water. E.g., the Charles River. We're not talking about yachts for the rich here. MIT doesn't exist to maximize fairness. It exists to perpetuate itself and to provide a beneficial experience to its students. (Which includes having a diverse student body.) Since it has a sailing program, having a good sailing program is good for MIT's students. I don't know what school you went to, but MIT is actually quite challenging, and, unlike Harvard, has resisted grade inflation. MIT does do a lot to help students graduate, however. E.g., you can easily change majors if the one you originally chose is not suited to you. And you can come back 20 years later and finish, should you not graduate on time. But I'll give you one example of how MIT compares to the typical school: I had a visiting Psycholinguistics professor from some big university in Arizona. (I don't remember which one.) It was the easiest class at MIT I ever took. I mean, really, really easy. The professor was impressed by us MIT students, however, because, according to her, she could make the class much more difficult than she would usually teach it, and we could still keep up. So, at least from this one data point, it seems that psychology and linguistics majors at a typical college would not be able to handle MIT.
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    > MIT doesn't exist to maximize fairness. It exists to perpetuate itself and to provide a beneficial experience to its students. ... Since it has a sailing program, having a good sailing program is good for MIT's students. Yeah, I'm aware that it doesn't. Maybe it shouldn't exist then? I don't think we should be putting institutions that aren't in the national interest on a pedestal like this. Let them lose non-for-profit status and have their massive endowments get taxed. > I don't know what school you went to, but MIT is actually quite challenging, My undergrad is also challenging to some people, most colleges are. I don't really know how you can really measure challenging fairly across institutions with just anecdotes. Unless you're arguing that folks that get into MIT are just inherently superior (which I'm sure you aren't, because that wouldn't be terribly politically correct and would be downright insulting to 99.9% of folks that didn't get into an elite undergrad like myself) I don't really understand your point.
    - nessus42 7y ago
      > Yeah, I'm aware that it doesn't. Maybe it shouldn't exist then? I don't think we should be putting institutions that aren't in the national interest on a pedestal like this. I can't even begin to express how nutty this idea is. MIT's existence is certainly in the national interest. MIT is the world's best university for training engineers and the world needs good engineers. The more, the better. The better they are, the better. MIT is also excellent in other fields as well. I.e., stuff that the world needs. > Let them lose non-for-profit status and have their massive endowments get taxed. More insanity! Look, I work at a famous research institute that is affiliated with MIT and Harvard. Our goal is to do fundamental research aimed at treating and curing cancer and other genetically-based diseases. Many people want to work here because it is so prestigious. And it's a non-profit because it makes no money. But getting a job here isn't egalitarian or "fair". The people who are hired are hired because the people hiring them believe that they are the best candidate for doing the job. Modulo affirmative action considerations, etc. So now you'd want to take away our tax-free status? The consequence of doing this is that some terrible diseases that might otherwise be cured might not be. And the same thing is true if you were to take away MIT's and Harvard's tax-free status, because the research institute where I work has close research ties to both MIT and Harvard. You seem to have lost sight of the purpose of research universities. They do research! Valuable research. And students get to come and be with the researchers and learn from them. At MIT, every undergraduate student can participate in research. Often with the leading expert in the field. Regarding sailing being for the rich, it costs $90 a day to rent a four-person sailboat on the Charles River. Anyone in Boston can do this who knows how to swim and sail. Divided by 4, that's $22.50 per person for a day of sailing. Is this really a sport only for the rich? Let's get rid of the tennis courts and the swimming pool and the bowling alley while we're at it! > Unless you're arguing that folks that get into MIT are just inherently superior Inherently superior? No, of course not. But MIT's difficulty level is "calibrated" to those in the top 1% of scholastic aptitude. If someone doesn't have an aptitude somewhere in this ballpark, MIT is probably not going to be a rewarding experience for them. In the US, the last I checked, 50% of high school graduates went on to college. MIT's difficulty level is clearly calibrated to only a few percent of these college students. Also, clearly, if we crunched the numbers, we'd quickly determine that there are lot more students in the country who are at an appropriate aptitude level for MIT than MIT can actually admit. Well, such is life. There are plenty of other great schools. MIT can't take everyone who is qualified to attend MIT. No college can. Life isn't always fair, nor can it be. Just like not everyone can work at my research institute that might want to. On the other hand, there are plenty of other high-quality choices for education. You don't have to go to MIT to get a high-quality engineering education. And there are plenty of other opportunities in the world for those who wish to do genomics-based disease research.
nessus42 7y ago
> If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit I just looked up what a 2100 equates to in terms of current scores. It equates to 1470, which is not shockingly low for MIT. Admittedly, it's not near the top of MIT scores, but it's well within the accepted range. MIT looks at all sorts for things when it admits students. You don't know what other qualifications this student had. He could have had straight A's, max scores on all his Advanced Placement exams, stellar recommendations from teachers, award-winning science fair presentations, etc.

akhilcacharya 7y ago

Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. I'm not really impressed by the elite staying elite at the expense of everyone else. Like I said somewhere else, I also think a lot of people would graduate from MIT if they were admitted. A 75th percentile student at my undergrad (someone the admissions committee would definitely consider consider "inherently inferior") would probably get a 3.5/5 at MIT and graduate. That's my bet at least.

nessus42 7y ago
> Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. You're talking about a single student admitted at a school that has an active sailing program and then making a huge extrapolation from it about MIT catering to the "elite at the expense of everyone else". Also, the sailing program at MIT is tiny little sailboats. The kind that any middle-class person can rent for reasonable rates if they live near a big enough body of water. E.g., the Charles River. We're not talking about yachts for the rich here. MIT doesn't exist to maximize fairness. It exists to perpetuate itself and to provide a beneficial experience to its students. (Which includes having a diverse student body.) Since it has a sailing program, having a good sailing program is good for MIT's students. I don't know what school you went to, but MIT is actually quite challenging, and, unlike Harvard, has resisted grade inflation. MIT does do a lot to help students graduate, however. E.g., you can easily change majors if the one you originally chose is not suited to you. And you can come back 20 years later and finish, should you not graduate on time. But I'll give you one example of how MIT compares to the typical school: I had a visiting Psycholinguistics professor from some big university in Arizona. (I don't remember which one.) It was the easiest class at MIT I ever took. I mean, really, really easy. The professor was impressed by us MIT students, however, because, according to her, she could make the class much more difficult than she would usually teach it, and we could still keep up. So, at least from this one data point, it seems that psychology and linguistics majors at a typical college would not be able to handle MIT.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  > MIT doesn't exist to maximize fairness. It exists to perpetuate itself and to provide a beneficial experience to its students. ... Since it has a sailing program, having a good sailing program is good for MIT's students. Yeah, I'm aware that it doesn't. Maybe it shouldn't exist then? I don't think we should be putting institutions that aren't in the national interest on a pedestal like this. Let them lose non-for-profit status and have their massive endowments get taxed. > I don't know what school you went to, but MIT is actually quite challenging, My undergrad is also challenging to some people, most colleges are. I don't really know how you can really measure challenging fairly across institutions with just anecdotes. Unless you're arguing that folks that get into MIT are just inherently superior (which I'm sure you aren't, because that wouldn't be terribly politically correct and would be downright insulting to 99.9% of folks that didn't get into an elite undergrad like myself) I don't really understand your point.
  - nessus42 7y ago
    > Yeah, I'm aware that it doesn't. Maybe it shouldn't exist then? I don't think we should be putting institutions that aren't in the national interest on a pedestal like this. I can't even begin to express how nutty this idea is. MIT's existence is certainly in the national interest. MIT is the world's best university for training engineers and the world needs good engineers. The more, the better. The better they are, the better. MIT is also excellent in other fields as well. I.e., stuff that the world needs. > Let them lose non-for-profit status and have their massive endowments get taxed. More insanity! Look, I work at a famous research institute that is affiliated with MIT and Harvard. Our goal is to do fundamental research aimed at treating and curing cancer and other genetically-based diseases. Many people want to work here because it is so prestigious. And it's a non-profit because it makes no money. But getting a job here isn't egalitarian or "fair". The people who are hired are hired because the people hiring them believe that they are the best candidate for doing the job. Modulo affirmative action considerations, etc. So now you'd want to take away our tax-free status? The consequence of doing this is that some terrible diseases that might otherwise be cured might not be. And the same thing is true if you were to take away MIT's and Harvard's tax-free status, because the research institute where I work has close research ties to both MIT and Harvard. You seem to have lost sight of the purpose of research universities. They do research! Valuable research. And students get to come and be with the researchers and learn from them. At MIT, every undergraduate student can participate in research. Often with the leading expert in the field. Regarding sailing being for the rich, it costs $90 a day to rent a four-person sailboat on the Charles River. Anyone in Boston can do this who knows how to swim and sail. Divided by 4, that's $22.50 per person for a day of sailing. Is this really a sport only for the rich? Let's get rid of the tennis courts and the swimming pool and the bowling alley while we're at it! > Unless you're arguing that folks that get into MIT are just inherently superior Inherently superior? No, of course not. But MIT's difficulty level is "calibrated" to those in the top 1% of scholastic aptitude. If someone doesn't have an aptitude somewhere in this ballpark, MIT is probably not going to be a rewarding experience for them. In the US, the last I checked, 50% of high school graduates went on to college. MIT's difficulty level is clearly calibrated to only a few percent of these college students. Also, clearly, if we crunched the numbers, we'd quickly determine that there are lot more students in the country who are at an appropriate aptitude level for MIT than MIT can actually admit. Well, such is life. There are plenty of other great schools. MIT can't take everyone who is qualified to attend MIT. No college can. Life isn't always fair, nor can it be. Just like not everyone can work at my research institute that might want to. On the other hand, there are plenty of other high-quality choices for education. You don't have to go to MIT to get a high-quality engineering education. And there are plenty of other opportunities in the world for those who wish to do genomics-based disease research.

nessus42 7y ago

> If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit I just looked up what a 2100 equates to in terms of current scores. It equates to 1470, which is not shockingly low for MIT. Admittedly, it's not near the top of MIT scores, but it's well within the accepted range. MIT looks at all sorts for things when it admits students. You don't know what other qualifications this student had. He could have had straight A's, max scores on all his Advanced Placement exams, stellar recommendations from teachers, award-winning science fair presentations, etc.