If MIT–or any other school–ever links this thread to AU, he’s cooked.
At least, that would have been my judgment if he were applying to my med school when I was on the admissions committee.
There’s a nuttiness factor going on here that is beyond simple naivete.
This.
Elite colleges are looking to train the next generation of leaders-- people who have a unique and insightful vision of how the world should be, and the skills and dedication to get it there.
This is utterly incompatible with the mindset of someone who keeps looking to the next authority figure to ask, “How high should I jump? HOW HIGH SHOULD I JUMP? YOU HAVE TO TELL ME HOW HIGH I SHOULD JUMP BECAUSE OTHERWISE MY LIFE IS OVER!!!”
Here you go.
Don’t think so. We just hired two MIT undergrads, both of whom are doing well.
I can’t say how employable I’d have been when I graduated. All I know is that I did get a job offer, but wanted to go to grad school, and having gone to MIT helped me get in. Now 40 years later almost no technical facts I learned are relevant, but the process of how to learn has been critically helpful. Undergrads today have a lot more exposure to research than I did, which is practical and helpful in a lot of places. And the resumes I see show kids with awesome internships.
I will have to humbly disagree with this. Everybody is obsessed with leadership training but in reality is that there will be a lot more follower jobs than leader jobs. There’s an overemphasis of leadership training, developing leadership skills, and that unique snowflake BS. Save the leadership training for after college. There’s no sense in pumping up teenagers and tapping them as “leaders”.
I will agree that all workers regardless of position would benefit from perspective and at least questioning authority (but not wholesale aversion to it).
However, none of this applies to the OP.
I sort of agree with you, but while there are way more “follower” than “leader” positions, elite colleges are definitely expecting to be training a disproportionate share of the leader positions. They’re certainly going to want students who are proactive and willing to push their own boundaries, and in that sense, I agree with F. Pu.
From what I’ve read, Anonymous User currently fits F. Pu’s description and I agree with her that it’s going to be a turn-off for college admissions personnel. This isn’t exactly news, as this opinion has been stated roughly one gillion times previously in this thread.
AU doesn’t need a “unique snowflake” pep talk, but he does need to find his own identity and reason to be, rather than just trying to go through whatever hollow motions he thinks will get him into MIT. Luckily, he’s only fourteen and he’s got plenty of time to do that. Fuck if I knew who I was when I was fourteen.
Are you sure these are the kind of people a Serious Young Man such as yourself should assocciate with?
MIT Gangnam Style
I turn 15 today Jan. 3 2013 at 7:30 PM DEL.
Well, Happy Birthday to you!
Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean being the CEO of the company. It means being the sort of person who looks for solutions to problems and goes out of their way to help others vs waiting to simply be told what to do. A person can demonstrate leadership at all levels of an organization.
Elite schools tend to look at the teenagers who are already demonstrating leadership - valedictorians, captains of athletic teams and clubs, students who demonstrate a particular interest or passion. There is a difference between passionately pursuing your goals and dilligently executing on what you have been told to do.
There is hardly a shortage of drones looking to sit around cubicles collecting a paycheck and you don’t need a degree from MIT to do it.
That’s just something people who went to State schools say.
SO, did you get accepted at MIT yet?
I’m only a freshman and I’m not applying until senior year. By the way, I was on a vacation in India for weeks, and was really busy after that, so I have god side-tracked and haven’t been really thinking about this whole “MIT” thing.
I h t f p
Make sure to put that on your application; pretty damn impressive.
I was typing on a smartphone. Usually when I make mistakes like that, that is probably the reason. Even now, I am typing on my iPad.
I say, I say, that was a joke son.
I just read through this thread and it seems like the OP has calmed down a little. I’d like to comment because I can see a bit of my childhood self in the OP. I was convinced by the time I was 10 that I needed to excel so that I would be tracked into honors classes, so that I would get into a good college and then a good medical school and then a good residency. My fourth grade teacher actually told me that if I didn’t stop worrying so much I’d have an ulcer by the time I was 12. (Although we now know of course that ulcers are caused by bacteria and not by stress).
In any case, I was one of those students who had good grades, lots of activities etc but nothing interesting that I really excelled in. It took a while to accept the following truth:
Elite college and graduate schools have a minimum standard for grades, SATs, etc to ensure that students are capable of doing the work. Once you exceed this standard you are in their pool of “eligible” students. The final decisions are made in large part in order to balance the class. If you have done something truly exceptional (like win an Olympic medal) then it is likely that you will be seen as unique and may have a greater chance of being accepted. For the majority of the rest it can be random. They try to balance for age, gender, ethnicity, outside interests etc. The majority of the class will not have something truly exceptional on their records; they will be students who are picked from the “qualified pool”. If you play the violin but they get 100 violinists that year and only one tuba player-they may be more likely to accept the tuba player.
The OP appears to have a good handle on what gets a person into the “qualified pool”. Beyond that, there’s nothing concrete that can be done. You might be a person who wins a pretigious prize but if 5 other prize winners apply the same year they might only take 2. This is a hard lesson to learn-that you can be good enough, but still be rejected. I speak from experience as the Queen of the waiting lists for medical school. I did everything right and got through all the applications, ane all of the interviews and was kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. When I finally got in I realized that I was just as qualified as any of the other students. The only distinguishing factor I could find was that my fellow students were the most charismatic group of people I had ever met. Talk about selecting for intangibles!
I have two recommendations for the OP. First-you mentioned that you have some issues with OCD (handwashing for instance). This may be affecting how you are handling your concerns about college. I would suggest you get help before the symptoms worsen. OCD can make you more competitive and high-achieving but it can also ruin your life. It is treatable.
Second, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you will easily be in the “qualified pool” for any of the elite schools. Beyond that, you realy don’t have that much control. Spend your high school years figuring out what you enjoy doing and what you can be happy doing every day for the rest of your life. Ideally, spend your first couple of college years doing that also. Find your passion and then figure out how to make money at it (and if you truly find what you love to do you may find that the money is no longer as important). Get a well-rounded education-this is the best time to do so. Play the violin if you love playing and stop caring about what others think. Realize that you have all the time in the world to decide what you want to do. Now is the time to try different activities and figure out what you like doing. Don’t lock yourself into a path too soon. Don’t waste your high school years stressing about the future. Look at the list of mathematics award winners noted above and see that many of them did not go to traditional “tech” schools.
You are obviously smart and you obviously have musical talent. You simply have to realize that if you are going to succeed in life the things you are obsesssing about (like which college to attend) really really don’t matter much. The cream will always rise to the top. The kind of people who are impressed by a “name” school are not the people you want to impress.
You say that as if he were old enough to get that joke
Thanks a lot! I understand and I’m not too OCD about college anymore…