For Accomplished Students, Reaching a “Great” College Isn’t as Hard as It Seems

For Accomplished Students, Reaching a Good College Isn’t as Hard as It Seems – NYTimes.com.

Note that I changed “Good” to “Great” since there are fewer “Good Colleges” than you think.  Here is what I wrote.

This article motivated me to look at MIT’s admissions statistics.

Here is a back of the envelope calculation based on one of those statistics.

If a student makes above 750 on the Math SAT, and applies to 5 schools with the same standards as MIT, she has a 50% chance of getting into at least one of them. Add good grades, good recommendations, and more high test scores, and those odds increase considerably.

BUT here is the problem, and its a problem for all of us. (Now I speak as a retired professor who taught math at Washington U. in St. Louis)

If the student doesn’t get into MIT and goes to a school only a little further down in the rankings, the difference in education could be mighty.

For example, when I taught a critical math requirement for engineers at Wash. U., I was strongly admonished for teaching the material the way MIT does. Here is some of what I was told.

Teach it as a “cookbook” course so that we don’t have “problems”. (from the math Chair.)

Don’t “discourage” them – “retention” is important. (From a Dean of Student Academic Integrity, after being advised that students who cheated on homework did poorly on the exam.)

From a student who took the “cookbook” course: “..I cannot do..many [MIT} problems ..and I received an A..” (This was written with pride!)

(The documented story, “A Tale Out of School”, is on my blog inside-higher-ed . )

This “consumer trumps student” attitude is endemic in. It must be stopped.