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MIT Axes the 500-Word Application Essay
netbuzz writes "No longer will those applying to MIT have to write the storied 'long' essay — long as in 500 words. 'We wanted to remove that larger-than-life quality to that one essay and take away a bit of the high-stakes nature of that one piece,' says the dean of admissions. Not everyone agrees with the bow to brevity, including a current MIT student who penned a scathing critique in The Tech and offers up her own essay as an example of what the form can provide to both MIT and the applicant." [125 words, including these.]
My father told me that as a graduating high-school student (Canadian) back in the 50's, a voluntary test was provided to all students to test your science and mathematics prowess. The intention was to draw attention to your knowledge in order to get a scholarship or admittance into a Canadian or US ivy-league school.
Questions on the test included "How would you land on Earth's Moon?" The answer they were looking for was totally open since it was intended to test your real knowledge of math and science.
One could probably just answer .... build a rocket, once it leaves Earth, position it to fly to the moon and wait a few days for it to get there. But, you won't attract much attention.
My dad recalled that one year - and he knew the student quite well - had probably gone as far as to detail the amount of fuel (and type of) to be used, some basic designs of the shuttle, accounting for the Van Allen Radiation belts, etc etc - all with the calculus equations/work to go with. I believe the kids' dad was an engineer but it went above and beyond what other HS students would know and showed the depths of his knowledge + his grades.
This was without calculators. And without computers/Internet back then, he would probably have spent some serious time reading books on the side - in the sciences/math naturally, to have explained his answers in as much detail.
I don't know all the details but he apparently had one of the best scores on the tests and had been accepted at Harvard or MIT.
At the least, it beats explaining how a 477 word essay in part discussing your eye color, provided enough information about your academic abilities to be admitted to an engineering program at MIT.
They are good when they amplify a high base score, but useless on their own.
That's the key to what Strunk and White were saying, that every word, sentence, etc. needs to have a function in the overall tale. Colorful words are great when they add nuance and flavor, but sometimes it devolves into filler. Most of this girl's essay was pure mood setting, which she didn't need 'cause that's not the story she's really telling. Since this is an MIT essay for an engineering spot, they essay could reduce down to:
My world is eight friends in a bed meant for two, the hidden tunnels of the mall, and semi-weekly trips to ogle gadgets at Best Buy. Widespread panic for Y2K made my father teach me more about system security than I ever wanted to know at the age of ten. I drooled the first time I saw a real G5, and put together my first circuit board when I was seven. The county fair gave me an addiction to funnel cake, the college nearby gave me my first look at a real milling machine, parties at my house gave me Dr. Pepper stains over a large percentage of my clothes, my neighborâ(TM)s dog gave me a hatred of anything smaller than a mailbox that can bark, and my introduction to broadband began a love affair with the world that has yet to die.
As fuzzy logic becomes more and more obsolete (in humans, at least), boolean values have come to rule all. Precision, accuracy, the Styrofoam cup holding your coffee, and the microprocessor in your toaster oven are all a product of infinitely many zeros and ones, a concept I find both irresistibly ridiculous and intriguing.Barring world disaster or a dramatic cult revival, technology is my future.
There's still tons of personality 'cause of her writing style and the great personal details, but all that detail isn't lost in generic reminiscence of suburban/rural living. This is 210 words and could easily be edited down further.
open source modern art: laser taggi
OK, after doing all that now convince NASA it's too cold to launch a shuttle today.
http://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html
Communication matters, even to engineers and failures in communication lead to engineering failures and people getting killed. Edward Tufte makes a convincing argument that if they had been better able to present and communicate their ideas they would have been able to make their engineering point in an understandable way and saved lives.
I'm not familiar with the details of MIT admissions, but I can comment based on the admissions in engineering universities here in Finland.
The basic problems is very similar: our equivalent of the SAT:s (nationally standardized examns at the end of highschool) are bad measurements for selecting students, because most of the would-be engineers score in the top 10% of the country in math and physics. The solution here is to hold separate entrance examns that are common for all the engineering universities. The material is basically the same (high school maths and physics / chemistry), but the difficulty is set higher: most high schools students would get no points on it, only very few can score full points, but it nicely measures the differences between the good and the best. In practice getting 50% right will get you into most programmes, 85-90% into even the most popular / exclusive.
Like Jim_v2000 said:
"An essay is a shitty way to select engineering students and doesn't gauge anything other than their ability to make up 500 words of bullshit. "
A very important part of a selection system is fairness: it's very hard to objectively measure differences in "Drive, ambition, ideals, character, motivation", so it's better to stick to the skills that can be measured and are relevant to the subject.
This.
Just a few years ago I was taking standard tests for college. A few colleges I was applying to required me to take the SAT Subject Test for Physics. I took the test and got a 750. This sounds like a fantastic score (and it is pretty good) although the mean for the test that year was 643 with a standard deviation of 107, putting me exactly one standard deviation away. Not only that, a large number of students (including a few friends of mine and some people I later met in college) got 800s. However, I'm the only person out of those people to score a 5 (max) on both calculus-based physics AP tests. What happened?
Easy. I took the SAT Physics my junior year and the physics AP my senior year. In that year was my first exposure to electricity and magnetism, which comprises ~20% of the SAT Physics. Everybody I know who got an 800 had already taken some form of E&M when they took the test, but I was left to try to figure out how an electric field diagram works. Does my lower score mean that I'm not as good at physics? No. Could I have gotten an 800 after having already learned all of the material? Probably.