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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.]
Maths today are stagnant. The field was once full of Nobel-prize winning innovations and leaps of pure logic, but now it is dominated by imperialist spies and computer hackers. There is, however, a solution. The root of the problem, (pun intended) is that we have too many numbers. Now back in ancient Greek times, engineers might have needed the full complement of rational and irrational numbers all over the real/imaginary plane. But now with our massive telescopes, it has become clear to us that infinity doesn't even nearly exist. The biggest possible number is way less than infinity, and we don't even need an infinite number of prime numbers -- that just helps terrorists and other computer malefactors to evade justice.
So I say, limit the number of prime numbers to no more than 500, and witness a new golden age in mathematics!
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How hard is it to get into a US university program as an international student, say for Computer science or Astronomy master/PhD?
(aside the paying-a-lot part, and English test)
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Sorry, that should have been parent, not grand-parent. Now it's grand-parent.
Were that I say, pancakes?