Does M.I.T./Yale Success = FIRST Dean's List Finalist/Winner?

[Alexa Stott]

Akash brought up a good point—the Dean's List isn't the only factor in the admission process. As far as I know, the only required information about the student's academic success is the cumulative GPA. That means Dean's List winners could potentially be students with low SAT/ACT scores, few other extracurricular activities, bad college admission essays, etc. Even the cumulative GPA is not incredibly informative if given on a 4.0 scale; it provides no indication of the strength of a student's schedule and whether or not that have taken challenging courses that would warrant entrance into a prestigious school. I've also noticed that there are FIRSTers who only do FIRST in high school. That's fine, but admissions people tend to like a bit of diversity in those activities.

Criteria for the Dean's List (courtesy of the manual) includes:

• demonstrated leadership and commitment to the ideals of FIRST;
• interest in and passion for a long term commitment to FIRST and its ideals;
• overall individual contribution to their team;
• technical expertise and passion;
• entrepreneurship and creativity;
• ability to motivate and lead fellow team members; and
• effectiveness at increasing awareness of FIRST in their school and community

This indicates success in FIRST and a passion for STEM, not academic excellence and ability to succeed at a highly-ranked college or university.

[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

That means Dean's List winners could potentially be students with low SAT/ACT scores, few other extracurricular activities, bad college admission essays, etc. Even the cumulative GPA is not incredibly informative if given on a 4.0 scale; it provides no indication of the strength of a student's schedule and whether or not that have taken challenging courses that would warrant entrance into a prestigious school.

Alexa... you may be right about a lot or even the majority of FIRST Dean's list Finalists and their academic (objective measurements) and their extracurriculars / recommendations / essays (subjective measurements) NOT being good enough for M.I.T. and Yale despite having Dean's List Finalist in their quiver.

But, in my son's case, he applied with a 99.6 GPA, 13 AP-level and 13 PreAP-level courses, HIGH SAT score (5th highest in his class of 604 seniors), FOUR _killer_ recommendations/assessments (including ONE on FIRST letterhead)... and AP Scholar... and an award-winning poet and writer in his district of ELEVEN high schools and in Texas... and FOUR years of _competitive_ marching band and concert band playing TWO different instruments; the clarinet and the bassoon. The rest of his life was pretty-much dominated by FIRST and competition robotics, hence the D/L Award.

AFTER he received his 2012 Dean's List Finalist award, the following summer he took a _non-paid_ internship at the FIRST Central Region/Texas (Alamo) where he worked projects, built a 3D printer from the open-source RepRap model, built a holonomic drive FRC demo-robot for the district, and took that robot and FTC/FLL robots on the road around San Antonio to PROMOTE FIRST ROBOTICS where he presented to/spoke with about ONE THOUSAND middle-school students (SEVEN events total) who were attending summer PREP (pre-engineering) programs at area colleges.

STILL, it wasn't enough for those, at M.I.T. and Yale, who are represented to "love" and "want" Dean's List Finalist applicants...

--Michael

[Grim Tuesday]

I think it serves underscoring that college admissions at the highest level is a crapshoot. Your son got unlucky, pure and simple.

I have friends who have perfect GPA's, extra curriculars up the wazoo, and fantastic essays but still don't get into their college of choice. There is literally no way I could tell them they could improve their application and they still didn't get in. Maybe the admissions counselor was having a bad day or your child violated one of the unspoken rules (a counselor from Cornell came down to our school and told us that he has a colleague who circles every time a student writes 'plethora' in their essay and dislikes their application more as the number goes up).

So maybe Dean is misrepresenting how much colleges care about Deans List. I just don't think it's reasonable to expect anything to be worth as much to colleges as some have claimed Deans List to be.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

STILL, it wasn't enough for those, at M.I.T. and Yale, who are represented to "love" and "want" Dean's List Finalist applicants...
--Michael

As a high school student planning on applying at MIT, this is something I've personally had to make piece with. I had a chance to talk to some interviewers, and the fact is, as so many people have already said, there are simply too few spots for too many qualified applicants.

I think this interviewer told me something along the lines of "after a certain level, it's not what your grades or your extracurriculars were, it's what time the readers looked through your application."

She also told me that most of the applicants to MIT would be well suited to it. There's a certain caliber of student it takes to even consider applying. As a Junior waiting in the calm before the storm, I can't help but look in with dismay-- it looks like chaos from the outside, and from what I've heard from survivors, it sounds like chaos on the inside and afterwards.

I completely agree with Tuesday:

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I think it serves underscoring that college admissions at the highest level is a crapshoot. Your son got unlucky, pure and simple.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

Hey Akash! ;-)

I AGREE, now, that "Admissions is too random to correlate to... Dean's List..."

THEN WHY does FIRST do that?!

FIRST isn't making that correlation; you are. Unless FIRST ever told you that meeting some benchmark and making the List would guarantee admission, all I've seen them do is correlate Dean's List with more interest from admissions officers. Dean's talked to many, and they say are particularly interested in these students. Truthful and transparent.

Correlating this extra interest from admissions officers with admission to the university is where the logic falls apart, but that's your logic, not FIRST's. In fact, Dean hasn't even promised it'd increase probabilities, he's just reported conversations: top schools want DLs. But there are other applicants they want; no one ever implied exclusivity. Tradeoffs are necessary: MIT didn't take 1,620 students because #1,621 wasn't very interesting; they took 1,620 because that's what their cutoff is.

[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by Siri

[Dean] just reported conversations: top schools want DLs.

Siri... "top schools want DLs"?! SHOW ME the evidence supporting this _desire_, or stop posting on this.

WHAT is the actualization, WHAT is the _results_ of the statement "top schools want DLs"?!

--Michael

[Chinmay]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

Siri... "top schools want DLs"?! SHOW ME the evidence supporting this _desire_, or stop posting on this.

WHAT is the actualization, WHAT is the _results_ of the statement "top schools want DLs"?!

--Michael

How do you know they dont want deans list finalists.... Show me the evidence?

maybe they wanted your son but chose not to admit him for another reason. I sent you a PM. I'd be glad to discuss this further. I am a student at Yale, and have lots of FIRST friends here at Yale and at MIT

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

Siri... "top schools want DLs"?! SHOW ME the evidence supporting this _desire_, or stop posting on this.

WHAT is the actualization, WHAT is the _results_ of the statement "top schools want DLs"?!

--Michael

I got a letter from WPI specifically commending me on being a DL finalist. That says something.

Nevertheless, HS students with high SATs and high GPAs and high class ranks will inevitably get A LOT of mail from colleges, and it'd be darn near impossible to figure out whether any of them are sent due to being a DL finalist..


Also to put the "no sure shot" of admissions in perspective, one of my friends, 3rd in the class out of ~300, plenty of APs, Drum Major/various other band commendations, was rejected from an extremely selective school for Computer Science, and upon having his guidance counselor call the admissions office to request why, she was told that since there were so many applicants for only XXX spots in the program, they had to start taking applicants with SAT math scores greater than XXX(something my friend did not have). So that shows that one great achievement will not "instantly" get you accepted.

[kmusa]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

Siri... "top schools want DLs"?! SHOW ME the evidence supporting this _desire_, or stop posting on this.

WHAT is the actualization, WHAT is the _results_ of the statement "top schools want DLs"?!

--Michael

For 2010 and 2011 Dean's List winners, at least 8 (of 20) attended MIT, WPI, or Yale. At least 2 were accepted by MIT, and decided to attend elsewhere. 1 also had a spot reserved in Yale's graduate school, upon completion of their undergraduate degree.

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

Jeff... there ABSOLUTELY is a known base-line in the objective measurements, both M.I.T. and Yale publish their data. ALL I'm talking about is the middle 50-percentile range. If you hit the numbers it's NOT a factor that has to be outweighed with other strengths or explained with a story.

For MIT's 2012 class, those numbers included an approx 17% acceptance rate for people scoring 2400 on their SAT's. Which means that more than 4 out of 5 still wouldn't be admitted. As has been mentioned, there isn't some magic number that makes admitance automatic.

[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by kmusa

For 2010 and 2011 Dean's List winners, at least 8 (of 20) attended MIT, WPI, or Yale. At least 2 were accepted by MIT, and decided to attend elsewhere. 1 also had a spot reserved in Yale's graduate school, upon completion of their undergraduate degree.

Karlis... this is good data regarding D/L WINNERS, Thank You!

Do you know the numbers if you remove WPI?

Also, do you know numbers for D/L Finalists? That's been the main focus of this thread.

I know about the D/L WINNER who turned down M.I.T. and the Yale graduate success. That person is an outlier... an AWESOME outlier in their own league!! COMPLETE admiration and respect for that person...

--Michael

[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by Siri

FIRST isn't making that correlation; you are. Unless FIRST ever told you that meeting some benchmark and making the List would guarantee admission, all I've seen them do is correlate Dean's List with more interest from admissions officers. Dean's talked to many, and they say are particularly interested in these students. Truthful and transparent.

Correlating this extra interest from admissions officers with admission to the university is where the logic falls apart, but that's your logic, not FIRST's. In fact, Dean hasn't even promised it'd increase probabilities...

Siri... JUST watch the darn video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature..._Wu_E#t=88 1s

... and put yourself in the place of a SEVENTEEN year old and his parents shooting for an M.I.T. education for FOUR years with the early conclusion that it's a "crapshoot". And then hearing the words at the ceremony and thinking, Holy Cow... this is REAL!

Causing us to expend time/effort/interactions/loads-of-$$$ where we would not have for a "crapshoot".

But, you know what, my experience is it's "a bunch of baloney". I'm sorry, but it's true.

--Michael

[PayneTrain]

60 of FIRST's best have been recognized for their great efforts in promoting FIRST and STEM programs through their community, and being the light that shines brightest among us, and draws us together to become something greater than ourselves. Not all of them will be accepted to an Ivy League institution, but they are still people worth recognizing and likely have the ability to succeed and catalyze communities wherever they go.

Tens of thousands of kids participate in FIRST at its highest level every year. Some of them go to Ivy League schools. Some go to community college. Most go to engineering schools or state universities with engineering programs. Very few of them receive the highest honor bestowed upon a FIRST student.

I didn't get into the college I wanted. I still love FIRST. I still go to a university I like. I still wake up every day with the rest of the world and try to make myself better. The sun still rises in the East, sets in the West, and robotics meetings still go on.

I don't feel like FIRST owes me anything. If anything, I owe almost everything I am to my religion, my family, and my other religion, which is being an active participant in FIRST after I have to take my hands off the joysticks for the last time.

There is a Dean's List Finalist from 422 this year. He has no idea where he wants to go to college. I don't even know if he's even visited any schools. But he is a remarkable kid that is going to be and Eagle Scout, an FLL mentor, an outreach guru, and a future FRC team captain... he is our role model. He is an incredibly bright kid with a heart of gold and he gives the work I put into my old team more meaning now than it did when I was a student.

We didn't recognize him because we feel like he deserves to go to Oxford on a full ride and this award is going to give it to him. We recognized him, along with the judges, because he represents the best we have to offer; a combination of his innate talent of getting people from all walks of life to gravitate to him, and to a lesser extent, those of us who facilitate the support system to make his work more impactful.

If you are making every move in your life and your son's life on getting him into Yale or MIT, I guess that's your prerogative. If your intent was to use this award to catapult your son to this objective, then you're just totally missing the point, man, and there is no other way to say that.

Think long and hard before you continue the crusade of passive-aggressive blame assignment on an award and the founder of the program that has enabled so many people to come together and become something greater than the sum of their works, including you and your sun.

[artdutra04]

This thread has started to devolve into personal attacks over semantics. I'm closing this thread for one day to let cooler minds prevail.

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

Alexa... you may be right about a lot or even the majority of FIRST Dean's list Finalists and their academic (objective measurements) and their extracurriculars / recommendations / essays (subjective measurements) NOT being good enough for M.I.T. and Yale despite having Dean's List Finalist in their quiver.

But, in my son's case, he applied with a 99.6 GPA, 13 AP-level and 13 PreAP-level courses, HIGH SAT score (5th highest in his class of 604 seniors), FOUR _killer_ recommendations/assessments (including ONE on FIRST letterhead)... and AP Scholar... and an award-winning poet and writer in his district of ELEVEN high schools and in Texas... and FOUR years of _competitive_ marching band and concert band playing TWO different instruments; the clarinet and the bassoon. The rest of his life was pretty-much dominated by FIRST and competition robotics, hence the D/L Award.

AFTER he received his 2012 Dean's List Finalist award, the following summer he took a _non-paid_ internship at the FIRST Central Region/Texas (Alamo) where he worked projects, built a 3D printer from the open-source RepRap model, built a holonomic drive FRC demo-robot for the district, and took that robot and FTC/FLL robots on the road around San Antonio to PROMOTE FIRST ROBOTICS where he presented to/spoke with about ONE THOUSAND middle-school students (SEVEN events total) who were attending summer PREP (pre-engineering) programs at area colleges.

STILL, it wasn't enough for those, at M.I.T. and Yale, who are represented to "love" and "want" Dean's List Finalist applicants...

--Michael

I'm going to be blunt here: it honestly sounds like you're just bitter that your son was not accepted to these schools and are searching for a reason why. Nowhere does FIRST claim the Dean's List guarantees you admittance.

Seriously, going to MIT or Yale is awesome if you can get in, but it's not the be all and end all of your life. Smart people are going to do well no matter what. I don't understand why you're so up in arms about this.

Also, if you're really serious about being sorry that your son was a Dean's List finalist, I'm sure FIRST would allow you to return the award. If you were pushing your son to do things specifically to win that award, then you were in it for the wrong reasons. I sincerely hope you're not saying that you/your son took that internship and promoted FIRST just so he could put it on his application for MIT or Yale.

[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

I'm going to be blunt here: it honestly sounds like you're just bitter that your son was not accepted to these schools and are searching for a reason why. Nowhere does FIRST claim the Dean's List guarantees you admittance.

I don't understand why you're so up in arms about this.

Also, if you're really serious about being sorry that your son was a Dean's List finalist, I'm sure FIRST would allow you to return the award. If you were pushing your son to do things specifically to win that award, then you were in it for the wrong reasons.

Alexa... you're accusing me of motivations that just aren't there... mind-reading happens, I've observed, on CD a lot.

I _never_ used the word "guarantees".

I won't be involved with Dean's List again for my team unless they change the "pitch" regarding the _desirability_ of M.I.T. and Yale... that's my prerogative as a 54 year old man whose lived a lot of life.

Accusing me of possibly "pushing" my son is laughable IF you knew my son. The fact is ALL we knew about Dean's List PRIOR to him winning the award was what is in the Game Manual, TIMS, and some entries on CD. We didn't know ANYTHING about colleges desiring D/L until AFTER he won the award... which we had COMPLETELY forgotten about his submission so when his name was announced the reaction was, "Huh?! What award did they just announce? ALRIGHT, Dean's List way to go!!"... LOL

We had NO IDEA about how much FIRST valued the award... it was an interesting and pleasant surprise.

--Michael