MIT decisions out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While it is true that kids who make it to that level are insanely talented at math, I truly hate the cottage industry it has built around contest math. Kids in early elementary school taking advanced geometry at AOPS… or functions. At this point, if you don’t start those classes at an early age, you really won’t do very well on the AMCs. Someone will point out some outliers and sure, maybe they exist, but not many of them… and the pressure and competition are absurd. At least in the DMV.

The issue (at least after/during Covid) is the rampant cheating. Apparently, this year there were over a 100 kids who had perfect scores in AMC-12! For context, it used to be that scoring 120 was an achievement. Both last year and this, the exams were leaked and were available online on Discord for a fee. This fun activity has now succumbed to the ambitions of parents/kids trying to get a leg up in the college rat race.

Cheating at an optional extra-curricular is pretty pathetic. You can just not do the math contest if it's not your thing.

I know a kid that probably cheated their way to AIME.
He spent his entire youth on AMC 8 in elementary with excellent results but by the time AMC 10/12 came around, they were not making the cut for AIME.
Then they started taking the test on make-up days at alternate sites and went from middling scores to top 5%.

There are no "make up days" for AMC 10/12.

You may find this shocking, but studying for the same test for FOUR YEARS can improve score .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MIT AOs are not myopic. They want admits who will graduate. MIT has a fairly broad range of required courses for everyone. A one trick pony math kid who can't read literature, write essays, take 3 nonmajor science courses is not what they want. Sure sime kids take economics so they can have mathy "humanities" but even so they need to absorb principles.

What makes you think these kids aren’t multi-talented. All these kids are well rounded, read a ton outside of the classroom, play music at a high level, engage in community service etc. no bogus nonprofits tho.

So, so many math-contest nonprofits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This year, 11,883 students applied Early Action to the MIT Class of 2030. we have offered admission to 655.We deferred 7,738 applicants;⁠ these students will be reconsidered without prejudice in Regular Action, with decisions released sometime in March. Given the competitiveness of our pool, we have also informed 2,703 students that we will not be able to offer them admission this year. 787 — withdrew from our process before we released their decision.

Can someone please explain why deferral rate's so high? They deferred three times as many applicants as they rejected - is it because the caliber of students is so high or because they're afraid that RA won't yield anyone good and they'd have to extensively tap into their deferral pool? Seems odd for a highly selective college.

EA is for the clear admits. The rest go into the careful class balancing algorithm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While it is true that kids who make it to that level are insanely talented at math, I truly hate the cottage industry it has built around contest math. Kids in early elementary school taking advanced geometry at AOPS… or functions. At this point, if you don’t start those classes at an early age, you really won’t do very well on the AMCs. Someone will point out some outliers and sure, maybe they exist, but not many of them… and the pressure and competition are absurd. At least in the DMV.

No true. If you are interested and have potential, it's easy to catch up. Some kids start early and rocket to the top early. Some start early and do well early but hit a ceiling. Some start later and do great. Most don't have the capacity and dedication to be the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While it is true that kids who make it to that level are insanely talented at math, I truly hate the cottage industry it has built around contest math. Kids in early elementary school taking advanced geometry at AOPS… or functions. At this point, if you don’t start those classes at an early age, you really won’t do very well on the AMCs. Someone will point out some outliers and sure, maybe they exist, but not many of them… and the pressure and competition are absurd. At least in the DMV.

The issue (at least after/during Covid) is the rampant cheating. Apparently, this year there were over a 100 kids who had perfect scores in AMC-12! For context, it used to be that scoring 120 was an achievement. Both last year and this, the exams were leaked and were available online on Discord for a fee. This fun activity has now succumbed to the ambitions of parents/kids trying to get a leg up in the college rat race.

Cheating started en mass when MAA stopped publishing honor rolls, so no one would know who got excessively high scores despite not showing the talent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While it is true that kids who make it to that level are insanely talented at math, I truly hate the cottage industry it has built around contest math. Kids in early elementary school taking advanced geometry at AOPS… or functions. At this point, if you don’t start those classes at an early age, you really won’t do very well on the AMCs. Someone will point out some outliers and sure, maybe they exist, but not many of them… and the pressure and competition are absurd. At least in the DMV.

The issue (at least after/during Covid) is the rampant cheating. Apparently, this year there were over a 100 kids who had perfect scores in AMC-12! For context, it used to be that scoring 120 was an achievement. Both last year and this, the exams were leaked and were available online on Discord for a fee. This fun activity has now succumbed to the ambitions of parents/kids trying to get a leg up in the college rat race.

Cheating started en mass when MAA stopped publishing honor rolls, so no one would know who got excessively high scores despite not showing the talent

You have a point. I do think it is a coincidence that MAA stopped publishing honor rolls at the same time as cheating ramped up.

Either way, MAA seems to be doing nothing to prevent cheating. They sold out to China.

[Anonymous]

MAA already banned the cheaters. You think MAA is dumb? I mean, they're literally comprised of the greatest mathematical minds in the world. They have already made several behind-the-scenes changes to shield us from the cheaters: 1. They shortened the exam release window to 90 minutes. Anything that was posted before that is either fake or purposely leaked by MAA but with numbers changed as a honeypot-style trap. 2. (They even wrote this on their website) MAA has extremely advanced AI cheating detection algorithms. If any test gets flagged as suspicious, multiple reviewers will scrutinize it then to ensure that nothing falls by the wayside. 3. On the digital AMC, MAA can check the speed at which people inputted their responses. If someone put in all the right answers in a minute then yeah theyre done 4. MAA actually vetted testing centers this year to make sure theyre not run by 10 year olds 5. Proctors sent student's scrap paper to MAA. I know this since after I was done my proctor collected all my scraps. That means that if someone is flagged as suspicious MAA will just check their scrap paper. 6. They run sting operations and go undercover in major cheating grounds (I saw that somewhere from an older post by them) to uncover more cheaters 7. I have friends who reported getting different questions than me because when I asked them the day after the test "hey what did you get on #_____" they were like "wait I thought that was #_____" which means MAA changed the questions for different people Anyways, I believe the real reason why cutoff on AMC 12 was 150 was because they made it easier than AMC 10 (from what ive heard)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MAA already banned the cheaters. You think MAA is dumb? I mean, they're literally comprised of the greatest mathematical minds in the world. They have already made several behind-the-scenes changes to shield us from the cheaters: 1. They shortened the exam release window to 90 minutes. Anything that was posted before that is either fake or purposely leaked by MAA but with numbers changed as a honeypot-style trap. 2. (They even wrote this on their website) MAA has extremely advanced AI cheating detection algorithms. If any test gets flagged as suspicious, multiple reviewers will scrutinize it then to ensure that nothing falls by the wayside. 3. On the digital AMC, MAA can check the speed at which people inputted their responses. If someone put in all the right answers in a minute then yeah theyre done 4. MAA actually vetted testing centers this year to make sure theyre not run by 10 year olds 5. Proctors sent student's scrap paper to MAA. I know this since after I was done my proctor collected all my scraps. That means that if someone is flagged as suspicious MAA will just check their scrap paper. 6. They run sting operations and go undercover in major cheating grounds (I saw that somewhere from an older post by them) to uncover more cheaters 7. I have friends who reported getting different questions than me because when I asked them the day after the test "hey what did you get on #_____" they were like "wait I thought that was #_____" which means MAA changed the questions for different people Anyways, I believe the real reason why cutoff on AMC 12 was 150 was because they made it easier than AMC 10 (from what ive heard)

I've seen this same post from AOPS forum. Some AOPS kid wrote it, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MAA already banned the cheaters. You think MAA is dumb? I mean, they're literally comprised of the greatest mathematical minds in the world. They have already made several behind-the-scenes changes to shield us from the cheaters: 1. They shortened the exam release window to 90 minutes. Anything that was posted before that is either fake or purposely leaked by MAA but with numbers changed as a honeypot-style trap. 2. (They even wrote this on their website) MAA has extremely advanced AI cheating detection algorithms. If any test gets flagged as suspicious, multiple reviewers will scrutinize it then to ensure that nothing falls by the wayside. 3. On the digital AMC, MAA can check the speed at which people inputted their responses. If someone put in all the right answers in a minute then yeah theyre done 4. MAA actually vetted testing centers this year to make sure theyre not run by 10 year olds 5. Proctors sent student's scrap paper to MAA. I know this since after I was done my proctor collected all my scraps. That means that if someone is flagged as suspicious MAA will just check their scrap paper. 6. They run sting operations and go undercover in major cheating grounds (I saw that somewhere from an older post by them) to uncover more cheaters 7. I have friends who reported getting different questions than me because when I asked them the day after the test "hey what did you get on #_____" they were like "wait I thought that was #_____" which means MAA changed the questions for different people Anyways, I believe the real reason why cutoff on AMC 12 was 150 was because they made it easier than AMC 10 (from what ive heard)

LOL

Posted either by a cheater or someone related to MAA.

We can prove many of the above as wrong. MAA shortened the release window to 24 hours not 90 minutes.