Thanks so much for this post, Aaron!! It covers a lot that desperately needs to be better-known by nerdy kids in the US.
Story time: in 1997, I was rejected from all five of "HYPMS" despite a 1600 SAT and a single-author paper in a major computer science conference. (BUT: I was 15 years old, had uneven grades and no sports or music or "leadership," and indeed had "escaped" from high school early, getting a G.E.D. instead.) Once you understand how undergrad admissions work, this outcome wasn't surprising in the slightest, though at the time it felt like a death sentence.
I went to Cornell, one of two places (along with Carnegie Mellon) generous enough to admit me with this bizarre record. I got an excellent education there, and ended up at my first choice of PhD program (Berkeley).
Truthfully, in the long run the rejections may have helped me, by filling me with a burning motivation to do enough in science that someday the rejections would be a point of pride. And whenever I get depressed, I can tell myself that at least I can now cross that particular teenage fantasy off the list -- having, e.g., been tenured faculty at one of the same fine institutions (MIT) that rejected me for undergrad.
These days I run the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, where almost every year I meet undergrads who I would've been thrilled to have at MIT.
I'm sharing this here because I hope some nerdy, academics-focused kid who feels like their life is over because they got rejected from HYPMS will read it, and it will mean something to them.
Insofar as your story isn't a fluke, it seems like qualitatively stronger evidence than my case and the evidence I presented. It seems like through the "normal" route of AP classes/grades/tests and SAT, you can more or less credibly demonstrate that you're one of the best few thousand college applicants (top .1 to .5% of 3 million (?)-ish incoming freshmen) in terms of simple academic ability.
But, you *can't* demonstrate that you're one of the best few hundred because of the upper limit on weighted GPA and SAT, and nor can you demonstrate complementary attributes like "ambition."
But holy shit, GED+1600 SAT at 15 easily nails both of those.
One substantial difference between 1997 and now is the internet. A 20 year old can start a substack/github/whatever and more directly and credibly show evidence of skills, interests, and intelligence. Hard to do the same 25 years ago.
Also, for anyone else reading this, Scott doesn't *just* run the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin...
also - " I can tell myself that at least I can now cross that particular teenage fantasy off the list -- having, e.g., been tenured faculty at one of the same fine institutions (MIT) that rejected me for undergrad." 🔥🔥🔥
I definitely agree with your point that SAT/AP/GPA are metrics that saturate beyond a certain point in the distribution and so become less effective metrics for these schools running their admissions process or for outsiders to analyze/judge their admissions process.
To the extent there are other useful metrics, they are less well-known, not generally available and unique to specific subjects/interests. For instance, in math, the AMC/AIME/USAMO set of exams. Also, doing scientific research and entering science fairs (speaking of these from experience and couldn't speak to the equivalents in other fields). In general, activities that demonstrate a higher level of skill than the standard exams can measure and/or deep interest in a particular area. I wish we'd direct a higher percentage of high talent high schoolers towards these rather than sports/leadership to give them the "well-rounded resume" that seems common.
Now, this is definitely biased by my own experience doing that and going 4/4 on admissions to Caltech/Harvard/MIT/Princeton and in the model I'm describing, actions like "a single-author paper in a major computer science conference" are exactly what should make a candidate stick out (and I'm definitely no Scott Aaronson). So setting aside flukes (or the potential that they in error let one negative like "uneven grades" outweigh unique positives), I'd also call out that as these are more unique factors, there is a need to make them legible to admissions officers (e.g. science fair awards, letter of recommendation from a reputable authority).
I had 1570/1600 on the SATs and a fair number of APs.
I actually ended up attending a liberal arts college that wasn't even the most well-known liberal arts college in Iowa. Like RulerofFranks, I'd note that I wasn't clearly the smartest person in my college, and several of my peers went and excelled at elite grad programs afterwards (I didn't).
I don't have nearly as stellar a record of intellectual success as Scott after college, but I think I performed reasonably well compared to most people I know at Ivy-tier places. Certainly by EA lights I've done activities that are more likely to be highly impactful, and I do not think I usually come across as dumb, even in highly selective settings.
I think one difference I notice between my younger self and the people from elite universities I interact with these days is that the elite university undergrads by and large come across as substantially more *mature* than I was at that age. I'm not sure how much this is a pattern, but in retrospect, there's a certain story where it makes sense that selecting on real-world (or deep extracurricular) success would by and large produce more emotionally/socially mature people than selecting on raw intellect or academic success.
Fortunately maturity is something that appears highly changeable with age. :P
"performed reasonably well...don't come across as dumb" - yes I'd agree haha! Assuming your sense is correct that you had some smarter peers, I'd say your and others' paths in EA shows that intelligence is instrumentally important but certainly no guarantee of "actually doing good things"
Super interesting about the maturity. If this is a legit phenomenon, I wonder how much is due to generalized changes affecting most/all youth and how much is just sorting/selection. The latter certainly seems plausible
Super interesting and thanks for voicing disagreement :)
My lazy answer for "what is intelligence?" is kinda an appeal to common sense, like (I'm stealing this example from Yudkowsky) saying that fire is "that yellow hot stuff over there, where we cook our food" instead of trying and likely failing to form an accurate technical definition.
So for intelligence, something like "the thing that determines how well a person accomplishes cognitive and intellectual tasks well," or even more vaguely, "the reason why John von Neumann could teach himself other languages at six and I can't"
I agree SAT correlates with to education, wealth, and probably obedience, but think that - for whatever reason - educ/$/obedience also correlate with some real and important quality that I'm trying to refer to by "intelligence"
Re your grandmother: take two middle class kids born in the US and with normalish childhoods, and I claim that their SAT scores will likely indeed correspond quite well to intelligence. But there are a million reasons why the world isn't that neat, as you recognize! If Einstein had been given an SAT written in Spanish, he would have scored poorly, but for a reason other than intelligence. Possibly something similar with your grandma.
Also, I'm really not a kneejerk optimist, but I definitely don't think the future is "ruined"
eggghhh i'm rereading what i wrote and cringing more than slightly. thanks for writing back :) your definition of intelligence kinda reminds me of that popular definition of porn "i don't know what it is, but i know it when i see it" and also how i feel when i try to think about what it means to be beautiful. i also don't think the future is ruined, and even if it is, well, we're still barelling towards it, and it's still barelling towards us, so we still rise to meet it and good luck to us ! i'm curious what you're spending your time on now work/play wise now that you've graduated (congrats btw)
Yeah, the "without sounding like an egomaniac" sentiment def feels familiar, somehow the product of a society that regards intelligence as a moral virtue but only recognizes a few (imperfect) institutionally-approved ways of signalling it as socially acceptable
Also agree about the instability, and I think of this kind of writing (and this very post) as being one of the mechanisms by which a shift might occur.
Does seem weird that the market hasn't shifted to literally just paying applicants to take the GRE or something and using that instead of random ideosyncratic brain teasers
Random idiosyncratic brainteasers seems wrong. I think the market has mostly converged to asking questions that are algorithms puzzles ("leetcode problems" is the derisive term).
I mention this not because I care particularly much about this specific issue but just in case you or anybody else reading this wants a job in tech. There's a specific game you have to play, and all the STEM-y kids from elite colleges know how to play that game.
Thanks so much for this post, Aaron!! It covers a lot that desperately needs to be better-known by nerdy kids in the US.
Story time: in 1997, I was rejected from all five of "HYPMS" despite a 1600 SAT and a single-author paper in a major computer science conference. (BUT: I was 15 years old, had uneven grades and no sports or music or "leadership," and indeed had "escaped" from high school early, getting a G.E.D. instead.) Once you understand how undergrad admissions work, this outcome wasn't surprising in the slightest, though at the time it felt like a death sentence.
I went to Cornell, one of two places (along with Carnegie Mellon) generous enough to admit me with this bizarre record. I got an excellent education there, and ended up at my first choice of PhD program (Berkeley).
Truthfully, in the long run the rejections may have helped me, by filling me with a burning motivation to do enough in science that someday the rejections would be a point of pride. And whenever I get depressed, I can tell myself that at least I can now cross that particular teenage fantasy off the list -- having, e.g., been tenured faculty at one of the same fine institutions (MIT) that rejected me for undergrad.
These days I run the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, where almost every year I meet undergrads who I would've been thrilled to have at MIT.
I'm sharing this here because I hope some nerdy, academics-focused kid who feels like their life is over because they got rejected from HYPMS will read it, and it will mean something to them.
Also, may I copy and link to your comment other places this is posted (as of now, the EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/czjZgTBFxPtDnPTBv/most-ivy-smart-students-aren-t-at-ivy-tier-schools) ?
Edit: ok Twitter too lol
Sure!
Thank so much and you're welcome!!
Insofar as your story isn't a fluke, it seems like qualitatively stronger evidence than my case and the evidence I presented. It seems like through the "normal" route of AP classes/grades/tests and SAT, you can more or less credibly demonstrate that you're one of the best few thousand college applicants (top .1 to .5% of 3 million (?)-ish incoming freshmen) in terms of simple academic ability.
But, you *can't* demonstrate that you're one of the best few hundred because of the upper limit on weighted GPA and SAT, and nor can you demonstrate complementary attributes like "ambition."
But holy shit, GED+1600 SAT at 15 easily nails both of those.
One substantial difference between 1997 and now is the internet. A 20 year old can start a substack/github/whatever and more directly and credibly show evidence of skills, interests, and intelligence. Hard to do the same 25 years ago.
Also, for anyone else reading this, Scott doesn't *just* run the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin...
- Podcast with Sean Carrol (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sean-carrolls-mindscape-science-society-philosophy/id1406534739?i=1000476427328):
- scottaaronson.com/
- Blog: https://scottaaronson.blog/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Aaronson
- Also found this "best of" post: https://www.gleech.org/aaronson
also - " I can tell myself that at least I can now cross that particular teenage fantasy off the list -- having, e.g., been tenured faculty at one of the same fine institutions (MIT) that rejected me for undergrad." 🔥🔥🔥
I definitely agree with your point that SAT/AP/GPA are metrics that saturate beyond a certain point in the distribution and so become less effective metrics for these schools running their admissions process or for outsiders to analyze/judge their admissions process.
To the extent there are other useful metrics, they are less well-known, not generally available and unique to specific subjects/interests. For instance, in math, the AMC/AIME/USAMO set of exams. Also, doing scientific research and entering science fairs (speaking of these from experience and couldn't speak to the equivalents in other fields). In general, activities that demonstrate a higher level of skill than the standard exams can measure and/or deep interest in a particular area. I wish we'd direct a higher percentage of high talent high schoolers towards these rather than sports/leadership to give them the "well-rounded resume" that seems common.
Now, this is definitely biased by my own experience doing that and going 4/4 on admissions to Caltech/Harvard/MIT/Princeton and in the model I'm describing, actions like "a single-author paper in a major computer science conference" are exactly what should make a candidate stick out (and I'm definitely no Scott Aaronson). So setting aside flukes (or the potential that they in error let one negative like "uneven grades" outweigh unique positives), I'd also call out that as these are more unique factors, there is a need to make them legible to admissions officers (e.g. science fair awards, letter of recommendation from a reputable authority).
I had 1570/1600 on the SATs and a fair number of APs.
I actually ended up attending a liberal arts college that wasn't even the most well-known liberal arts college in Iowa. Like RulerofFranks, I'd note that I wasn't clearly the smartest person in my college, and several of my peers went and excelled at elite grad programs afterwards (I didn't).
I don't have nearly as stellar a record of intellectual success as Scott after college, but I think I performed reasonably well compared to most people I know at Ivy-tier places. Certainly by EA lights I've done activities that are more likely to be highly impactful, and I do not think I usually come across as dumb, even in highly selective settings.
I think one difference I notice between my younger self and the people from elite universities I interact with these days is that the elite university undergrads by and large come across as substantially more *mature* than I was at that age. I'm not sure how much this is a pattern, but in retrospect, there's a certain story where it makes sense that selecting on real-world (or deep extracurricular) success would by and large produce more emotionally/socially mature people than selecting on raw intellect or academic success.
Fortunately maturity is something that appears highly changeable with age. :P
"performed reasonably well...don't come across as dumb" - yes I'd agree haha! Assuming your sense is correct that you had some smarter peers, I'd say your and others' paths in EA shows that intelligence is instrumentally important but certainly no guarantee of "actually doing good things"
Super interesting about the maturity. If this is a legit phenomenon, I wonder how much is due to generalized changes affecting most/all youth and how much is just sorting/selection. The latter certainly seems plausible
Super interesting and thanks for voicing disagreement :)
My lazy answer for "what is intelligence?" is kinda an appeal to common sense, like (I'm stealing this example from Yudkowsky) saying that fire is "that yellow hot stuff over there, where we cook our food" instead of trying and likely failing to form an accurate technical definition.
So for intelligence, something like "the thing that determines how well a person accomplishes cognitive and intellectual tasks well," or even more vaguely, "the reason why John von Neumann could teach himself other languages at six and I can't"
I agree SAT correlates with to education, wealth, and probably obedience, but think that - for whatever reason - educ/$/obedience also correlate with some real and important quality that I'm trying to refer to by "intelligence"
Re your grandmother: take two middle class kids born in the US and with normalish childhoods, and I claim that their SAT scores will likely indeed correspond quite well to intelligence. But there are a million reasons why the world isn't that neat, as you recognize! If Einstein had been given an SAT written in Spanish, he would have scored poorly, but for a reason other than intelligence. Possibly something similar with your grandma.
Also, I'm really not a kneejerk optimist, but I definitely don't think the future is "ruined"
Thanks again for your thoughts!
So
eggghhh i'm rereading what i wrote and cringing more than slightly. thanks for writing back :) your definition of intelligence kinda reminds me of that popular definition of porn "i don't know what it is, but i know it when i see it" and also how i feel when i try to think about what it means to be beautiful. i also don't think the future is ruined, and even if it is, well, we're still barelling towards it, and it's still barelling towards us, so we still rise to meet it and good luck to us ! i'm curious what you're spending your time on now work/play wise now that you've graduated (congrats btw)
Thanks so much!
Yeah, the "without sounding like an egomaniac" sentiment def feels familiar, somehow the product of a society that regards intelligence as a moral virtue but only recognizes a few (imperfect) institutionally-approved ways of signalling it as socially acceptable
Also agree about the instability, and I think of this kind of writing (and this very post) as being one of the mechanisms by which a shift might occur.
Does seem weird that the market hasn't shifted to literally just paying applicants to take the GRE or something and using that instead of random ideosyncratic brain teasers
Random idiosyncratic brainteasers seems wrong. I think the market has mostly converged to asking questions that are algorithms puzzles ("leetcode problems" is the derisive term).
I mention this not because I care particularly much about this specific issue but just in case you or anybody else reading this wants a job in tech. There's a specific game you have to play, and all the STEM-y kids from elite colleges know how to play that game.