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Comment by erdos4d | Hacker News Reader

As a counterargument, a fake ID is all that a rich person needs to put a smart kid in their place at the testing center. Those places are usually huge, nobody knows anyone, and if you flash a legit looking ID, you will have no trouble sitting the test. GPA and such require effort over years to game (and maybe the kid actually learns something from all that tutoring, who knows).

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How common is this? I would guess not very.

Either way, if you cheated your way into MIT, expect to fail out. The hand holding stops there.

MIT is one of the more rigorous schools but I expect its still pretty easy to avoid failing out.

Do you speak from experience? I attended it for grad school and not undergrad, but there was the expectation that you stand on your own. I was in one of the rare programs that was a terminal masters and you had to reapply for the PhD, and only 50% were accepted to the PhD.

I think there probably aren't too many failing out of undergrad simply because they do a great job of filtering in the first place. But I know people who attended that certainly struggled... one who came a C student and still want on to a great medical school and a successful career. There isn't grade inflation.

> There isn't grade inflation.

That depends on your definition of grade inflation. I think most of my undergrad classes at MIT had a median grade somewhere in the B range, maybe B-. Edit: I know some people consider a non-inflated grade curve to be C-centered.

I came to MIT with more than a year's worth of credits from the U of MN, including 6 trimesters of honors level math[0] (multivariable calc, linear algebra, diff. eq.). I had all As, except a B in my Intro to World Politics class. My senior year of HS, I was actually taking a bit over a "full course load" at the U of MN, plus 1/4 time at my HS.

I could sleepwalk through nearly straight A's at a pretty well regarded school's honors program. I was a B/C student at MIT. I like to think that a lot of it was that some "wise" uperclassmen had sat me down my freshman year and explained that once you had a degree from MIT, nobody would ask for your GPA. (The were wrong, BTW. Work for those grades.) I taught myself most of a CS degree while earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering. However, I was also too slow to put my ego in check and admit to myself that I really needed to work hard.

[0] https://cse.umn.edu/mathcep/about-umtymp

Sounds like you’re effectively saying there wasn’t grade inflation. You were an A student elsewhere and then become a B/C student at MIT despite working hard. That’s my point — now imagine you were only an A student because you were rich and somehow swindled those good grades in high school. Imagine what would happen at MIT.

Note that Harvard undergrad has something like an A- average. That’s grade inflation.

I certainly agree with your broader point: nobody is handed a degree from MIT. If they have a degree, they've put in the work and have a good grasp of the subject matter. (Also, MIT doesn't give out honorary degrees.)

I also attended it for grad school only. Nobody was even close to failing out. I don't think MIT did a lot of grade inflation and generally regard it as a very strong academic institution.

That's not incompatible with weaker students being able to pass by with lower grades. Getting bare minimum grades just isn't that difficult.

edit: teammwork also seemed to be strongly encouraged. It wasn't a place that wanted you to fail. It wanted to help you succeed, which is by all means a good thing.

Well, Trump did it, that's one data point. Also, he did fine at U Penn, an Ivy, so why should we assume MIT is so awesome that another rich kid couldn't cheat his way through there?

Technically MIT isn't an ivy league school. But either way, what makes you think all Ivy's are the same?

I'm just saying that U Penn, being an Ivy, has as much "reputation" as MIT, CalTech, etc. Until someone pipes up with some sort of proof that it is actually better (which I doubt it is), then why should U Penn's reputation allow a Trump to go through, but at MIT such a thing could never occur? I'm not seeing it frankly.

As an MIT grad with many friends at other Ivies, I can tell you that it is more rigorous than pretty much all of them. Princeton is probably the closest.

MIT is absolutely harder and more rigorous than UPenn (and, for that matter, HYP). If you compare the GPAs of people from those schools and e.g. MCAT scores, MIT students exhibit a much stronger positive correlation.

This is pretty common knowledge, in the same way people know that Berkeley and CalTech have tougher classes than Stanford.

The man is functionally illiterate so it's likely someone else did it in his name.

But saying you got into MIT, plus the connections there, probably would still help

If you fail out, it doesn’t look so good, and everyone will know. I wouldn’t expect many connections to last if you’re not someone people respect.

Sure. So, 2 things.

1) The solution to that is to improve security measures. Not to remove the SAT entirely.

2) It is significantly harder to find someone who can score well on the SAT and is willing to take the test for you compared to gaming GPA, extra curriculars, etc.

I've heard of tons of instances of people hiring homework-help services, their dad paying $5k to get their extra-curricular club going, private tennis lessons, etc.

But I've never personally heard of someone paying someone else to take the SAT for them.

I'm sure it occasionally happens, but it's a lot harder to pull off compared to manipulating GPA, extracurriculars, college essay.

> It is significantly harder to find someone who can score well on the SAT and is willing to take the test for you compared to gaming GPA, extra curriculars, etc.

Idk about that. I found people to pay me for taking the ACT for them through my alma mater's subreddit. Top schools are full of people who got 35/36, I'm sure there are plenty of other people who scored there and would be willing to take the standardized test for 10k too. In fact, in some ways it's easier to find someone to take the test for you than it is to find someone to boost your extracurriculars because you can structure the payout around the score obtained. I got 10k for a 36, 7k for a 35... no guarantees with tutors and coaches.

If the parents/students are willing to cheat on the SAT, they're probably going to have no issue manufacturing extracurriculars. The schools for the most part aren't auditing run of the mill activities (student org leadership, fundraisers, mission trips, local awards), and a lot of local newspapers basically let you write your own articles for them so cheaters can build up documentation if they're really motivated.

Some years ago in high school others offered me significant amounts of money to take the SAT for them. I didn't do it, but based on the security arrangements at the time I'm pretty sure I could have done it without getting caught. So I have to assume there has been some of that cheating going on.

> I have to assume there has been some of that cheating going on.

It's an industry.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-...

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