My friend (Asian wife) hopes that his son might get into MIT. His son is not a superstar but has done quite well in math competitions. His son was a pretty good baseball player until they had to decide between Math competitions and sports. I always tell him that his son has to become more interesting - less one-dimension Math/Science stud - like Cal Newport talks about on his blog. And that some schools for MIT could be looking for a few good baseball players.
The interesting thing is that the cutthroat high school his son is enrolled at - the AP weed-out courses, the hardest ones are the humanities. Courses like Modern European History.
> For these students, extracurricular activities play a different role than for their peers. They don’t use activities to signal their qualities, they use them instead to transform themselves into more interesting people. In other words, what’s important about an activity is not its impressiveness, but its impact on your personality.
The interesting thing is that the cutthroat high school his son is enrolled at - the AP weed-out courses, the hardest ones are the humanities. Courses like Modern European History.
> For these students, extracurricular activities play a different role than for their peers. They don’t use activities to signal their qualities, they use them instead to transform themselves into more interesting people. In other words, what’s important about an activity is not its impressiveness, but its impact on your personality.
http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/02/18/want-to-get-into-harva...