From: "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 13:52:36 -0800 (PST)
To: "'cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: Getting into MIT is impossible
Message-ID: <01BC0E04.F8BCC4B0@crecy.ai.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




Anonymous <nobody@REPLAY.COM> wrote in article <5cndl2$89k@life.ai.mit.edu>...


> "The only thing I didn't have that the next MIT applicant had was money.  I
> made the mistake of letting them know that I was dirt poor and would need
> full aid/grants/etc, and to quote "The Great Escape" it was "Zzzt! To the
> Russian front!""
> 
> My guess is that "other factors" were involved. 

Inevitably since the admissions tutors would not have known the means of 
the parents. Thats the whole idea of "needs blind" admissions. 

The admissions people could not give a damn about means. The alumni
that are most likely to make donnations are those who made it from
scratch in any case.

> I noted with some interest, but little surprise, that the guy claiming MIT
> required a 4.0 GPA and a 1600 combined SAT score could barely spell, and
> had major problems making a coherent point. Methinks this is why MIT
> rejected him, not his lack of a "1600."

Possible but remember that dyslexia is not an indicator of intelligence.
The director of the Media Lab is dyslexic.


Certainly if you think that being taught in a particular operating system is
important you should probably try elsewhere. Depending on which classes 
you take you could end up using UNIX, Windows or Genera. The main 
advantage of UNIX is that it is reasonably compact and we have full
sources which means that people can be set operating system projects.
Windows NT is much too large for that although it does have many 
interesting APIs that make it usefull for teaching application level stuff.
I would imagine that there will be people interested in NextStep for
Apple too, Tim-B-L was always a Next person, but he learnt how
to use it because he had an open mind. If he had thought that nothing could
be better than what he had already he would still be using CERN-VM.

If someone can't cope with an unfamilliar O/S they probably shouldn't be
an engineer at all. An O/S is only one large software system a grad
needs to deal with. They have short lifetimes, rarely being dominant for 
more than a decade.

	Phill