Better prepared I would say. There are plenty of kids that don't get the opportunity to show how smart they are. They grow up in the projects, have to work nights to help their family, some have to join gangs to survive. You swap they're upbringing with someone who's parents got to spend 100k on their high school education, provide them the things like a car, so they don't have to ride the bus a hour to and from school, and they'd be a lot different. It's really easy to be a lot smarter when you have a support system that nudges you along the way. Now agreed, there are some kids that really are smarter, but mostly it's about being prepared to handle that rigor.

It ultimately comes down to nurture vs nature.

My opinion is that nurture affects nature, so yes if we optimize childhood development it would naturally lead to better outcomes.

However I do believe people have a “natural” ceiling based on genetics. Meaning that no matter how great your nurture environment is, you could never become a top NBA basketball player or a Nobel prize winner.

Now I’m not saying MIT is either of those things, but it’s certainly difficult to get in and not simply a by-product of your “nurture” environment but some interplay with your “nature”. Although I’m sure with a timely $20M gift from your parents your chances of getting in would increase substantially, regardless of your qualifications.

Although I wouldn't contest your opinion about "ceilings" etc, because I don't know much about it, I would contest that elite universities select from a pool that is above most people's top end. I suspect the average intelligence of Harvard, MIT, or Stanford students is higher than the national average but still within the first deviation - in other words, most people in the population who are interested in university are probably "smart enough" by nature to succeed at one of these schools.

Socioeconomic factors playing a role (even a majority role, in my opinion) in access to elite education isn't about $20 million gifts. It's about living in neighbourhoods that have good primary and secondary schools; it's about living around peers who think going to university and even elite universities is normal and achievable; it's about being able to afford "personal rounding" activities like organized sports or music lessons; it's about being rich enough to be able to afford to give volunteer hours.

This "privilege" doesn't make those people bad or invalidate how hard they worked, but we should avoid thinking their success is due to some innate, "natural" superiority like just being smarter.

while I agree, that very smart children can be victims of their childhoods, not everyone can prep their way into MIT. that is why Harvard and Yale are more prestigious, its more associated with the powerful, not purely the most academically inclined.

To be clear I grew up fairly poor myself with no support system, but not that bad with violence, just trailer park poor, you can tell smart children at a very young age, kindergarten it will be obvious if a student is mathematically gifted(for whatever that is worth, it is certainly not the end all be all indicator of future success).

my point is that MIT will have a higher percentage of mathematically gifted students, because it isn't something that can be prepped for.

I guess I would be curious on how much a difference it really is , if you could completely control for environment, but even then the difference still exists.

> my point is that MIT will have a higher percentage of mathematically gifted students, because it isn't something that can be prepped for.

What are you talking about? The requirements to get into MIT are not mathematical genius. It's above average quantitative skills. And you can prep for the standardize math requirements quite easily. All of my high school friends did, and some managed to get into MIT.

you obviously have a pretty strong bias. I didn't say its a requirement, I said they would have a higher percentage of gifted students.

Also the requirements are not "above average", a math SAT of 750 is in the 95% percentile of SAT takers, which is already below average for MIT. Even then, the "average" student isn't even taking a college readiness test. You are grossly overestimating what average is.

Can you clarify how this can't be prepped for, and is a marker of intelligence instead of also being explained by average intelligence, coupled with means ($$) and drive?

I attended a top school. I can assure you my classmates weren't on the whole more intelligent. They did have more drive, better study habits, more external forces (parents) pushing them. Some were extraordinary, but not the average. I would have trouble saying as a body they were more intelligent than say those that went to large state schools.

Here[1] is a good overview of studies on test prepping and their relatively underwhelming influence on scores:

>Once scholars control for all these factors as best they can, they find that coaching has a positive but small effect: Perhaps 10 or 20 points in total on the SAT, mostly on the math section, according to careful work by Derek Briggs of the University of Colorado Boulder and Ben Domingue of Stanford University.

[1] https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...

I really don't think I am making that claim. As far as I've read SAT scores before the age of 10 are a good marker of intelligence. Of course you can prep a large extent to get into a good school as a high school student.

I attended a small state school for undergrad, and a top school for grad school. There were no extraordinary students at the small state school. I was top of the class. When I went to grad school I was quickly humbled as very much average in that selected group. Everyone studied/research all day long in grad school, it wasn't really a matter of who was more driven, everyone was driven.

All my point is and has been, is that extraordinary people self select to go to good schools. That brings up the average overall compared to low rank state schools.

Although I agree that the average student at one of those schools is much better than one at a lower ranked school, I think there is a false equivalency at play here. Enrollees in Math55 are not representative of all math students at Harvard.

In my experience, the average student of a prestigious institution is just as good as an upper decile student from a decent university. That said, the top end of those at top colleges are truly world-class. At the end of the day, these universities have historically educated the elite: there is discussion to be had on legacy admissions and paper-mill research groups that pad the resumes of high school applicants with research of little merit.

don’t mean to detract from the conversation, but isn’t math 55 just elementary algebra and analysis? surely this is insufficient at the vast majority of schools to constitute a math degree

algebra, analysis, topology. That is about what the average mathematics curriculum consists of.

Maybe we have different definitions of average, which seems to be a hacker news bias, schools in the top 40 are not average by definition

, but many many schools offering math degrees don't even offer classes beyond that level.

> different definitions fair enough. certainly some bias from me, here

but, i’d still be stunned if introductory algebra, analysis at a baby/papa rudin level, and some point set topology would be sufficient enough to be called a math degree