MIT Track distance

Well their top 7 all broke 25 minutes. I can find you 50 college freshmen who didn't break 25 who ran 9:10 in HS.

Well their top 7 all broke 25 minutes. I can find you 50 college freshmen who didn't break 25 who ran 9:10 in HS.

I can shed light on this as I went to MIT years ago and was the top runner / record holder / D3 national leader / distance captain in my final year.

The first reason you don't see fast times in outdoor is because we almost never get time trial invitationals. It's mostly championships and smaller meets, with rarely good weather. That's New England for you. My college PR came off a slow pace in the rain with a 56 last lap, and that was the best weather I got all season.

The second is because most top runners lose focus to work on other things that they (rightfully) deem more important to their career interests. One top runner stopped training because he was focused on being pre-med. He's an attending neurosurgeon now. Another created a startup and is worth hundreds of millions. Etc. In that same vein, rigorous course loads make it difficult to get in a morning run or enough sleep to recover.

Spending your time at practice instead of saying "yes" to that offer to be a cofounder of Dropbox is a pretty easy decision.

The previous coach did his best with the level of commitment he was given. The team now seems much better, but it's more of a fluke of committed individuals with good momentum of team culture.

An average MIT grad makes significantly more $$$ more by 30 than a top pro runner. Running is stupid to bank your career prospects on unless you're the absolute best. Otherwise, you do it because you love track and love to compete.

Look, I’m not criticizing the MIT guys. They are good D3 runners and they have depth. But for the most part they are mid-14 5k runners on the track. Their only guy well under an 8:30 3k indoors was a 9:20ish 3200er in HS. That is the level of recruit MIT is bringing in. This kid will just be at a different level as a recruit after this year. Not many of those kids opt for D3. But if he chooses to, good for him. I just think D1 is a more logical fit. (And yes, I’m aware that their mid-d kid was a legit recruit out of HS, comparable to a 9ish min 3200 runner, but he’s also the D3 national champ so not exactly a typical MIT recruit).

MIT gets great, Ivy-level recruits and historically has failed to develop them. If you look at their top athletes these past few years, few of them, men or women, have improved by any significant margin since high school. Their team's success is attributable to the school's academic recruiting power alone. That said, it's an incredible school that will open doors for you for the rest of your life if you can get in. And the new coach (this was his first year) is friendly and, due to his youth, may be more in touch with modern approaches to coaching, or more knowledgable about how to get the most out of athletes without grinding them to a pulp. Time will tell. But at least based on MIT's past (lack of) development of top talents, I wouldn't go there if I was focused on big athletic aspirations.

I guess the counterpoint would be, a 9:10 guy is great but probably not going to win anything in his career -- in fact, may never make top 7 at Princeton/Harvard/Stanford. So you need to think honestly about what your focus is going to be and what school works best for that.

Also, big fish/small pond can be a blessing compared to grinding it out as a journeyman at certain D1 programs. I've known 4-5 of those guys and most were injured all the time; none of them competed after college.

Surprised nobody has mentioned Colorado Mines yet. Top notch engineering school with one of the best coaches in the country. Siemers routinely turns signifcantly slower athletes into sub 14/29:30 guys. Probably a little easier to get into than MIT and he would likely get some scholarship money.

Wherever it is he decides to go, do some visits and get a sense of team culture first. A lot of people here seem to forget that college should be both challenging and enjoyable.

Definitely Caltech

You say that you had an "offer" from MIT, and in the next breath you say that you "think" you'd "have been accepted to MIT." What, then, was you "offer" from MIT? An offer for you to apply? (Your statement suggests that you chose Harvard, but the academic admissions standards for recruited athletes at Harvard are significantly lower than they are at MIT.)

I attended MIT in the 1970s, before its athletics department did any recruiting at all, and before the athletics department had any say in the admissions process. Guys like Frank Richardson (class of '77, DIII national champion, national marathon champion, top ten at U.S. Olympic marathon trials) and Paul Neves (class of '83, top-ranked high school 800m (or 880 yards) runner in the country) were not recruited and were unknown to the athletics department when they were offered admission to MIT. (I remember when the head track coach, Gordon Kelly, found out that Paul Neves would be coming to MIT. He had no idea who Paul Neves even was; he found out only when another college coach asked what he had done to get this guy, since Neves had been highly recruited elsewhere.)

I always liked that MIT didn't recruit or give admissions boosts for top athletes, and I was very disappointed when that changed in the 1980s. But I will say that, however much athletes are now recruited and provided admissions assistance, the academic standards for MIT distance runners appear at least as high as the standards for the school overall. A few years ago, longtime coach Halston Taylor, in a message encouraging possible recruits who might be competitive for the team (my recollection is that he mentioned a recruiting standard of around 9:10 for 3200m), said that you still need a math SAT of 800. That may not be entirely accurate, but I'm confident that the majority of MIT distance runners these days (like the majority of successful MIT applicants overall) did receive 800s on the math SAT, and their subsequent academic records at MIT are, on average, consistently and considerably higher than those of most MIT students.

I'd say that MIT is doing pretty well in long distances at the DIII level. It obviously has both advantages and disadvantages in recruiting athletes. On the one hand, over 99% of incoming freshmen are effectively eliminated from consideration based on academic standards: on the other hand, the school is very attractive for bright, ambitious young people, and a high percentage of those who are actually offered admission will choose to enroll there. I think the biggest obstacles for MIT distance runners seeking to maximize their athletic achievement are (1) the brutal academic work loads and (2) the high opportunity costs of going all-in on athletics for students who have so many attractive options.

If the student in question has the academic record for MIT, and if he is really interested in the kind of academic setting that MIT provides, then the possibility of NCAA competition seems like a big bonus. I certainly wouldn't turn down MIT for nothing more than a better chance of a low-14 or mid-29 on the track.

It helps to take pressure off that MIT doesn't do grades for first-years (or at least that was the case when a high school friend of mine went there back in the late '80s).

Yeah, you guessed it. I went somewhere between 5-10 years ago (privacy). I was fast but not insane (I think I'd have been able to run a little under 9:00 for the 3200 as a senior if I had supershoes and did 60+ mpw), but I had 4.0/36. I would have liked to run there, but there's no difference in academic quality between MIT and Harvard. I cared about getting into the best college I could, so I chose the (virtual) guarantee at the other Cambridge school.

I'm not certain, but I believe that it now does "pass-no pass" for the first semester only. But that's actually consistent with the school's effort in recent years to dial down the largely self-imposed pressure that M.I.T. students tend to place on themselves. Two other significant changes have been (1) to put a lower ceiling on the number of "units" (essentially, what are called "credits" elsewhere) that students can take in a single semester and (2) to eliminate the option of earning multiple bachelor's degrees (previously, a student could earn two degrees by fulfilling the graduation requirements for each degree and completing five years of units (credits) within four years, or even three bachelor's degrees (very rare, but not impossible) by fulfilling the graduation requirements for each degree and completing six years of units within four years). There also seems to be a much greater emphasis now on collaboration among students. In the old days, MIT could be a really brutal place for introverted, lone-wolf, and somewhat masochistic students (who were largely just the kind of students attracted to MIT).

Caltech is interesting. We’ve discussed it as an option. He goes to a public school and it doesn’t seem like anyone has ever gone there… plus he’s not sure about going cross country. Same thing for Stanford.

Note, all these schools seem like reaches. It’s so hard these days, which is why we’re casting a wide net. We also don’t EXPECT running to help… but would love if it did. Anyway, if anyone else has any good schools for technology/comp sci on the east coast (preferably close’ish to NY) feel free to make a recommendation. 1500, 4.0 (ap when offered), black belt in tai kwon do, runner as mentioned and captain of the robotics team, has coded a first player computer game and knows Java, c++, python.

Also, is it worth it to hire a personal college counselor? Everyone does it in our town and it seems obnoxious and excessive. But if everyone is doing it…

+1 for college counsellor if you can afford one. It's super helpful to have someone who has been through the process many times before.

My kid is in a STEM major at an ivy-type university (but not running on the team). While it's obviously a bit spendy, I've been very impressed by his experience so far. If you have the opportunity it can be a great experience for someone who thrives on having highly motivated classmates, challenging classes taught by world class faculty, and easy access to undergraduate research opportunities. Most of that can be reproduced at big public universities, and you can get a great education at one those (as I did), but it's all much harder to navigate.

I'm assuming you're at a competitive public school. If it's a feeder or semi-feeder (very good private) it's easier but nowhere near a walk in the park.

Aim for as close to 1600/36 as possible, but 800 on math (or 36s on math/science) is virtually required. The only person I know of who got in without a 800 math had a 1590. I'd also recommend doing some form of activism that looks impressive on paper but doesn't take up much time or energy (since 2020, colleges have hyper-focused (even more) about bringing in a class that fits their social values, and you need play the game). The computer game is good, but he'll be competing against students who basically only code and have reached international levels so he needs to be a little more well rounded.

+1 for what Muller's Ratchet said, college counselors are (quite) useful but make sure you pick a good one. They won't be able to get a weak student into a T5, but they can help with tailoring an application so that a student who'd only get into a T15-T20 gets into a T10 or even T5

Is Chat GPT going to make a lot of comp sci jobs obsolete?

Or will we still see a need for new, innovative and creative code, and GPT will just edit and improve once it's written ?

I've always had tremendous respect for Caltech. Of all the top universities in the country, it's the one that has remained most purely focused on academic excellence, and also most focused on pure science. Its small undergraduate population also allows it to be extremely selective in admissions, and permits more interaction between top faculty members and undergraduates. These days, however, I would have two concerns about the place. The first, and infinitely more important, is that I believe it lacks the academic diversity for a student whose interests change significantly over time. (At MIT, I started out as a computer science and engineering major, and did receive a degree in the subject, but I discovered that I had little interest in computers and much more interest in philosophy, which I took on as an additional major, with a particular focus on philosophy of mind and psycholinguistics. MIT's department of linguistics and philosophy was a perfect fit for me. In later years, I became interested in economics, which was also an exceptionally strong department at MIT. I don't think I would have the same opportunities to pursue those interests at Caltech.)

The second concern is that Caltech is notoriously weak in athletics. In fact, its teams are known almost entirely for their losing streaks, even in the least competitive DIII circles. I have generally thought that's kinda cool, because it further demonstrates Caltech's choice to continue to focus almost exclusively on academics. And Caltech does actually have cross-country and track DIII teams. But I imagine that such an environment might be somewhat dispiriting for a hard-core runner. And I doubt that Caltech is eager to change that.

Please do and report back. 25 minutes is a cake walk for a 9:10 junior in HS by the time they get to college.

MIT track distance? It is just under 1/4 mile, a.k.a. 400m.