College Confidential - View Single Post - MIT Admissions Have Become A Complete Joke

Maxwell1864 · 03-01-2009, 10:50 PM

I'm an MIT alum, EECS (course 6) class of 1968, so have had 40 years to consider what it meant to attend MIT. At our 40th reunion there was general agreement that most of us would not be admitted in competition with today's applicants - even though our class of 800 was 20% smaller than today's entering classes. For most of us, being an MIT undergrad was the hardest thing we've ever done, yet all of us would do it again in a heartbeat. Of course, people who attend reunions self-select and those who have great memories might tend to be over-represented among reunion attendees, but I was on the reunion committee and talked to a random sample of about 100 former classmates and those who didn't come simply had conflicts or couldn't afford it in this economy.

What impresses me about this thread is that a significant number of very smart, very articulate, and impressively open-minded people with ties to MIT or Caltech have invested an enormous amount of time in this debate about admissions policy. I hope some of these posters will consider jobs in MIT or Caltech admissions because I think their voices are cogent and passionate. But like all jobs that try to predict the future, college admissions is extraordinarily hard. And there is obviously no single approach that can be proven best.

I was a professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Physiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for 17 years. I sat on the MD/PhD admissions committee for most of that time. I've seen a lot of extraordinary applicants and I hated having to choose among them, but I would never advocate making such choices on pure numerology. We just wanted to admit the "best" men and women we could get. But we all accepted that "best" was decidedly subjective. Furthermore, this subjectivity is vital both for the school and the applicants. It's why people, not machines, make these decisions best.

So my bottom line is that the wit and civility and keen intelligence that characterizes this thread (at least the 18 pages I read) would be far better invested in solving bigger, more pressing, problems. The real world is in trouble; we need you out here.

03-01-2009, 10:50 PM	#535
Maxwell1864 New Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 7	I'm an MIT alum, EECS (course 6) class of 1968, so have had 40 years to consider what it meant to attend MIT. At our 40th reunion there was general agreement that most of us would not be admitted in competition with today's applicants - even though our class of 800 was 20% smaller than today's entering classes. For most of us, being an MIT undergrad was the hardest thing we've ever done, yet all of us would do it again in a heartbeat. Of course, people who attend reunions self-select and those who have great memories might tend to be over-represented among reunion attendees, but I was on the reunion committee and talked to a random sample of about 100 former classmates and those who didn't come simply had conflicts or couldn't afford it in this economy. What impresses me about this thread is that a significant number of very smart, very articulate, and impressively open-minded people with ties to MIT or Caltech have invested an enormous amount of time in this debate about admissions policy. I hope some of these posters will consider jobs in MIT or Caltech admissions because I think their voices are cogent and passionate. But like all jobs that try to predict the future, college admissions is extraordinarily hard. And there is obviously no single approach that can be proven best. I was a professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Physiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for 17 years. I sat on the MD/PhD admissions committee for most of that time. I've seen a lot of extraordinary applicants and I hated having to choose among them, but I would never advocate making such choices on pure numerology. We just wanted to admit the "best" men and women we could get. But we all accepted that "best" was decidedly subjective. Furthermore, this subjectivity is vital both for the school and the applicants. It's why people, not machines, make these decisions best. So my bottom line is that the wit and civility and keen intelligence that characterizes this thread (at least the 18 pages I read) would be far better invested in solving bigger, more pressing, problems. The real world is in trouble; we need you out here.
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