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I personally think the difference in MIT's student body as of now compared to a student body composed under a purely merit based admissions wouldn't be very large. I have no evidence to back up my claims other than just logic. This is the way I think about it:
-An institution wants to enroll "talented" students but at the same time wants a "healthy mix" of students.
-Say we have two students, student A and student B.
-Student A is slightly more talented than student B. (Of course you can't quantify talent, but if you put the two students side by side and look at their GPAs, SATs, Classes Taken, Extracurriculars, Accomplishments, and other factors you can be reasonably sure that a student is more talented than the other.)
-Student B gets in because of some form of preferential treatment.
My point is if you have different standards of admissions for different demographics you will have a less talented student body, because situations like the one above (which I don't think is unreasonable) will occur.
@ Pebbles, I don't think MIT's admissions are broken. I'm merely trying to argue that preferential treatment results in a less talented student body. I really think there is a difference, and that it can't be ignored- it may be somewhat negligible but to say it doesn't exist is what I'm trying to argue against.
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