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Old 04-12-2007, 05:25 AM   #113
sakky
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 11,656
Quote:
Agreed with collegealum, and disagree with sakky.

Look at the Harvard and Ivy threads. People are indignant about Marilee Jones' policies because they are extremely silly in the context of what is supposed to be MIT.

Do we ever see people bashing Harvard on affirmative action and other wacked admissions procedures? Probably not nearly as much as what we've seen on the MIT forum here on CC - where threads like this have popped up since the beginning of the admissions season.
Well, don't you see what you've done here? So basically you are arguing that just because the Ivies were "worse" in the past than MIT, that they deserve a free pass, even though they are still , relatively speaking, less meritocratic than MIT.

So again, I ask, for those people complaining about unmeritocratic issues with MIT admissions, why don't you also complain about the unmeritocratic nature of the Ivies? After all, be honest, right now - who is worse?

Quote:
MIT used to be about admitting the best of the best. In a sense, they've gotten "worse" since new admissions policies have been anything but meritocratic
Well, if you want to take a historical view, then MIT "used" to be little more than just a trade school. For the first half of its existence, MIT was little more than that. MIT didn't become a serious research university that truly did become attractive to the best technical minds until WW2 or so. Heck, I would argue that Caltech became a research powerhouse before MIT did. After all, Caltech was already winning Nobels in the 1920's. MIT didn't win any until the 40's.

But the point is this. Even if MIT's standards have declined from a meritocratic standpoint, like I said above, they are still better than that of the Ivies. Which is why I find it so ironic that somebody using the handle "ivyaccepted" would complain only about MIT's admissions policies.
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