<p>From my numbers, a bit under 20% of the applicants were URMs, and around 24% of the accepted students were URMs. </p>
<p>So why the difference? Some part of it is because of affirmative action: we value the cultural, racial, and ethnic contribution that URMs bring to the MIT community. </p>
<p>Another part of it is self-selection. URMs, for example, are very, very underrepresented among pure physicists. So when a URM applies to MIT and wants to be a physicist, often they will have stronger applications OVERALL, because they don’t tend to just sort of apply because they liked physics in high school. It’s very similar to the gender self-selection I described above. MIT accepts a higher proportion of girls than those who apply, but that is in large part due to the fact that girls who apply to MIT tend to really rock. </p>
<p>Another part of the answer is that raw numbers are very misleading. For example, the class of 2014 is 30% Asian, yet only 26% of the applicants were Asian! This would lead you to believe that MIT acts affirmatively on Asian students, which is contrary to the avowed dogma of everyone who posts to CollegeConfidential who thinks that being Asian is the kiss of death 
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<p>The point, always and forevermore, is this: the numbers don’t tell the whole story. For the dozenth time today, </p>
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