PwnzDeLeOwnz

You shouldn't have to make an effort to accept a balanced class, that's my point. If you do, then yes I said it was my belief that you would have a less talented student body. Hypothetically if you have 1 girl applying to MIT for every two boys, and you assume that male and female applicants are equally talented, then trying to strive for a 1:1 M/F ratio will make admissions easier on girls and harder on guys.

When did I say that LauraN? Did you even read what I wrote?

Anyways it was nice debating with you guys.

barberconcerto

I don't think that the argument of "Admitting less qualified girls" (if, in fact, that is what's going on...which I don't believe) will be an issue much longer. MIT is taking steps to reduce the gender gap in science and engineering that is societal, and this is good. When the gap has closed and everyone is on an equal footing, they won't have to do that anymore. But for now, for how our society is RIGHT NOW, it is essential to get more girls into science because they have traditionally not been encouraged into these fields.

I'm a white girl from SC, 2360 SAT scores, 13 AP classes by the end of this year, and I was waitlisted at MIT but will be attending Stanford next fall. Clearly, less qualified girls aren't just admitted for the hell of it. I realized that SAT scores aren't the end-all-be-all, but I know that I could handle MIT and am "qualified" to be there; but, the competition with the other white girls (and the rest of the applicant pool, for that matter) was/is very very tough.

Anyway, what MIT is doing is necessary and good. Try to have a good attitude about it. It's hard to do when your admission decision letter doesn't say what you want it to, but trust that MIT is doing what is best for MIT. Why would they do otherwise?

collegealum314

Will student A be more successful as a biologist or student B? 17 is a VERY young age to be judged so minutely.

But for argument's sake let's say that holds. OKAY. Mr. PwnzDeleOwnz the Senior Admissions officer has decided that Student A is "a LITTLE more talented" than Student B. Maybe he went to his concert.
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Let me give you an example of Harvard/Stanford admissions to demonstrate how a lack of objectivity can give bad results:

Person A:
1600 SAT (perfect, old scoring)
generally 800's on SATII's
USAMO qualifier (top 160 in country through two rounds of Qualifying Exams for the US Math Olympics team)
AHSME score: about 145 out of 150 (this is the first Qualifying Exam for the US Math Olympics team)
top 5 violinist in the state
research: INTEL semifinalist
many state and national math/science awards
perfect student, took most advanced curriculum (took number theory/group theory senior year)
soccer team for 3 years-average player, made varsity
personality: softspoken
ethnicity/gender: Asian male

Person B:
high 1400's on the SAT
700's on most of the SATII
AHSME score: 70 to 80 out of 150
-started a bunch of clubs, in one case founded a club which took over a cultural festival that another club was already running in order to take credit for it--sort of a "hostile takeover" I guess
-has reputation for being a BS artist among students
-generally good student, can memorize but not good at reasoning so gets mostly A's
-had trouble in calculus, getting a "B".
tennis team for one year (JV)
personality: very agressive
ethnicity: Asian male
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Person B got in everywhere (Harvard, Stanford, Princeton) while Person A got rejected at these three places. Person B goes to Harvard while Person A goes to Case Western Reserve University. After going to grad school at Stanford in engineering, Person B decides to quit engineering and become a concert violinist with a well-known professional orchestra.

collegealum314

I think the question of preferential treatment for women and URM is separate from the general question of the value of objectivity in admissions. Besides, the URM issue is imposed on MIT by federal law, isn't it? For the record, the women who went to MIT from my high school were not any less qualified than the males.

My arguments were pertaining to who gets in among non-URMs. For a school like MIT, I think they should take in who looks smarter and more motivated based on test scores, grades (not just GPA but who is the best student in the classes), awards, taking the maximum difficulty offered at one's high school, looking for opportunities outside of school to challenge themselves, any outstanding musical talent (which I consider an intellectual activity.) Recs are perhaps most important as long as they ar in line with the other awards. Leadership should only be a small component and only be tested by something like student government where other students actually have to vote for you, not things like starting 500 pointless clubs. If someone is poor and has to work an outside job, then I think admissions should be a bit easier, but their recs should still indicate that they are one of the best people that had ever come out of their high school.

shawtysqrpants

Well said barberconcerto.

Corroborator

Well there must be some merit to the original posters argument to create such a stir

wired_LAIN

I always thought that MIT was one of the most meritocratic colleges. In fact that's one of the main reasons why I want to go there. Compared to what other colleges are doing, I don't see how anyone can say that MIT accepts "athletes like crazy". I know that if you're the captain of the crew team at my school, you're guaranteed in at schools like Princeton and Stanford. Not at MIT. Same with nationally ranked tennis players and basketball players.

Anyways, since we seem to be using personal anecedotes in this thread, I don't know about the OP's school, but the students from my school who've been accepted to MIT over the past several years have all been amazing people without any exceptions.

And SAT scores don't mean anything.. I mean whos smarter: A) a person who makes a couple of mistakes (maybe because he stayed up late the night before researching a computer algorithm that interests him), like 2+3=6 or something equally trivial, and ends up with a 760 on his SAT Math section,
or
B) a person who spends months taking SAT prep classes, retaking the tests over and over again until he is able to get 800 every time?

poxpox

"You'd think, though, that with such faulty admissions policies, MIT would cease to be such a math/science powerhouse... its blatantly weak student body really should have no business sweeping the Putnam competition."

Putnam Competition is not dominated by MIT at all. Harvard and Caltech are the top players.

The following table lists Teams with First place finishes (as of 2006 competition):

First place Team (s)
25 Harvard
9 Caltech
5 MIT

collegealum314

MIT had half of the top 25 and 25 out of the top 77 finishers in the Putnam...pretty sure that is more than anyone else.

collegealum314

I always thought that MIT was one of the most meritocratic colleges. In fact that's one of the main reasons why I want to go there. Compared to what other colleges are doing, I don't see how anyone can say that MIT accepts "athletes like crazy". I know that if you're the captain of the crew team at my school, you're guaranteed in at schools like Princeton and Stanford. Not at MIT. Same with nationally ranked tennis players and basketball players.

Anyways, since we seem to be using personal anecedotes in this thread, I don't know about the OP's school, but the students from my school who've been accepted to MIT over the past several years have all been amazing people without any exceptions.

And SAT scores don't mean anything.. I mean whos smarter: A) a person who makes a couple of mistakes (maybe because he stayed up late the night before researching a computer algorithm that interests him), like 2+3=6 or something equally trivial, and ends up with a 760 on his SAT Math section,
or
B) a person who spends months taking SAT prep classes, retaking the tests over and over again until he is able to get 800 every time?
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good post...completely agree.

Perplexitudinous

I think most college admissions officers would want students to find a happy medium between the two extremes of "preparation." SAT scores provide a standard yardstick and are most useful if every student does his/her best, gets sufficient sleep the night before, and perhaps studies a moderate amount for the test. Even if you're much more interested in other things (which you probably should be :-), the SAT should be respected as one important part of the college application and I don't think it's TOO much to ask students to study a few hours per week a month or two before the test. (Note that I haven't mentioned SAT prep classes - they're expensive and unnecessary; books are widely available and economical.) I think the MIT website says it best:

http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/...ts/index.shtml

poxpox

MIT math is good but not the top. Besides, there are about 200 students at MIT math departmen each year and about 20 in harvard math department ( &Caltech). Still, the very top 1st places are dominated by Harvard, Caltech teams. MIT comes after Harvard Caltech, Princeton.

There may be more students intereted in Math at MIT, but the very top mathematicians are always from Harvard, Caltech, & Princeton. That is why no one from MIT ever won Fields medal even though MIT math is 10 times bigger.

collegealum314

There is a post on the Putnam Contest results...go to the link.
results:
http://www.math.harvard.edu/putnam/2...lts/index.html

You will find that the top placings in the Putnam are dominated by MIT people. The reason MIT only got 3rd is that the team competition is based on combined score of a 3-person team whose composition is determined before the competition. 3 of the top 5 individuals on the Putnam are from MIT, but only 1 of those was designated as being on the official team. The winning Princeton team only had one guy in the top 5.

Before 2000, Harvard had more people in the top 50 on the Putnam than MIT but things have changed since then. There was a top American math guy in the early 2000s who was really more interested in computer sciene. He worked in the MIT media lab since the age of 10 and decided to come to MIT. Since then, it seems that it has become in vogue to go to MIT for the top math people in the U.S. I don't know if this is what started the ball rolling, but the math people all know each other from the math olympics camps in high school so this may have been the cause. Prior to 2000, MIT had 1 or 2 in the top 10 every year but generally all of the top math people were from foreign countries.

Also, I don't know where you get your numbers, but there are more than 20 math majors at Harvard. (Do you mean there are 20 math majors graduating every year? Because if you do mean that, then there are way less than 200 math majors graduating every year at MIT. The most popular major at MIT, EECS, has about 250 people graduating every year. About 5 years ago, it was more like 600 per year in EECS. With a graduating class of 1000, there's no way MIT has 200 math majors graduating per year.)

As for the Fields medal, Harvard has had 2 undergrads go on to win the Fields Medal and Princeton has had one. CalTech and MIT have had zero. I don't think that means anything. Most of the American Fields Medal winners went to mediocre colleges for undergrad.

Ben Golub

What a nice silly thread to come back to.

Obviously MIT is becoming more Harvard-like and silly in its admissions. They still admit the very top academic superstars to sweep the Putnam, but also admit a whole bunch of academically weak students (by Caltech standards) for balance reasons. That's not bad but it's true. Let's swallow that and get over it. In between those academically weak admitted students and the Putnam superstars, there are lots of good and sometimes even superb kids who get rejected while academically weaker kids get in. That makes people mad and drives threads like this one.

To pebbles -- it is possible to rank people at least coarsely by intelligence in a way that splits MIT students into a few distinct groups. Take off the debating hat for a second -- do you really disagree with me? Do you think the average URM admit is intellectually at the level of the Putnam winners?

collegealum314

Ben...I wasn't trying to make any point about the quality of the student body or justifying the admissions process--just that that MIT has been getting more of the Putnam superstars than any other college lately. Poxpox was asserting otherwise.