molliebatmit

I'm not trying to be vague here, but the data is the property of the registrar & co., not the admissions office, which is probably why it's not in my hot little hands right at this moment. (Mmm, delicious data.) The registrar doesn't release male vs. female GPA data, as it does not release any GPA data at all.

I will repeat: my understanding, from those who have in fact seen this data, is that the female student GPAs are higher than male student GPAs, even taking differential major choice into account. If you don't trust me to not make this kind of stuff up, I apologize.

BlkBltDad

barberconcerto was making an excellent point. Then:

FWIW, you had the argument on the facts. You then killed your post with what is little more than a "nyaa-nyaa". Women weren't "oppressed" on MIT's campus when I was there 27 years ago or elsewhere in academia and I doubt it got worse after I left.

afan

MIT somehow seems to attract a response to its admissions decisions that I do not see at the other top universities. It seems to go like this "I am a high school student, and I know what the admissions criteria of MIT should be. If the deans and faculty at MIT do not do what I believe they should, then it is proof that they are either incompetent (do not know what they should be doing with admissions) or dishonest. By the standards that I believe are appropriate, I should be admitted. If I am not, then there is something drastically wrong with MIT."

To point out the obvious:

1. Jones did not unilaterally decide the admissions policies at MIT. She was influential, but ultimately broad policies on admissions are made by the faculty.

2. If the quality of students were declining, due to efforts to recruit more female or minority students, as some posters claim, the faculty would notice and demand changes in admissions practice.

3. MIT admits a little over 1/10 of applicants. If you fire Jones, and replace every person admitted with someone else, about 80% of applicants will have been denied admissions both times. (actual admit rate is a bit over 10%, but you get the point). So even if you replace her, and radically change admissions practices, MIT will still admit ~10% of applicants and most who were denied will still be denied.

4. MIT is being HONEST when it says it is not just grades and test scores. Strangely when the admissions decisions reflect this, they are accused of dishonesty.

5. This will have no effect on the future of MIT. Jones did not teach courses, do research, or run a lab. The education MIT students receive will remain outstanding. I can remember several of my professors from college, but I never had any idea who was head of admissions. I got an admission letter, that I assumed was signed by him - it was a long time ago, so I assume it was a him. That's it.

Kamikazewave

Kemet please don't bring out that "hogwash" again (it seems everytime I use an * I get my post deleted, while other * words from some other users remain...).

That list of what MIT looks for is the same as what every other college says they look for, and really doesn't give much into answering the real questions about "what kind of class are you trying to compose this year." Also, a lot of people fit the category that's described there. What do they use to further break down applicants?

I'm not blasting MIT. It's just that every college is pretty tight in admissions, but MIT's claim of openness seem exaggerated to me.

Kamikazewave

Also, the trustees pick the next admissions officer. I'm sure that they picked Jones agreeing with her philosophy. Thus, Jones was merely carrying out the wishes of the MIT Trustees.

siserune

MIT's affirmative action policies almost certainly have opposite effects on the male and female admitted pool --- an upward effect on female performance and a downward effect on the male statistics.

It is difficult, because of the smaller female and URM applicant numbers that drive AA in the first place, for the admissions office to race-balance the female admit pool or to gender-balance each race pool. The only solution is to over-admit Asian and white (and possibly international) women and over-admit URM men. MIT can also try to admit applicants that fall into two categories, i.e. to give double preference to URM women, but these are rare enough to be a secondary effect.

Assume that the distribution curve of admissions credentials is the same for all race/gender combinations, with the only difference being the number of applicants --- i.e. there are more white men with 800 math SAT's than Latino women, but the proportion of 800 to 750 SAT scorers or 4.0 to 3.8 GPAs is the same within all populations. Assume also that the correlation between high-school credentials and performance at MIT is the same across all groups. Then any admissions-balancing policy such as AA must lower the male performance and raise the female performance for the reason given above.

oasis

Really? I still prefer MIT's admission system to Stanford's mystical method of selecting students any day.

barberconcerto

Maybe opressed was a bad word...maybe. But they definitely have not been as encouraged in science/math fields.

sanguine99

I feel terrible for the best applicants who work their asses off in high school and then lose out to someone who is less qualified but happens to be a minority. Affirmative Action is a complete sham. Elite institutions should embrace meritocracy and stop assembling classes with "balanced demographics". If a person is qualified they should be accepted because they deserve it.

krica205

Last time I checked, the "best applicants who work their asses off in high school" get into at least one of their top schools.

Don't make it sound that in trying to assemble a culturally diverse class, schools are committing some wrong. Qualified people are always rejected because of numbers. Every single student admitted into an elite college deserves to be there.

Ben Golub

siserune -- that is a seriously insightful and clever argument. Kudos.

differential

Another point I thought about is how the times are different from before. I admit for fields like theoretical/experimental physics, chemistry, mathematics (applied instead of experimental), being able to study hard, etc etc as has been cited in this thread is important.

But aren't the sciences changing as well? Some of the skills that are crucial in new fields might require things that aren't necessarily rewarded in the traditional sense. Especially in Biology, which like it or not will have its true glory revealed in this century. MIT has emerged as a powerhouse for bioengineering in the last few years.

Another thing I think is that MIT is a school of Engineering. Engineering requires context to advance. How do you know what problems to solve if you aren't familiar with the problems? The vast majority of problems don't lie in a textbook but are derived from real world experience. In this context, bringing in people from different backgrounds to form a diverse net that covers a lot of society, and then giving them all a first rate education seems more productive to MIT's mission in the long run.

HappyPoet

FWIW, this is what MIT's previous Freshman Crew coach told us about MIT admissions:

There are five categories that a student is rated on, and the scale is 1 to 5.

The categories are: Academics (GPA, course load, teacher recs), Athletics, ECs, Test scores (APs, SATs, ACT, contests etc.) and the Essay.

A score of 2 in any category means immediate denial.

After totals are computed, then other factors play a role, such as gender, AA, demographics, etc.

HappyPoet

Sorry, I should have added that not having a recommendation from the Athletic Dept does *not* hurt one's chances, but having one does give athletic students a chance for extra points.

siserune

Ben, thanks for the thumbs up. The idea is not hard to come by if you have ever spent quality time at 77 Mass Ave, Cambridge and noticed the demographics.

The phrasing of the argument (post #471) might obscure the fact that it remains true even if the women have an amazingly strong "self-selected" distribution of credentials that is better than that of the men, and even if the minorities have a better distribution than that of the whites, Asians, rich people, internationals, etc. I think everyone believes that the minority distribution is in fact weaker for both men and women, but that would only magnify the size of the effect. What brings the effect into existence is that there is, for whatever reason, a shortage of URM in both the male and the female applicant pools who would be admitted under a procedure that is race-blind within each gender.

Question for Ben or Joe or anyone who has been on a tech-school admissions committee: what does a "self-selected" (more than the men) female applicant list look like? There is no huge difference in the male vs female yield, but the women are admitted at much higher rate even at Caltech.
What features of the credential distribution account for this, beyond the general idea of credentials declining less steeply as you go down the list of women?