Advantage to be a URM?

collegealum314
Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:06:09 +0000

MIT is hard. Like, really. Letting in people who can’t handle it does no one any favors.



This is true.



MIT’s affirmative action refers to trying to find accomplished URMs and encouraging them to apply to MIT – not giving them the easy route into MIT.



Yes, but if that was all they did, then it wouldn’t be racial affirmative action. In the strict sense, if they get a non-URM and URM application, the URM app is favored if they are roughly similar in terms of accomplishments even if the socioeconomic situation is the same. Even if the URM has somewhat less accomplishments, they may still be favored. How much they are favored, of course, varies from school to school, and no one really knows how much they are favored at MIT.

At MIT, like you said, they need to be careful that people can actually do the work. At MIT, unlike ivies, it’s not easy to coast so this term “do the work” actually means something.