<p>how important is minority recruitment at MIT?</p>
<p>^^ ducktape’s clone maybe lol</p>
<p>lol… I’m tapedDuck, theres a ducktape, and now there a duckedtape… was ducktape your first choice, too???..</p>
<p>anyway… I thinks its kind of important but its not a huge factor</p>
<p>…hasn’t this been discussed many times? it’s kind of like the does-being-a-girl-help question…</p>
<p>WHERE DID ALL THESE OTHER DUCKTAPES COME FROM??</p>
<p>In answer to the OP, use the search function, but in summary, it’s moderately important, though not overwhelmingly so.</p>
<p>to ducktape: they all want to be accepted like you and get a personal call from Ben!</p>
<p>lol…I WANTED A CALL FROM THE ADMISSIONS STAFF!! <em>pouts and goes to change his s/n to ducktaper</em></p>
<p>to the OP
Yea, its sort of important but everyone accepted under AA is just as qualified as anyone else.</p>
<p>i think it’s a lot more important than it should be-i mean you see urms with 1900s getting into MIT, and there’s no way an asian could get in with that kind of score. Also, “qualified” when it comes to MIT admissions is a loose term-according to the blogs, ~70% of the applicant pool is “qualified” to attend MIT, but when I see kids I know who made USAMO getting rejected and URMS who have done practically nothing getting in it feels mad wrong. Btw I’m an admitted student who happens to be an indian male, so I’m not bitter or anything, this is really an objective opinion. In short, if you’re a URM and have let’s say ~2000 on the SAT and a decent GPA/average SATs you will get into MIT. Also, to say that people accepted under AA are just as qualified as anyone else is counterintuitive-if the people who get in AA would have gotten in anyways, which is what “just as qualified” should mean, then why have an AA policy?</p>
<p>^^ wow you don’t have a clue do you, try coming and living in my neighborhood and see how easy it is to focus on and get 2200s on the SAT. I’m not saying its right or wrong but historically URMs tend to live in “not so pleasant environments” where getting a 1900 is a big deal. We don’t all live in the suburbs and go to good school were 2200, 2300 is a common score. In NYC where i live some schools are so bad that there are two or three police officers commissioned in each classroom. Grades are far from important to those kids, they’re trying to make it home safe, and you best believe there’s not ORMs in those schools. So for someone to come from somewhere like that and get a 1900 or 2000 on the SAT at a school where 1200s and 1300s are common, and 60%-70% of the kids graduate maybe they deserve a chance. To me overcoming those odds shows A LOT! more about character than any science Olympiads ever could. Maybe it has nothing to do with that. Maybe everyone isn’t a good test taker, maybe they had a bad day, maybe you don’t know whats going on in their life or why they were accepted. And yeah I’m a URM but don’t think I’m trying to defend myself. I could not list my ethnicity and still be competitive at top schools but thats because I got lucky. I get to go to a good private school on a soccer scholarship, but not everybody’s me. Not everybody gets break that I got, but maybe they should be given one.</p>
<p>^^^not to start a debate or anything, but to say that they’ve done practically nothing, to me it just seems like wow if you only knew what happens in projects or ghettos. Making it out is a big accomplishment, going to college is even bigger.</p>
<p>Just putting this out there… but maybe economic position and geographical location should be considered over race in AA? Makes more sense to me, to be honest.</p>
<p>^^ yea actually i agree, i was thinking the same thing</p>
<p>what about height? XP shorter people are less likely to be selected in higher leadership positions XP</p>
<p>akybaky, ur right. Where you come from and what you have to put up with on a daily basis just to go to and from school safely should be taken into account. RACE should NOT. What if some white/asian kid were going to that school you speak of? They put up with the same BS the other URMs do, and yet they wouldnt get any help in the admissions process. Like was said before, home life/economic position/location/other hardships should be taken into account in the place of race.</p>
<p>Furthermore, as far as I understood, the whole AA thing was not originally instated to help out less fortunate people, but to help increase diversity. To me, that’s just plain stupid. Less fortunate people deserve extra help (regardles of race), but equally fortunate people (who happen to be of a particular race) don’t deserve any more help. Really, it’s just racism. And it’s no more right now than it was before.</p>
<p>^^ yea thats why i don’t necessarily think it should have to do solely with race but more like with what heerad said.</p>
<p>sorry if i was misunderstood but that’s what i meant-context is important and should be considered-the whole what you do with what you had thing-but I know urms in my town who are pretty wealthy and stuff that get in on basis of AA-that’s what i had the problem with. The thing is that AA targets “historically disadvantaged peoples” without seeing if they are currently disadvantaged or not.</p>
<p>I agree that AA policies need to be reevaluated- instead of evaluating on the basis of race, why not on basis of socioeconomic status? If anything, I think that would bring greater diversity of opinion to a college campus than simply race. Additionally, I’d think it would lend greater weight to the whole idea of “context” that’s being so strongly tauted by admissions committees recently.</p>
<p>Obviously, a major problem with this is quantification- it’s easy enough to say “well, I’m 1/4 African American, 1/2 Native American, and 1/4 Pacific Islander” but it’s harder to say that “well, my dad makes X amount of money, but I live with my mom, who makes Y amount of money, and I go to a crappy public school…” It just gets really messy really quickly.That, and how do you account for kids whose socioeconomic position has changed throughout their lives? I mean, I did not live in the greatest neighborhood when I was younger, but my dad’s done really well as I’ve gotten older and we live in a good part of town and I go to a pretty good school.</p>
<p>Really, the only way I can see it working out is if every applicant (or counselor, I guess) was REQUIRED to complete an essay/form which would allow the applicant to give a statement on any extenuating circumstances while requiring the applicant to also divulge their parents’ income (basically, you’d end up using financial aid documents in admissions). And then we get into a whole debate about being “need blind.”</p>
<p>College admissions is a pretty hard business to reach perfection in.</p>
<p>once you get into the other stuff, things just gets too complicated and somewhat unnecessary for all that work. Some people might be like " just include it in the essays or something" but most people have other things to write about. so much for “evaluating in context” when there isn’t enough context to evaluate for fairness anyways.</p>
<p>btw ducktape: what do you do at petsmart ? or was it petco?cashier or do you actually get to touch the animals like cleaning the cages and tanks and stuff?</p>
<p>they could always make the financial info optional, so if a student felt that they were going to be judged for admission based on teh number they put down they could refuse to do so. a required essay would be a bit too much i think. I mean, if you really do come from a wealthy family, what do you say when asked “Have you ever been thorugh any financial hardships that have made life difficult?” They’d be screwd for the essay. And there’s already a place for additiona info.</p>
<p>If colleges asekd how much parents made, and about how much each contributes to the applicant per year (even rich parents dont help out muhc) I think it would really put into context how much students have to work against. But as was said above, this then raises the question of need blind.</p>
<p>There’s no easy solution, but whatever route college admissions takes in the future, it seems from this thread there is a number who believe that things need to change somehow.</p>
<p>@Rainy- Technically, I’m a cashier. However, I clean the store during opening and closing, clean the adoption center (read: clean cat cages), and do other miscellaneous stuff around the store. It’s not too bad. I actually really like cashiering as long as I don’t have to deal with any massive jerks. And even then, it’s tolerable.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, where did that question come from?</p>