Mismatch caused by racial preferences

[Pizzagirl]

<p>

What this means is that regardless of the wholistic characteristics of the Ivies, the rank/SAT numbers are still exceedingly important and that the vast majority of the time the holisitic part of the analysis is used most closely to pick among already top applicants. There are of course exceptions to this, and each year on CC you hear from a 650 SAT student who got into Brown etc. *But the odds are clearly against unhooked applicants without outstanding AIs. *

</p>

<p>Yes, one typically concludes that odds are against unhooked applicants without super-high stats at places that have sub-10% acceptance rates. Not newsworthy.</p>

[texaspg]

<p>collegealum -
I am ridiculing any notion that females are not upto par at MIT incase you have not read what I said. Pretty much everyone I know who got in had perfect/almost perfect scores. I don’t really care about the ratio and whether MIT admits enough girls. The girls going there will beat the pants off any male in academics if they chose to do so.</p>

[Beliavsky]

<p>

@jusdafacts

I have tried to read through most of this thread. If you get past the rancor, it has got me thinking on this issue.

</p>

<p>The rancor has been almost entirely in one direction, from the defenders of affimative action towards the critics. The critics do not attack the defenders personally for their views.</p>

<p>There has been a lot of female cattiness on this thread, while the men more often try to make actual arguments for or against affirmative action. Some women do too.</p>

[absweetmarie]

<p>I think texaspg’s post was a joke, collegealum314. (Gotta remember those emoticons, txpg!)</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>What’s the gender makeup of the applicant base to MIT? The applicant base is what % female, what % male?</p>

<p>Would MIT be within its “rights”/charter to want to actively encourage more women to apply? Would that be “bias against males”?</p>

[muckdogs07]

<p>Here is the back-up as some have requested regarding the AI (forgive my pathetic computer skills as I did not go an Ivy and also please consider this an extension of my last post so I do not break my promise). </p>

<p>Re Princeton academic index at 228. See dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/01/27054</p>

<p>Here is a quote:</p>

<p>The University, however, takes advantage of the scholastic leeway afforded to athletes by the Ivy League and incorporates applicants’ athletic prowess into admission decisions. While the average Academic Index for recruited athletes is around 214, it is roughly 228 for all enrolled students, according to Director of Athletics Gary Walters ’67.</p>

<p>For the earlier AI index figures for the Ivies from 10-15 years ago and a detailed explanation of the AI see Montclair Kimberley Academy: Search Results<em>counseling/publications/AI-guidelines</em>work</p>

[bovertine]

<p>^^^
Thanks. I’ll check it out!</p>

<p>FYI - if this is the same thing, it isn’t really based on any data. this is the disclaimer at the top of this information -
Disclaimer
The following statements reasonably approximate the Ivy Group’s Academic Index for athletic admissions. The information provided is based on informal conversations with Ivy admissions representatives as well as published institutional research. However, at their best, the guidelines below offer a useful representation—and not an exact codification—of admissions criteria that are not available to the general public.</p>

<p>Basically, this is whatever the person who wrote this thing up thinks.
I didn’t think the schools were actually giving out this stuff.</p>

[bluebayou]

<p>

What’s the gender makeup of the applicant base to MIT? The applicant base is what % female, what % male?

</p>

<p>Last year: 12,443 male, 5,466 female.</p>

<p>Admitted: 891 (7% rate), 851 (16% rate)</p>

<p>Matriculated: 620, 505.</p>

<p><a href=“MIT Institutional Research”>MIT Institutional Research;

[lookingforward]

<p>No, Muck, we do not agree. What the Princeton document* said: is admitted and matriculated atheletes in relation to the schools four previous matriculated classes. And, “not designed, and does not presume, either to be the basis for individual institutional admission decisions.”</p>

<p>What leeway refers to is you can have a sub-AI athlete kid if balanced by the total for that athletic group. Your other eariler link was to mka, Montclair Kimberley Academy, a pre-K-12.</p>

<p>*orig P doc I linked.</p>

[texaspg]

<p>pizzagirl - I believe the reason MIT is considered to be gender balancing is because females get accepted at a 15% rate vs males at 7% rate because of the lower female applicant rate. MIT says their female applicant pool is self selective and I tend to believe them based on the many that apply, get in and don’t show up. Some of the scores of those not showing up, 2380, 2390, 36 (ACT), 2370. One I know who went there - 2350. At least one female I know was rejected with a 36. </p>

<p>People who apply to MIT seem to have really high scores to start with but MIT is looking for a lot more in their applicants. Anyone who got in and is attending deserves to be there.</p>

[Beliavsky]

<p>

@Pizzagirl

What’s the gender makeup of the applicant base to MIT? The applicant base is what % female, what % male?</p>

<p>Would MIT be within its “rights”/charter to want to actively encourage more women to apply? Would that be “bias against males”?

</p>

<p>Congress has explicitly allowed universities that receive federal funds to discriminate on the basis of sex. There are single-sex universities such as Wellesley. There are more women than men on college campuses, and I have read of colleges discriminating against women to achieve rough balance between the sexes.</p>

<p>Someone asked why it matters if MIT prefers women. A school like MIT is training many of the people who will be making scientific and technological discoveries, and if it is lowering its academic standards slightly to achieve gender balance, it may be passing over some applicants who are more likely to make such breakthroughs. I earlier cited a paper showing that SAT scores in 7th grade were predictive of future scientific achievement. Even in the right tail, intellectual differences matter.</p>

[lookingforward]

<p>If we will toss around the word “discriminate,” why not dive in the deep end? Schools with less than 100% acceptance discriminate against someone, a whole lot of them. Discriminate against low scorers, incomplete apps, kids who did not finish hs, kids who wrote poor essays. And more. </p>

<p>Where is this thread going? Just a lot of unloading?</p>

[3togo]

<p>

Someone asked why it matters if MIT prefers women. A school like MIT is training many of the people who will be making scientific and technological discoveries, and if it is lowering its academic standards slightly to achieve gender balance, it may be passing over some applicants who are more likely to make such breakthroughs. I earlier cited a paper showing that SAT scores in 7th grade were predictive of future scientific achievement. Even in the right tail, intellectual differences matter

Well if we believe MIT and MITChris, specifically, the women at MIT are performing, on the whole, as well or better than their male counterparts … so it appears, at first glance, your hypothesis does not hold. That said the comments I’ve seen on performance has been a high level summary level data … GPAs, graduation rates, etc. So, I guess, a deeper dive might find a gender difference at the level when looking for another Gauss. However, if women are given a break in the admissions process the males getting bumped are on the lower tail of the male applicants so they would not likely be the future Gauss either (given your theory).</p>

<p>PS - I turned down MIT as an undergrad and one of the big reasons was at the time it was about 10% female … and I had did not want to spend 4 years in such a lopsided environment … the increase in the female population is a great thing in many dimensions IMO.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>So, the MIT applicant base is 69% male / 31% female.</p>

<p>Since they’d like to get within spitting distance of 50% / 50% since they consider that a goal of their institution (and because what guys want to go to a place that is 69% male?), they admit women at a higher rate - 7% admission for males, 16% admission for females.</p>

<p>Leaving aside the question of yield, that gets them within spitting distance of the 50/50 goal … The matriculated class is 55% male / 45% female. </p>

<p>But they’ve “discriminated” against high-scoring males! There are high-scoring males whose spots were stolen from then by less-high-achieving females! Isn’t that a great social wrong?? Doesn’t that prove evidence of prejudice against males? It is SO NOT FAIR!</p>

<p>MIT has a goal to get some measure of gender balance. Who cares if they “lower their standards” a bit to get in, or if being a female is a micro-hook at MIT … if at the end of the day the students can all still do the work? </p>

<p>How is this any different from the race issue? </p>

<p>EDIT: Just saw Beliavky #1151. I disagree that it’s a “problem” for MIT to “lower its standards slightly” to achieve gender balance - given that there’s no evidence that MIT females are wandering around lost in the dark or anything, and I don’t have that fear-based mentality of “what if”? Well, what if MIT admissions lost the first bunch of students entirely and had to select another class out of its applicants. So what - the same high quality would be there… Splitting hairs at the highest of high quality levels is a fool’s mission, and I’m not going to tear my hair out at the sadness and horrible injustice of some 2400 male being turned down at MIT for a 2300 female.</p>

[sally305]

<p>Beliavsky, just stop. Please. From the CDS data from MIT for last year…</p>

<p>The 25%/75% SAT math scores were 740-800. For ACT the range was 34-36. This is for male and female students.</p>

<p>97% of admitted students were in the top 10% of their classes. This is girls competing against boys for four years of high school.</p>

<p>It is astonishing to me that you cannot stop pushing this “SAT is the only true predictor of intellectual capability” argument despite ample evidence that it is not. Is it because SAT scores are the only way you think you or your kids have excelled, rather than in analysis or creative thinking or problem-solving?</p>

<p>Here is a quote first posted by MITChris from the assistant director of admissions at MIT (also an MIT grad)…obviously, before the writing section was added:</p>

<p>

People make a big deal about test scores. No one seems to believe me when I tell them that when I’m reading an application, I just glance at the test scores to get a sense of them before moving on to the more important parts of the application – that is, who you are. But here’s an example. So, I’m reading this application of a student, a pretty strong student, who’s definitely overcome some challenges recently. I come to the second to last piece in the folder, which is the guidance counselor letter (the last piece is the interview report). The GC makes a big deal of the student’s “scoring the magic 1600 on the SAT.” Now, when I started the case, I mentally noted to myself, “Okay, this student has scores that are fine, let’s move on,” but it didn’t really make an impact on me that the student had “the magic 1600.” Yes, scoring a 1600 is something that you, your school, your parents, and your guidance counselor can be very proud of. But it’s not something I’m going to bust out my highlighter for, circle in big red pen, make it the focus of your case. In fact, I don’t think I have ever in my summary of a student used high standardized scores as an argument to admit that student.</p>

<p>I wanted to share this with you because this case was one concrete example of just how little we care about the small differences in competitive test scores. A student with “the magic 1600” is not implicitly better to us than a student with “the spellbinding 1400.” Scores are one tool we use to help us in admissions. And yes, your grades and test scores (especially your grades) are important. But as I have said in the past, what ultimately really matters to us is who you are, what qualities you bring to the table. We want people who are academically curious and passionate, people who will bring their various talents to MIT and share them with others, people who will be good roommates, good mentors, good friends. We do not admit test scores. We admit people.</p>

<p>Let me tell you one more story that I often relay. I was doing a regional reception in a city a few years back, and afterwards a student – we’ll call her Artemis – comes up to me and tells me that she has a 760 on the Math SAT. As I was about to tell her that her score was just fine, she keeps talking, to inform me that she was going to take the test again, since “clearly” her score was “too low.” I was like, “What!!!” I “ordered” Artemis to not take the Math SAT again, and instead to have a picnic on that Saturday. Because to us, a 760 math is the same as any higher score she could receive on the retest.

</p>

[bovertine]

<p>

The rancor has been almost entirely in one direction, from the defenders of affimative action towards the critics. The critics do not attack the defenders personally for their views.

Nice to hear from someone with a neutral perspective.</p>

<p>

There has been a lot of female cattiness on this thread, while the men more often try to make actual arguments for or against affirmative action.

Following on the first paragraph, this is almost so ironic I have to think it’s a joke.</p>

<p>Plus, I guess my Bayesian statistics generator is off, because unless someone has a moniker like PizzaGirl or Sally most of the time I can’t tell if it’s a woman or a man. I have no idea what gender lookingforward is, and I’m pretty sure texasPG is a fella, but originally I thought he was a lady.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>

People who apply to MIT seem to have really high scores to start with but MIT is looking for a lot more in their applicants. Anyone who got in and is attending deserves to be there.

</p>

<p>Agreed - and I don’t see how it’s any less true for the majority of students at any elite college. They got in – in the absence of true egregiousness (2.0 GPA but daddy wrote a check), they deserve to be there.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>

It seems like you, PG, and others assume that the male-female ratio would be very lopsided without AA. On what do you base this assumption? Perhaps you guys know more about this school.

</p>

<p>Gee,collegealum - the applicant pool is 69% male / 31% male. If admission rates were the same for males and females, then, yes, the male-female ratio would be very lopsided. That seems pretty self-evident. MIT clearly has a vested interest in tilting it more towards the center, which is their prerogative. If they decided they didn’t want to try to tilt it towards the center, that would be their prerogative too.</p>

[absweetmarie]

<p>

@Beliavsky

I earlier cited a paper showing that SAT scores in 7th grade were predictive of future scientific achievement.

</p>

<p>I don’t doubt this. Among other reasons, I expect that the cohort of 7th graders taking the SAT is small and tends to include kids who have demonstrated intellectual gifts that warrant them taking the test several years earlier than normal. I wonder, however, if there are data showing that these future achievers are not finding their way into good programs (whether at top privates or state flagships). I also wonder if there are data showing that MIT is slipping with regard to turning out accomplished scientists. If these data exist, can you show that affirmative action of any kind is to blame? I have yet to hear of a single student destined for greatness who was thwarted in achieving his or her destiny by an admission decision. Anyone have data or even anecdotes along these lines?</p>

[collegealum314]

<p>

Gee,collegealum - the applicant pool is 69% male / 31% male. If admission rates were the same for males and females, then, yes, the male-female ratio would be very lopsided. That seems pretty self-evident. MIT clearly has a vested interest in tilting it more towards the center, which is their prerogative. If they decided they didn’t want to try to tilt it towards the center, that would be their prerogative too.

</p>

<p>MIT says this is “self-selection”-- only very qualified females apply to MIT while the male pool has more longshots.</p>