<p>No. I see what you are saying collegealum. I see you are saying the women who apply to MIT tend to be qualified at maybe a higher concentration than the males who “give it a shot.” Young women, even at that level of credentials don’t automatically think, “MIT.”</p>
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<p>Ever heard of the word, “spin”? :D</p>
<p>Hey texaspg, been missing your lively voice! Welcome to the “if you ain’t got a 2350 you ain’t s**t” thread.</p>
<p>newhope - it might also work if the last name is Kennedy or Gates but that must be a different thread where we complain about those.</p>
<p>I don’t think MIT discriminates against young men, I think given two pretty equal candidates they’ll take the woman. I’m fine with that. My older son and a good female friend applied. Her grades were a smidgeon higher, his scores were a smidgeon higher. They both had a bunch of first place medals from Science Olympiad. She had done biology research, he had done stuff with computers. She played in band, my son was more one sided, but possibly more accomplished in his field. She was waitlisted (ended up attending Caltech), he was rejected. I think she had the edge because she was female, and frankly I’d have done exactly the same thing if I’d been in that admissions office. I do think that women who apply to the tech schools are by and large both exceptionally well qualified and more sure of their direction than the average applicant. No proof - just what I’ve observed at our high school.</p>
<p>^^ It would be most gratifying if Texas took the Kennedys off our hands. How 'bout a trade? As many Kennedys as fit in West Texas in exchange for fifty million barrels of East Texas crude?</p>
<p>Maybe just anecdotal evidence, but in my D’s class, a few students are applying to MIT, all male. There are several females at the top of the class, but none are applying to MIT. Some are applying to Wellesley, with the intent to take classes at MIT.</p>
<p>MIT doesn’t publish the breakdown of scores among their admitted students, but if we look at SAT distributions, which are available broken down by gender, the difference between qualified male and females does not account for twice as many male applicants as female. A smaller percentage of qualified female applicants apply to MIT, so if they want a balanced class, a larger percentage of female applicants will get in. Girls (or boys) whose second or third choice for a major is outside the STEM fields are more likely to apply elsewhere.</p>
<p>I love how no one seems to be questioning that it’s ok for MIT to want some kind of reasonable approximation of gender balance despite an imbalanced gender pool of applicants – that we intuitively understand that an all-male environment is not appealing – but that some on here are sort of flummoxed by why an institution would want some reasonable representation of different races in their pool.</p>
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<p>Well, I saw it at my high school, which had a pretty good number of people apply to MIT.</p>
<p>Any high school which has a “pretty good number of people” applying to MIT is one of a relative handful of high schools and not really extrapolatable to the population at large. I feel pretty confident in saying that out of the nation’s 30,000 or so high schools, there are maybe a few hundred high schools at most that have multiple applicants to MIT in any given year - representing either high schools in MIT’s backyard, math-and-science magnet schools, exclusive private schools, and very affluent suburban schools. Surely you’re aware that there are a lot of applicants to MIT who come from schools where no one ever has applied to MIT before (and that’s a GOOD thing, and something MIT should encourage).</p>
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<p>Likewise, if a smaller percentage of qualified URM’s apply to an elite college, if they want a balanced class racially, a larger percentage of URM applicants will get in. It’s up to the observer whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s interesting that no one seems to react the same way wrt gender as wrt race.</p>
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<p>My point is that there was enough of a sample size to say that self-selection may be at work. That’s it. I don’t think you can draw any conclusions from a high school which sees maybe one applicant per year. </p>
<p>Also, Caltech’s admission rate is heavily skewed toward females, but they have no AA at all.</p>
<p>"Also, Caltech’s admission rate is heavily skewed toward females, but they have no AA at all. "</p>
<p>This is not completely true. From its CDS, Caltech does consider race, first generation, legacy etc in its admission.</p>
<p><a href=“Redirect Notice”>Redirect Notice;
<p>From the Caltech board, one poster summarized how admissions work at Caltech. People who have worked in the admissions there have commented that it is an accurate representation of the process there.
It is a good summary of a rationale way to choose among applicants with high stats, and I think it is close to what most people mean they say “select the best people” in the math/science/technology area. We’re not talking about taking 2400s over 2300s. And don’t get hung up on the fact they don’t care about non-academic accomplishments here. Focus on how they judge academic talent and potential. </p>
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<p>In response to PG,
Having students of different races can provide different perspectives. Having students of different sexes provides that, but also much more. For one thing, most people don’t yearn for the company of those of other races (hopefully the great majority is open to it, but most don’t yearn for it), while the majority of boys yearn for the company of those of the other sex.</p>
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<p>This.</p>
<p>Maybe MIT needs to do a better job of selling itself to well-qualified female high school students. </p>
<p>I have known several highly qualified science-oriented high school girls, and none of them showed any interest in MIT. I’m not sure why.</p>
<p>Hmmm…could it be because they fear a certain percentage of the male students will doubt their credentials?</p>
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<p>Gender AA is fundamentally no more or less “fair” or “unfair” than race AA. </p>
<p>I think people just don’t want to take the bait.</p>
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<p>I don’t think so. Caltech had the same issue and if they have gender AA now (unclear from PC’s link), they didn’t when I applied. So they had the self-selection issue despite any preference.</p>
<p>Also, in general, many well-qualified girls I talked to found it unappealing. I think campus aesthetics, ridiculous work load, tech atmosphere all were contributors.</p>
<p>This is the link to Caltech CDS.</p>
<p>[Home</a> Page - Caltech Institutional Research and Educational Assessment](<a href=“http://www.iro.caltech.edu/]Home”>http://www.iro.caltech.edu/)</p>