<p>Does anyone have links to degrees and majors selected by male and female students. I seriously doubt, for example, that many males are enrolled in the “Women Studies” major. What percentage of the women admitted to MIT graduate with an engineering degree or one in the math/physical sciences?</p>
<p>sly_vt: I agree with you 110%. It’s just that when you start saying things that are obviously wrong,</p>
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<p>it becomes odd. I know you probably meant that statistically, there aren’t that many women leading corporations, etc. but that slight change in wording makes a huge difference. If we start accepting inaccuracies as facts, we can’t move forward.</p>
<p>Mootmom,</p>
<p>You asked a few posts ago why so many people care. I think the answer is that it isn’t just current students and potential students that are interested. There are at least as many grad students as undergrads, and also as many visiting researchers and postdocs. And then you have all the alums. These people all care deeply about MIT, and what it represents in terms of excellence and scientific integrity. Ms. Jones has been annoying the community for quite a while by implying “good enough” is the same as “excellent” , and implying that good intentions toward making the world a better place is enough, when in fact, it can be very, very hard to make progess in science and engineering and truly make the world a better place. </p>
<p>When Ms Jones then throws gasoline on this smoldering irritation by blithely adding a PhD to her name, (when all but the undergraduates here probably know how much work and sacrifice those letters mean) well, yes, tempers flare!</p>
<p>Yale Daily News reports
<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/20971[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/20971</a>
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<p>A Healthy Attitude to have! :)</p>
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<p>It is a sad day indeed when MIT becomes complacent about its role in society and relegates itself as just another institution.</p>
<p>For what? ** For scientists, engineers, and thinkers of all kinds**
For whom? ** For all mankind**</p>
<p>Well, at least we’re not getting too grandiose here! :)</p>
<p>You know, it’s just a university. It’s not the only place to get an education, and not all graduates are destined to change the world. Let’s keep it in perspective.</p>
<p>Leading Change
<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/hr/rewards/ex_past/2001_awards/LCscripts.html[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/hr/rewards/ex_past/2001_awards/LCscripts.html</a></p>
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Too bad she built her career on a foundation of lies.</p>
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Haha, it’s MIT…I doubt there are many students of either gender enrolled in “Women’s Studies.” In fact, I’m not even sure there’s an actual degree-awarding women’s studies program. (There are definitely some classes in the subject, I’m just not sure you can major in it. It’s not even listed on the registrar’s page.)</p>
<p>Anyway, some relevant info can be found here: <a href=“http://web/registrar/[/url]”>http://web/registrar/</a>
There’s enrollment data, enrollment data for women specifically (although not for men specifically) and data about degrees awarded…you’ll have to do some number crunching to get the info you’re really interested in, but the raw data is all there.</p>
<p>“Haha, it’s MIT…I doubt there are many students of either gender enrolled in “Women’s Studies.” In fact, I’m not even sure there’s an actual degree-awarding women’s studies program. (There are definitely some classes in the subject, I’m just not sure you can major in it. It’s not even listed on the registrar’s page.)”</p>
<p>That was the point - LauraN. But, you happen to be wrong - there is a degree program in such - they brag of such!</p>
<p>And, your link doesn’t work.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago there was a thread - based upon the concept of a lottery for admission to elite schools by the author of the book, “Paradox of Choice”. It was his position, that after an initial screening of qualifications, a lottery could yield an equally good “class” for these elite universities. The majority of posters disagreed. I read many posts describing the effort, influence and results of the Admission’s process on the student body. </p>
<p>Yet, here we have evidence of dishonesty, fraud, etc. by the Dean of Admissions and no one wants to admit that it may have negatively impacted the selection process and student body chosen by M. Jones.</p>
<p>Either the admission process is influential or not?</p>
<p>Amherst and Williams have very active programs to recruit minority applicants to their schools. If, next year, one of the heads of admissions is found to be dishonest in some way, will this have made a difference in the admissions policy that exists now? I think not.</p>
<p>Those schools want more balance and diversity in their student bodies and the schools are the richer for that. Knowledge is not purely from books or labs, it’s cultivated by interactions among students. </p>
<p>At MIT in particular, a lot of problem solving is done by student- initiated study groups. I propose that diversity in thinking strategies and viewpoints makes those study groups much better learning environments.</p>
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You make a very good point. </p>
<p>I think many people have downplayed Ms. Jones’ role in admissions far too much. Certainly we can agree that some decisions would have been different without her tenure - she herself claimed that before her time, ~10 percent of accepted students would not have gotten in.</p>
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Yes, you make a good observation. </p>
<p>Whether that is true or not, though, I would rather have an admission’s director who had some academic experience be the one to either make this evaluation or be the one to implement it. Ms. Jones presented herself as such, and because that is now known to be false, it calls into question both her qualifications and conquent decisions.</p>
<p>reflectivemom: Everyone even remotely connected to MIT–including any and all “chums”-- got the cya memo. I doubt we’ll be hearing much more about MJ in the press or anywhere.</p>
<p>I propose that “diversity” in religious and political affiliations makes study groups much better learning environments, but for some reason the admissions office pays no attention. Why are only certain kinds of “diversity” credited? You have the ridiculous situation where someone who is Peruvian has the “right” kind of diversity but someone who is Korean doesn’t even though they look about the same. Gay and transgendered people (who are especially good at looking at a question from “both sides”) would also bring even more diversity but they are not given a special leg up (yet). I also want there to be more “diversity” on NBA teams - I think they would play better if certain underrepresented minorities (e.g. whites and Asians) were better represented on each team. For that matter, why aren’t the teams set up to have equal numbers of men and women? Why does “diversity” apply to certain things but not others?</p>
<p>My point is just that not many MIT students choose to major in women’s studies, then it’s not very fair to claim that it’s responsible for women taking “easier” majors.</p>
<p>Also, apologies about the link, that was the internal link for people already on the MIT network. Try this one instead: <a href=“http://web.mit.edu/registrar/[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/registrar/</a></p>
<p>The process matters (to some extent) but that doesn’t mean that one particular person matters. Jones did not solely set the policy nor implement it.</p>
<p>^ I think it would be interesting for people at MIT to actually go back and evaluate what decisions she was involved with. Certainly she wasn’t doing nothing all day, everyday…</p>
<p>To be fair, both Laura and reflectivemom are right – there’s a program in Women’s Studies at MIT, but it’s under “special programs”, and is a major departure rather than a major. Students who wish to major in Women’s Studies would actually have a degree in Course 21 (Humanities); five students in my year graduated with degrees in Course 21, and it’s a safe bet that not all of them had major departures in Women’s Studies, and that not all of them were single majors in the humanities.</p>
<p>I don’t know what M. Jones meant by “spark.” It cannot mean that students who exhibited spark but did not have the conventional high SATs high GPA were somehow subpar. It might mean demonstrated passion.<br>
It is interesting how much weight is invested in GPAs, which are highly subjective (good behavior, nicely done projects…) and SATs which really test knowledge at the 10th grade level at best (and which many high achievers ace in 7th or 8th grade).
Chicago, easily most posters’ favorite college for its intellectual atmosphere (and the equivalent of Caltech in this sense), is notorious for de-emphasizing SATs as an admission metric and putting lots of weight on the essay. I suppose the essay is expected to demonstrate spark; but so far, I have not seen anyone bashing Chicago or calling into question the qualifications of its admitted students.</p>