<p>“Personally I wouldn’t go so far as to say that adcom are deliberately deceitful.”</p>
<p>I agree. Most of them I would put in the morally obtuse category. Our elite universities are not places that admit a lot of people “not like us”. It is a self-perpetuating, overwhelmingly politically correct culture where underlying assumptions are rarely if ever seriosly questioned.</p>
<p>I suspect working in admissions can be particularly difficult because the facts on the ground simply do not comport with the operating premise - see Percy Skivins post. Add to that the business pressure to beat Harvard, CalTech, Michigan, and Hopkins to the available talent pool and it is small wonder there is turnover.</p>
<p>The adcom I’ve met have a wide humanitarian streak. They are the furthest thing from NOKD (“Not Our Kind Dear”). Are they pragmatic about development admits? Yes, but beyond that it’s game on, can we change the world outlooks.</p>
<p>Besides, HYP, CalTEch and MIT don’t lose that many true thoroughbreds. If anything, they are drowning in talent. They aren’t sweating the ones who got away.</p>
<p>Bookworm –
I’m not saying or implying that Marilee should be a role model…she made a terrible error in judgement that will follow her for the rest of her life. I’m not saying that she can, or should, be easily and quickly forgiven. There are consequences for her actions that she will (rightly) have to face.</p>
<p>However, despite all of her msitakes and lies, some of Marilee’s “less stress” college advice is good and informative. What I was attempting to emphasize is that all of Marilee’s advice should not be ignored because she screwed up. Is she a hypocrite for telling applicants not to lie on their admissions essays when she herself fudged her resume? Yes. But her mantra of “tell the truth” on college essays still rings true, perhaps even more so now. From Marilee’s issues, applicants can see the effects of misrepresenting themselves. Lies always “come out in the wash” and will be revealed eventually.</p>
<p>Did Marilee Jones do wrong? Yes. Does she deserve to be punished for the things she did? Another yes. However, regardless of whether our personal mistakes were/are as grave or as serious as Marilee’s, it is important to keep in mind that we all do make mistakes.</p>
<p>You can’t assume that the very tail end of the distribution on a single measure will contain diversity. Two examples where males dominate:
height
math problem solving ability (I can include this because I don’t have a university presidency to lose.)</p>
<p>But:</p>
<p>I don’t know why this should upset us. There are many important skills involved in being a scientist or engineer. Presumably there are other important skills in which women or even (gasp!) minorities might dominate the high achievement tail.</p>
<p>As long as we are afraid of the data, though, we will never know. I keep hearing that women may have softer SAT’s going into MIT, but they have higher GPA’s or are doing better in their course work. Really? If I had the data to show this, I’d be shouting it from a rooftop right now!</p>
<p>The problem will all the fluff and obfuscation around admissions is that we don’t really know if the qualities MIT admits on are the qualities that important for success.
They are trading off analytical ability, creativity, leadership in group projects, and pure persistence in getting things to work, in what is almost certainly a seat-of-the-pants way.</p>
<p>CAdream,
It may not be a result of “being afraid of” the data, but perhaps too early to get representative comparisons going, or at least concluded. I’m not afraid of the data, because, like you, I also acknowledge the <em>tendency</em> of males to dominate in mathematical ability (percent of total population). But since MIT has the globe from which to choose, those females who can match & perhaps surpass some male admits may be those represented at MIT, CalTech, and analytical departments in several universities. </p>
<p>QUOTE:
“The problem [with] all the fluff and obfuscation around admissions is that we don’t really know if the qualities MIT admits on are the qualities that important for success.
They are trading off analytical ability, creativity, leadership in group projects, and pure persistence in getting things to work, in what is almost certainly a seat-of-the-pants way.”</p>
<p>No, they wouldn’t know direct connections between such qualities and <em>career</em> success, but they may have done some systematic observations of how those qualities (or the absence of them) affects MIT classroom productivity, engagement, excitement, problem-solving. In fact that is what I had heard, informally: that MIT was particularly interested in the importance of creativity as an element of engineering problem-solving, as it was observed to be needed and formerly too lacking. (That is from someone who worked recently at MIT.)</p>
<p>“The adcom I’ve met have a wide humanitarian streak.”</p>
<p>Yes and that wide humanitarian streak is one of the things that never gets called into question. When the adcoms are looking for “change the world outlooks” they invariably have a direction in mind.</p>
<p>For instance I sort of doubt someone who had a passion for protecting our borders from illegal aliens and spent their Summers patroling with the Minutemen Project would by vewed as favorably as say the kid who worked in soup kitchen even though some of the folks in line at the soup kitchen might be there because they lost their job to an illegal alien. That is just a guess of course.</p>
<p>I’d also guess that teaching NRA gun safety classes or picketing an abortion clinic with a right to life group wouldn’t fit the adcoms definition of humanitarian or “our kind of admit”.</p>
<p>Of course most kids who would do those things would also have the good sense not to mention it on their application if they seriously entertained getting into the school so some slip the net. But then there are the folks who just sort of have a general bad attitude to working for free either because they can’t afford that little luxury or because they feel that if the local school needs painting and landscaping the tax payers can foot the bill instead of doing less useful things with my tax dollars. These bad attitude folks likely selfselect out of applying to these elite schools altogether.</p>
<p>One of the results of this broad humanitarian outlook the adcoms at Americas elite universities have is that they end up with a student body that looks like America but doesn’t think like America nor represent broad economic diversity. Look at the student body at any of these schools and you will see a near total dirth of kids from families making in the $40-80K range. These schools are beginning to wake up to the fact that they are losing this demographic to the state schools and to institutions further down the foodchain lavishing “merit” aid on these working and middleclass kids. But of course it gauls them to no end that they too might have to in effect lower their prices to get them.</p>
<p>“they may have done some systematic observations of how those qualities (or the absence of them) affects MIT classroom productivity, engagement, excitement, problem-solving. In fact that is what I had heard, informally: that MIT was particularly interested in the importance of creativity as an element of engineering problem-solving, as it was observed to be needed and formerly too lacking. (That is from someone who worked recently at MIT.)”</p>
<p>I think this would be interesting. Interesting enough to be published or at least to make it into a report. The lack of such publication makes me think it either hasn’t been done rigorously, or did not result in the “right” answers.</p>
<p>By the way though, this is such an interesting subject. I’ve been coaching Odyssey of the Mind for a few years now, and it’s amazing to me how 10 year olds can be coached to increase their creativity.</p>
This is what higherlead is responding to, cheers. This sentiment can come from both the left & the right. It’s pretty widely known that the faculty & administration at US universities lean heavily left, while our citizens are pretty evenly split down the middle. That’s why HL says they don’t think like America. I think it’s safe to say that an adcom would look more favorably on a kid who states she “worked to raise awareness of immigrant rights” or “worked as an advocate for LaRasa” than a kid who states she “volunteered to teach English to new immigrants” or claimed “300 donated hours of babysitting for my church’s immigrant support group.” The latter is simply too pedestrian for some, even though it could be easily argued that it is a much more valuable contribution to struggling immigrants.</p>
<p>My opinion is based on a couple of data points only --but the former adcom I know do think like Americans, for heaven’s sake. They are solid midwesterners who wouldn’t distinguish between community services to/for immigrants as right wing/left wing–though they might take exception to Minutemen volunteers or NRA advocates.</p>
<p>I don’t have the dark view that hl has. In my experience, Adcom are a unusually good hearted, moral, fair minded bunch–as a rule–versus say the adcom at Goldman Sachs where NOKD rules the day, every day.</p>
<p>cheers - You think those are extreme views not just different views and yet millions of Americans hold them. Some of those views might even manage a slim majority depending on how exactly you phrase them. For instance I am pretty sure a majority of Americans are opposed to illegal immigration and right to life/right to chose split is essentially 50-50. Judging from the number of conceal carry laws passing state legislatures at least parts of the country are pro-gun. But all are extreme for our elite colleges and universities and people who hold them are “not like us”. So under the banner of diversity their apps would go in the trash bin.</p>
<p>What kind or sort of diversity is that? And if that is the kind the system is set up to promote what does that say about openness, frankness, honesty of the people running the system?</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t tell the Ivies or anyone else they have to or even ought to admit people whose views they don’t agree with but I would suggest they be a little more honest about it. They might have fewer people lying to them on apps if they lied a little less themselves about what they were looking for in an applicant.</p>
<p>“fair minded bunch–as a rule–versus say the adcom at Goldman Sachs where NOKD rules the day, every day.”</p>
<p>Interesting. So I guess a Republican shouldn’t bother applying for a job at Robert Rubin and John Corzine’s old stomping grounds? Rubin was Co-Chairman of Goldman sachs when Bill Clinton tapped him for his chief economic advisor and then Secretary of the Treasury. John Corzine also held high level position in Goldman and the firms top ranks are full of democratic party contributors.</p>
I’m not sure that there’s any ideological discrimination going on the admissions process, and I suspect that the liberal leanings of incoming students can be related to the larger numbers of East Coast and California kids who apply to top schools.</p>
<p>When I applied to MIT, I was a card-carrying fundamentalist right-winger, and I didn’t hesitate to talk about my church activities in my application. It clearly didn’t impact my admission, and I didn’t even feel particularly out of place when I came to MIT (other than the general out-of-placeness that came from being on the heathen liberal East Coast in the first place).</p>
<p>According to the MIT Facebook stats, as many MIT students consider themselves “conservative” as consider themselves “very liberal”.</p>
<p>There are lively Republican clubs and Christian groups on all the Ivy campuses. I think the admissions officers whatever their preferences are like to see political and religious diversity on campus.</p>
<p>Re post 1256:
I don’t think so. In this case, Ivies is used interchangeably with “elite.” I submit that MIT is elite. See Higherlead’s post 1247:</p>
<p>Good point hl, but you’ve missed mine. Rubin graduated from Harvard, LSE and Yale. He was Super-OKD at GS with those credentials.</p>
<p>Likewise, Corzine, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from UI, with an MBA from UChicago, making him OKD at GS. </p>
<p>Find me the third tier MBA who works at GS–in an executive position.</p>
<p>Anyway, you’re not going to convince me that adcom at MIT, Caltech and HYP are evil liberals who hate conservatives and deliberately bin their apps. Gun advocates might get binned depending on their view–although I went to a private university with lots of young men who loved to hunt. I don’t believe Marilee is part of some massive conspiracy. She was a lone liar supported by a institution with lax vetting procedures. End of story.</p>
<p>I was using Ivies synonymously with elite and certainly MIT is as elite as you can get. Tech and Engineering schools in general though tend to be less political and draw a more conservative student body than other universities. That is a generalization of course and I am sure there are exceptions. One of the reasons for the more conservative student body is that the kids drawn to engineering seem a lot more likely to come from working class or middle class blue collar backgrounds - the sons and daughter of plumbers and mechanics, carpenters and contractors, the kind of kids who need to know they can get a paying job when they get their degree. Again that is a generalization and though I cannot cite the studies i know they exist. The science kids kids on the other hand might be a little closer to their counterparts at other elite schools in socio-economic terms.</p>
<p>When somebody says the student bodies of elite schools are more liberal than the US population in general because they are disproportionately from the NE and West Coast they may just be seeing self-selection at work. Conservatives may find the admissions game at elite schools distasteful? </p>
<p>Why do you think MIT and CalTech aside so many of these elite schools are having increasing difficulty attracting high calibre male students? Could it be the gender gap in politics? 17 and 18 year old boys are not the sort to tell you what you want to hear if they don’t believe it themselves, James Dean’s fault no doubt and they may find the process of proving their broad humanitarian commitment cloyingly annoying and simply opt for the state u and saturday football games instead.</p>
<p>BTW it is not my intention to sidetrack this discussion away from MIT, but I think the whole Marlee thing is bigger than just MIT. Certainly she is and was a figure in the whole admissions debate.</p>