Odds of getting into MIT differ based on gender

FoundDad
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 12:56:25 +0000

I think some of the points above may all be all true and accurate. I don’t think that the intent is to bash MIT’s system and core values.

In one of the blogs by @MITChris he states “more than half the students who apply to MIT every year are qualified for admittance, by which I mean the majority of applicants are sufficiently prepared to do the work at MIT.” He does not state that more than half of the boys are qualified while the girl applicants are all qualified. MIT’s own published numbers have established that boys constitute 69% of the applicant pool. In other words, if you “weed out” the boys who are not qualified, you would still have a significant number of very qualified males that are statistically higher in numbers than the remaining qualified female applicants.

I have seen the argument that girls are a “self selecting” group perpetuated on this forum and by various quotes from MIT admissions. I presume that the concept that is being disseminated is that 50% of the boys are not qualified but most if not all the girl applicants are qualified. This would bring the percentages of qualified male and female applicants (from 69/31 M/F) closer to equilibrium which would make it supportable to have 51%- 49% acceptance rate.

The salient fact remains that the odds are much better for female applicants than it is for male applicants to be accepted to MIT.