<p>I think some here will find these blog entries from MIT interesting:</p>
<p>[Diversity</a> or Merit? | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/diversity-or-merit]Diversity”>Diversity or Merit? | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>[In</a> Praise Of Holistic Admissions | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/in-praise-of-holistic-admissions]In”>In Praise Of Holistic Admissions | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>“When we admit a class of students to MIT, it’s as if we’re choosing a 1,000-person team to climb a very interesting, fairly rugged mountain - together. We obviously want people who have the training, stamina and passion for the climb. At the same time, we want each to add something useful or intriguing to the team, from a wonderful temperament or sense of humor, to compelling personal experiences, to a wide range of individual gifts, talents, interests and achievements. We are emphatically not looking for a batch of identical perfect climbers; we are looking for a richly varied team of capable people who will support, surprise and inspire each other.
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Put another way: we are not looking for the thousand students who aced the math SAT. Or the thousand students who won some biology award. Or - for that matter - the thousand students who come from poor, underrepresented backgrounds that make our hearts bleed. We are looking for the best mix of all these students who will together constitute a terrific class. And in assembling this class we consider many, many, many factors holistically in our process.
This is what we mean when we say we value “diversity.” It means we want a lot of different people, from a lot of different backgrounds, to come to MIT and to learn from each other.
One of the most important things about college is its role as a socializing institution. College is a place where you meet all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds and you learn from each other. It is, properly constituted, an environment which fosters intellectual, ideological, and social cross-pollination.”</p>