<p>Do they do it? Like yellow asian (chinese, jap, korean, filipino, etc.) and brown asian (indian, bengali, paki, etc.) </p>
<p>Also are all asians expected to have amazing sat scores, or at least better than other ethnicities??</p>
<p>Nance has said that Asians are held to the same standards as everyone else, and aren't treated any differently.</p>
<p>He also said no one would believe him, but there you have it. :).</p>
<p>Other schools should have a bananna/twinkie category for those of us who are pretty much all American. Shoot, I'm more redneck than asian.</p>
<p>But anyway, coming from MIT, I'm willing to believe they don't use affirmative action or anything similar. Sure, if an African American is a victim of racism MIT is bound to take that into account, but that's not the same as affirmative action.</p>
<p>MIT is historically one of the greatest proponents of affirmative action.</p>
<p>I would recommend taking a look at Bryan</a> Nance's blog, he's the Director of Minority Recruitment at MIT, and is partially responsible for doubling the amount of minorities accepted in the EA pool.</p>
<p>I would specifically like to direct you to this</a> entry, which discusses the reasoning behind asking for ethnicity and racial informaton on the application.</p>
<p>If you have any more honest questions, I'm sure Bryan would be more than happy to answer them for you. You can post a comment on his blog, or e-mail him at <a href="mailto:bgnance@mit.edu">bgnance@mit.edu</a>.</p>
<p>I never really considered what MIT was doing to be affirmative action (at least until just now since they used the word themselves). In their words they are just trying to look at a person in context. It's not like they automatically make generalizations of a person because they identified themselves as an American Indian, regardless of whatever the rest of the application says.</p>
<p>Affirmative action in my understanding was the lowering of standards for an underrepresented minority; basically admitting someone just because he's a minority.</p>
<p>So sorry for the misunderstanding, it's just that I've almost always heard of affirmative action in the negative context (point systems, etc.). The phrase just has too many connotations.</p>
<p>"Affirmative action in my understanding was the lowering of standards for an underrepresented minority"</p>
<p>They do that for females.</p>
<p><em>raises shield against flames of wrath to come</em></p>
<p>@PheonixFire: Not a problem. You are correct in that some universities do lower their standards for under-represented minorities. MIT is not one of those universities.</p>
<p>@chibearsfan17: That is not a battle I'm going to fight today. :P</p>
<p>Oh, not you again.</p>
<p>chibearsfan: I'd advise you to not go there, but seeing as how you already did and I have lots of stuff to do today, I'll just say one thing and leave it at that, unless you feel like responding with some of the horribly offensive comments I know you're capable of, like maybe that my opinion is invalid because I'm "ugly":</p>
<p>You are wrong. And I'd appreciate it if you could decide if you are going to automatically assume based on my gender that I'm ugly OR stupid, then pick one, and stick to it.</p>
<p>That is all.</p>
<p>LauraN, if you got into MIT, regardless of gender, you are certainly not stupid, and you obviously have quite a keen memory. You're probably not ugly either. I'd classify very few people in this world as ugly. Maybe Saddam after he was found in the cave...can't think of too many girls. I usually find shallow girls ugly I guess, and I wouldn't put you in that category. You also seem to have only remembered your original misunderstandings from my old posts and not my explanations. I can be bad with words sometimes, sorry. Accept my apologies if you have not already. Regarding the female thing though, if the accpetance rates by gender have remained about the same since last year, then it seems to me to be only logical that standards are somewhat "lower" for girls. I mean, if they have 3x the accpetance rate of guys, the only way the standards for each gender to be same would be if female applicants to MIT were 3x better than male applicants. I'm perfeclty comfortable with saying they're as qualified or even more qualified than males given the evidence. But THREE TIMES more qualified? I guess you'd have to give me proof for that one.</p>
<p>chi- I'm sure you have a point (an unoriginal point that's been beaten to death), but the fact that you bring up your sense of injustice toward MIT female applicants in irrelevant discussion is pretty telling. PM me with some new (less exaggerated) statistics if you're looking for a discussion.</p>
<p>I realize completely that this topic has been "beaten to death" on these boards, but that does not make it "irrelevant discussion". The poster wanted to know what the aspects fo MIT's affirmative action policy were, and to ignore the gender aspect is to really beat around the bush and offer an incomplete answer to phoenixfire's inquiry. Pebbles, if my statistics are exaggerated (they may very well be, but I saw them in multiple threads), I'd love to see the real ones so I don't sound like an idiot, :-/</p>
<p>No comments on anything. Here are the statistics. <a href="http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2005/cds2005.html#c%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2005/cds2005.html#c</a></p>
<p>I remember Ben said that the female applicants could kick most of the male applicants ass.</p>
<p>vu_preuss, thanks for the stats man. Sorry pebbles, instead of saying three times as many guys, I should have said 2.75 times as many.</p>
<p>I know you're trying to be sarcastic and stuff and it's in my nature to give you the last word but good god, it's MIT, I can't let that slip. You can do simple math can't you?</p>
<p>12 into 27.5</p>
<p>hey... u guys included a lot about the gender issue... but i meant ethnicity. the other info is interesting though!</p>
<p>My "simple math" says 2.75 times as many guys applied and that the male acceptance rate was 2.34 times as high. "2.75 times as many" doesn't make much grammatical sense if we're talking percentages rather than physical quantitites, therefore I was talking about male applicants v. female applicants. I guess I should have clarified. Sorry if I'm not smart enough to go a school as prestigious as MIT, but I can usually do my simple math ok. </p>
<p>to snowgirl: I'm glad you find it interesting. AA is so multi-faceted, especially like a school at MIT, that it reaches far beyond race. Gender is an aspect, socioeconomic status is an aspect, legacy status can be an aspect, and at schools as selective as MIT, very minor things can be an aspect. Let's say the school of music needs another bassoon player because they already took all they need for clarinet players. Maybe a bassoon player with poorer stats gets taken over a clarinet player in order to round out their acceptance pool. There are tons of reasons a school will pick a "less-qualified" applicant over a "more-qualified" applicant because they want a certain feel about their freshman class. It truly is fascinating stuff.</p>
<p>What does 'three times as qualified' mean :confused: ... i didnt know you could quantify such things as being qualified to attend a school ?</p>
<p>And I think the correct explanation to the issue is that MIT takes more females than males, but that does not necessarily mean that they are less qualified. It simply means that for guys MIT has to reject many qualified applicants while for girls they don't have to. Both groups are equally well qualified, however. It stems directly from the statement - "there are more qualified applicants than there are places". Come on, they have to do that to keep at least a little gender balance. Any guy studying at MIT will probably be more thankful about this than sorry ;)</p>
<p>I have a 'new' (I say it's new, because I haven't heard anyone else mention it) theory.</p>
<p>I don't quite know how to explain what I'm thinking, particularly without sounding like I'm stereotyping males (for the record, I'm male myself). It sorta seems like MIT is such a big name school that more males that think their interested/are interested in engineering/whatever apply. (Can I accept as fact that in general more males are interested in engineering and such?). This would make a much larger number of males apply than females. We have seen many, many times that MIT doesn't accept 'perfect' engineering students, they accept as good of PEOPLE as they can. Perhaps all these males that get deferred/rejected don't quite interest them as much as females?</p>
<p>(I swear I had a point when I started typing, I'm not really sure where it went. Perhaps someone can pick it out?)</p>
<p>"Come on, they have to do that to keep at least a little gender balance. Any guy studying at MIT will probably be more thankful about this than sorry"
i totally agree... a balance is pretty crucial. mit is a small world... and in the world, the female to male ratio is pretty even. perhaps more male students apply to mit, but females are just as qualified.</p>