<p>Mikalye,
I think it’s arrogant to claim that you can gauge scientific potential in an applicant after approximately an hour conversation. Because I’m talking about kids I know since early childhood I believe I have more information about them then you. Also, wasn’t it you who referred to some kids you interviewed as “only vaguely human”? It tells a lot about you as a person. I’m sorry your opinion can hardly be objective.</p>
<p>And finally, you didn’t provide any data to support your opinion. See PLWT data I provided that gives support to my claim that many more boys than girls demonstrate interest in STEM (not counting biology) in high school.</p>
<p>[Something</a> Wrong with the Sex Ratio : Engineering Schools](<a href=“http://theblueandwhite.ca/article/2011/03/09/19/47/52/something-wrong-with-the-sex-ratio.html]Something”>http://theblueandwhite.ca/article/2011/03/09/19/47/52/something-wrong-with-the-sex-ratio.html)
In the fall of 2009, female students comprised 21.9% of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (FASE). While the statistics indicate that one in five engineering students is a female, in practice, the perceived proportion is much less. In reality, this is not a good representation of the current situation/environment. Statistics Canada shows that in 2004, 50.4% of citizens were female, so it is no wonder that the enrollment numbers seem intuitively unnatural to most engineering undergraduates. This phenomenon is not a well-kept secret, as a recent Globe and Mail article from 2010 explains. The article draws a clear conclusion that in many engineering disciplines, the percentage of female undergrads has been in decline since 2002. For example in Mechanical, only 10% of undergrads are females, down 5% from 2002. Even the ubiquitous “place to find girls” in Civil engineering has declined 3% to 22% over the same time period.</p>
<p>[Gender</a> gap in majors persists | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2006/04/27/gender-gap-in-majors-persists/]Gender”>Gender gap in majors persists - Yale Daily News)
Compared to the ratio in 1978 when women comprised 37 percent of the student body the proportion of female to male students has changed little in engineering, physics and mathematics. Women were 29 percent of engineering majors in 1978, and they are 30 percent today but now they make up about 50 percent of the student body. The percentage of female physics majors was 24 percent in 1978; it is 26 percent now.</p>
<p>Which list of majors is more typical for MIT? Notice the percentages for STEM majors reflect the applicant pool ratio (70-30). I showed in my earlier post that the ratio even more skewed in high school (at best 75-25) in STEM classes, not counting biology). </p>
<p>Now you try to convince me that the girls interested in STEM in high school are so much better than boys that MIT will pick 2 girls for every boy from the applicant pools by gender (because this is what it takes to get to the 50-50 ratio in the admitted students). Im sorry its really hard to believe.</p>
<p>in the tables on page 11
females are majority in courses in:
Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Biology
Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences</p>
<p>males are majority in courses in:
Nuclear Science and Engineering
Aeronautics and Astronautics
Physics
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Mechanical Engineering
Mathematics</p>
<p>It appears that even at MIT gender ratios in subjects reflect the ratios elsewhere. </p>
<p>So, could someone please explain me why is MIT so unsuccessful to recruit more females interested in Nuclear Science and Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, and similar hard subjects if females are so much better than males in the applicant pool? </p>
<p>Why the majority of girls is not interested in hard sciences is a different story. I’m all for changing this situation, but I believe we have to start much earlier than during admissions. Unfortunately, MIT is simply creating artificial, not supported by reality, gender ratios that are not changing the situation.</p>
<p>Because it’s NOT the girls who are uninterested in robotics/math/calculus/engineering who are applying to MIT. Only ~7000 girls applied to MIT this year. Assuming there are 3 million high school seniors any given year, and 1.5 million senior girls (both underestimates), that’s 0.5% of the female senior pool. Obviously a percentage that small does not need to reflect the “overall” female pool. So even though MOST high school girls are uninterested in the hard sciences, those do NOT represent the female MIT applicant pool.</p>
<p>From the same MIT survey you cited, overall 40% of MIT’s students in its School of Engineering are women. And 54% of the MIT students in the school of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences are female. So the disparity in certain specific majors is essentially cancelled out in others, and women are not dramatically underrepresented in engineering overall, nor are they dramatically overrepresented in humanities overall.</p>
<p>I never said that female applicants are “better” than males. You’re missing the point. MIT doesn’t look at the applications and say “okay, who here is the best/highest scoring/most accomplished person?” After determining who’s qualified based on test scores and grades, it becomes “who is the best fit for MIT?” And often, a “worse” woman is a better fit for MIT than a “better” man because she offers a different perspective, experience, or other non-statistical benefit to the campus. Which brings me to another obvious point – you have not read these girls’ essays, and you were not there for their interview. To look at their test scores, grades, and “demonstrated interest” as a community parent is very different from seeing them as an MIT adcom. They obviously met the requirements (in grades/scores) and then got in for other reasons. Maybe their essays showed a side of them that you don’t know, or maybe their interviews were fantastic, or maybe both. But MIT didn’t just look at the “female” checkbox and throw it on the “accepted” pile.</p>
<p>For whatever reason, MIT values a balanced campus and wants to offer a scientific education to women in the same proportion as men, regardless of the ratio of the applicants. We can only guess at why. I’ve already explained my side.</p>
<p>It seems pointless to argue this point any further; it’s obvious that you think women have an advantage in MIT admissions, and I think that this advantage is countered by the self-selecting female pool and the culture we live in. Neither of us is going to change the other’s mind.</p>
<p>Females are also in the majority at MIT in chemistry and chemical engineering; men are in the majority in political science and management, and I could go on forever – it’s not that all majors are at gender parity other than those listed. </p>
<p>Why is it the baseline assumption that outstanding students at MIT would not be found in the School of Science? For some of the majors that are most heavily female, such as Brain and Cognitive Sciences (Neuroscience) and Biology, MIT is one of the best schools in the world, just as it is for engineering. Why would it be problematic for women to choose these majors?</p>
<p>Caltech for years did not practice any sort of gender-based affirmative action, and women were still admitted at almost double the rate of men. Why is it so surprising that this happens at MIT?</p>
<p>PLTW classes have not been weighted as highly as AP courses in the past, and even now in many schools. Thus, a decision to take extra AP courses instead of PLTW might be a saavy decision to a student who needs a high wGPA rank for scholarships and be unrelated to which a student would actually prefer to take. You need to be absolutely sure you want to do engineering before committing to wrecking a wGPA; many girls are not decided in early high school grades.</p>
<p>I would not call Biology a “soft” science at MIT. No MIT undergrad who has taken physics, the math requirements, Org Chem, Chem Thermodynamics, and other required courses for this major would say this. Girls in the past may not want to work in nuclear subs, a dwindling number of nuclear plants, or a roller coaster defense industry, and they may see more growth and flexibility (e.g. location) in medically or biologically related industries. Again, decisions on major may be influenced by various very rational factors in addition to interest. </p>
<p>In the last four years, MIT admissions has gotten it right (judging merit and potential) regarding every application from my kids’ school. (I knew all the applicants well, boys and girls, and they have accepted more boys in this case.) Although I am sure they are not perfect, their process has been one of the best in my (admittedly limited) experience. I definitely saw the “self selection” process in play; many more (weaker app) boys gave MIT a try rather than girls. </p>
<p>I also have to comment on statements made in this forum recently; I caution anyone against assuming to know a student’s economic situation based on the color of his or her skin. On my small street, three of the wealthiest families are Black or Hispanic. (I know that two of these families had brought themselves out of poverty within one generation through hard work and talent; the third couple are both lawyers although I don’t know their background.)</p>
<p>When my daughter visited MIT as a high-school junior, she made arrangements in advance with the physics department to meet with a professor and visit some classes. I believe she met with a post-doc back then, and he told her, “You should come to MIT. Some of my best physics students are girls.” She did end up gaining admission to MIT a year later, and she ended up graduating with a major award from MIT’s physics department. She’s now a grad student at Harvard in High-Energy Physics (HEP).</p>
<p>Here’s my very anecdotal take: I believe that the most talented high-school girls in STEM fields would choose to apply to MIT. What female wouldn’t want to study in a place that is not only top-rate in science but that also avoids gender discrimination? The fact that MIT has such a relatively high percentage of females among the student body makes it attractive. When my daughter applied, she was one of ten students from her large Silicon-Valley high school to apply to MIT. She was the only female in the group, and she was the only student accepted. But I’d also have to say that no one at her high school ever gave her any grief over having been admitted over “some more qualified boy.” It’s just that back then, in that year, it’s fair to say that if MIT was only going to take one, everyone at the school agreed it would be her.</p>
<p>I’d like to thank Mollie for the reference to the recent article in Nature. Let’s all read it.</p>
I do not disagree. I have never made any claim that I have any particular abilities in that area whatsoever. That is not the purpose of the MIT interview, nor to my knowledge that of any other competitive school interview excepting a handful of British institutions. The MIT interview is designed to do something very different. It is also, why I have said many times on this board that the interview is not particularly determinative, and is unlikely to significantly change the admissions decision excepting in a very few and highly specific circumstances. It is also why even the most extreme interview reports come with caveats. That being said, the process is of value to MIT and usually to the applicants.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes it was. In one comment out of the thousand-odd that I have made on this board, I referred to a single applicant, out of the many dozens that I have interviewed as only “vaguely human”. It was flippant, and callous. I did not put anything like it in my interview report for that candidate (where I actually chose to repeat a section of our interview verbatim to let the admissions offers draw their own conclusions). </p>
<p>Obviously, the applicant was completely human. Though it was some time ago (2006 if I recall correctly), I remember that interview very clearly. The applicant could not identify a friend that they had ever made, nor a non-academically assigned activity that involved more than one person that they had participated in while in secondary school, nor a non-physics book that they had read in the past two years beyond what was assigned in class. Clearly he was fully human, and I have taken a huge amount of abuse for that flippant comment over the years. But outside of the interview report, when I was very careful to try to remain clinical, I actually remember him (and only him) as “vaguely human”. If that renders me incapable of providing any valid opinion on this board in your eyes, that I can live with that.</p>
<p>I have been one of the people giving you flak for that comment (mentioned in #88), Mikalye, and have been intending to send you a PM about it. </p>
<p>I have recently started reading a book about Alan Turing and Kurt Goedel. With the appropriate changes, I think you might have given a description of Turing at the same age.</p>
<p>Perhaps the student you mentioned might have Asperger’s syndrome. If so, it appears that it rose to the level of an actual disability–which in my opinion takes it off the table for joking. </p>
<p>I appreciate your remarks in #88. Your post did refer to a single interviewee specifically. I don’t really want to rub this in, but in the interests of accuracy, immediately after your description of the one applicant, you also remarked back on that old thread
</p>
<p>To be sure, I’ve written a few “cringeworthy” things over time. I’ve tried to apologize for them, when I became aware of them.</p>
<p>Of course there is a continuum here. Not every kid is or should be a social butterfly, nor is that something that MIT, or anywhere else is really looking for. I have a lot of sympathy for those with Asperger’s. I have two close family who are diagnosed with Asperger’s. I have had an employee working for me with Asperger’s, who did a great job for me, and of course, even for those with Asperger’s there is a wide range of presentations, and a wide range of social functions.</p>
<p>Though while I would happily hire an employee with Apserger’s (for the right job), I must say that I would struggle to recommend all but a very-high-functioning Asperger’s kid for MIT. MIT offers a very collaborative education, which is designed to prepare people for what are usually collaborative careers. It is exceptionally rare to find a one-person high-energy-physics lab (which was the intended career path of the one 2006 applicant). I have been around a bunch of people with Asperger’s and the specific applicant that I am referring to did not strike me as such, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe he did suffer from Asperger’s. In which case, I still could not recommend him as likely to succeed and thrive at MIT.</p>
<p>That may sound callous. But I really don’t mean it to. Every year I meet brilliant, talented and wonderful kids who are not going to get in. Faced with a 3% international admit rate, MIT cannot take all of the kids who WOULD thrive there. </p>
<p>In 2004, I interviewed a kid who had been totally screwed over by his local private school. He had just landed in this country, knew nothing about the local schools, and went to a school which enrolled him on a course of study that they would have otherwise had to cancel for lack of numbers, despite the fact that it did not prepare him for any top university. That totally was not his fault. Nonetheless, I had to write to MIT and explain that he did not have the preparation that they were looking for. Did he take the most challenging coursework that his school had to offer? Not even close. Was that his fault? Nope. But what is the remedy? Should MIT take him over a student who does have the background that they have been asking for? If MIT was struggling for ways to fill the class, then they could take a chance on him, but that isn’t MIT’s problem. I agonized over that interview report far more than I did with the kid who had never made a friend.</p>
<p>I referred to a specific individual who had demonstrated no ability to interact with any other people as “vaguely human”. I did not mean to offend anyone with that flippant remark, and I apologize unreservedly to anyone I did offend. As to the other remark that you quote, you were taking me out of context, and I want to make the context clear.</p>
<p>On a very regular basis, we get posts from young students (often sophomores or juniors) who are dreaming of going to MIT and who are looking for ways to impress MIT with how wonderful they are. Sadly, we also regularly see folks who misguidedly recommend that the best way would be to spend all your spare time alone in your bedroom studying [insert field here]. I have seen dozens of misguided recommendations on CC, that if you only study for the (say) Environmental Science AP on your own time, as that is the one that your high school does not offer, then that will be deeply impressive.</p>
<p>While that might indeed be extremely impressive, what gets you into any school is the match between yourself and that institution. For a school as deeply collaborative as MIT, spending all of your time alone in your room studying does not demonstrate much of a match. That does not make you any less human, in ANY way, but it does reduce your chances of matching and of getting into MIT. I reread the quote you posted and stand by what I said then: </p>
<p>I don’t think that anyone who read the MIT Admissions web site nor the MIT blogs would come away with the impression that additional solo studying would be helpful for MIT admission, despite advice that might be offered on CC.</p>
<p>However, I must say that the MIT Admissions web site and the highlighted blogs give me the impression that MIT does not particularly like applicants in two groups:
a) the overly studious, and
b) the 2400 SAT I/2400 SAT II/4.0 UW GPA/lots of AP’s group–and not simply that this won’t get an applicant in (ok), but there really seems to be a negative undertone about this group. I’d rather not cite “chapter and verse” from the MIT site about this, but will do so if pressed.</p>
<p>Admittedly, possibly I am overly sensitive, or I am just reading it wrong–however, I doubt that I am the only reader who sees it this way.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, ExieMITAlum, apparently an MIT interviewer, remarked (on another CC thread) about interviewing students who were “robotic clones.” One starts to wonder whether this view is endemic at MIT with regard to applicants who are high scorers on standardized tests/very studious/participants in common EC’s for high achievers.</p>
<p>I feel that it would be better all around if MIT made positive statements about what admissions is looking for, rather than negative statements about those they are likely to reject.</p>
<p>For example, I certainly wouldn’t quarrel with a statement such as “Other things being equal, MIT strongly prefers applicants who enjoy working cooperatively with others.” It’s not as snarky and not as humorous as other formulations, but (despite its comparative blandness), I actually think it captures better what MIT is about. Yes? </p>
<p>I do understand the odds that all applicants face, and the particularly low odds for international applicants–I can sympathize with an interviewer who is likely to interview 100 strong students for every 3 who are admitted.</p>
<p>(Incidentally, my point in quoting your remark was to note that although you had made the comment (ovh) about a single applicant as you pointed out in #88, you immediately followed up with the remark that “There are quite a few of those folks out there.” How do you know this?)</p>
<p>Re #91 by molliebatmit: Meg Urry, who is a Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Yale and Chair of the Department there, has written and collected a lot of information about the situation for women in the U.S. I believe that she was an MIT undergrad.</p>
<p>as much as we like to think we have made progress, we have this disaster:</p>
<p>"Writing a fair-minded obituary isn’t rocket science, but the New York Times botched it anyway.
Yvonne Brill died the other day at 88. She was, in fact, a world-class rocket scientist.
So what did the newspaper lead with?
“She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. ‘The world’s best mom,’ her son Matthew said.”</p>
<p>Admittedly, this was quite a few years ago, but when Maria Goeppert Mayer won the Nobel Prize, the local newspaper headlines read something like “Grandmother wins Nobel Prize.”</p>
<p>I’m a current student and I don’t get the emphasis on collaborative work. It’s surely possible to do well at MIT without working in groups and in least some majors/careers (math) you can do very well without much collaborative work. I don’t get the dismissal of self-studying either. It clearly shows dedication and intelligence both of which are important to success at MIT. I’ve found that self-studying material has been very helpful to me academically yet it carries little to no weight in admissions. I sometimes get asked for advice and I’m conflicted as I think self-studying is a pretty good way for high school students to learn stuff yet spending time self-studying instead of on other things will hurt them in admissions.</p>
<p>luisarose, because you are not the only one here Im replying to, some of my arguments were meant for other people. Im glad that you and I agree that, sometimes, a “worse” woman is a better fit for MIT than a “better” man because she offers a different perspective, experience, or other non-statistical benefit to the campus and For whatever reason, MIT values a balanced campus and wants to offer a scientific education to women in the same proportion as men, regardless of the ratio of the applicants. </p>
<p>molliebatmit, with your MIT education I would expect you to be able to interpret data, and make conclusions about patterns, not a single fact at a time. If you look carefully at the table in the paper I quoted, there is an obvious pattern. Can you summarize it for us?</p>
<p>DDHM, you make a point about AP courses being preferred by girls over PLTW courses. I did some research and found several interesting facts: (1) more girls take AP exams than boys, but (2) boys take more AP exams than girls, on average, and (3) earn higher scores on the majority of AP exams than girls, on average, and finally (4) the girls are a minority on AP exams in subjects like Chemistry, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Calculus BC, Physics B, Physics C2, Physics C1, Computer Science A,
Computer Science AB. Its kind of interesting that boys outperform girls on so many subjects, even Biology. However, my point is that even with AP classes (vs. PLTW) girls are not demonstrating a lot of interest in STEM. </p>
<p>You can’t have it both ways. On one hand, you suggest that MIT prefers females applicants because it wants high percentage of females (btw, what you mean by high? 40, 50, 60, 80%?). On the hand, you say MIT is doing it to avoid gender discrimination. But boys are the ones who get discriminated against with such policies. Why is this okay? Well, I’m arguing it’s MIT right to chose who they want. But be honest about it. Admit it’s easier for girls to get into MIT.</p>
<p>Your daughter is great, but should we generalize from her experience that all girls love physics and are good at it? I believe the data suggests otherwise.</p>
<p>Mikalye, I really appreciated your explanation for that comment. Now that I know more, I am not going to mention this again. However, I believe MIT is lying when it says interviews are not important. In a high stakes admission game, every little factor is significant. I suspect your experience with non-US students is probably different from other counselors’ experiences. However, I am still curious, because you haven’t really explained what you are looking for in evaluating applicants? You said it’s not academic or scientific potential? Than what it is? Ability to work collaboratively? Potential to do harm (e.g., mass shooting)? Although I don’t think you can assess such things objectively, I can imagine we do often sense dangerous people and try to stay a way from them. Is this what you are looking for?</p>
<p>But I am puzzled. How can you judge the ability to work collaboratively? Based on what the student says? Well, the girl who was picked over my son this year is one of the loneliest persons in school, staying away from people by her own choice. She says there is no one to talk with around her, that’s how superior she is in terms of intelligence. However, academically she is still no match to my son who is uniformly liked. MIT thought she was a better fit, while Stanford, Princeton and other excellent institutions thought my son was a better fit. If this is the kind of applicants MIT prefers, my son doesn’t belong there.</p>
<p>What are you trying argue here with all of those AP data, yolochka? That boys outperform girls? You’re just bitter over your son’s rejection.
That’s what you think. You’re obviously biased as a father of your son. Do you know her grades and scores? Did you read her application, her essays? Do you know her life story and character? I am sure the admissions committee saw something in her that you didn’t, because surely, she was not the only female applicant in your area. She earned her spot in the class of '17.</p>
There are more women than men in some of the most outstanding departments at MIT, more men than women in some others of the most outstanding departments at MIT. Women outnumber men in the School of Science, which apparently indicates that they are not interested in STEM, because when we talk about STEM, what we really mean is nuclear engineering. Or whatever we need to pick to ensure that STEM is something boys do.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to be dense, above; I was just trying to determine what, precisely, the dog whistle was. As you can imagine, it’s difficult for me, because I do consider myself a scientist even though I majored in both (!) biology and brain and cognitive sciences as an undergraduate.</p>