Cruel Process

[luisarose]

<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>You’re missing the point entirely. MOST GIRLS don’t love physics and MOST GIRLS may not be great at it. But MOST GIRLS do not apply to MIT. The girls applying MIT are by and large the best of the best of girls in STEM.</p>

[unicameral2013]

<p>yolochka, I skimmed your posts and what people are trying to say is that it doesn’t matter what data you have about girls, as a whole, and boys, as a whole. Let us know when you have data about the female and male MIT applicant pools (probably the top 1% of the population in all those links you posted).</p>

<p>Disclaimer - all of those posts were way too long to read, but I apologize if there is relevant data in there. Somehow though, I doubt there is.</p>

[yolochka]

<p>NO295208

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>

<p>Actually, I’m a mother. Now, you don’t know me at all, yet you judge me and make conclusions. At the same time, you deny me a right to judge and make conclusions about people I know well. So in this particular case, I do know this girl. Compared to my son, she has lower test scores, grades, less challenging coursework, fewer awards and leadership roles, shallow involvement in ECs, no cooperation skills, and as a result no friends. What MIT found in her is beyond my comprehension. MIT was her best success, while my son was admitted by 4 out of 6 highly selective institutions he applied to, and was waitlisted at MIT (rejected only by Harvard). He wrote about the same interests and ECs on the common app and MIT app. There were more room to tell about himself on the common app and the supplements. He refused to embellish and brag, but his achievements spoke for themselves, so that admission counselors from those institutions he was admitted to (Stanford and others) wrote us, his parents, personal letters to congratulate us on raising such an outstanding student. So don’t tell me I’m bitter. I’m proud and happy for my son and his future. Btw, if you looked at my earlier posts you would notice that I raised the issue of gender discrimination at MIT before the decisions were announced. In fact, I became suspicious years ago when I started comparing girls and boys from my town admitted to and rejected by MIT. Then I saw the data in the common data set and it explained everything.</p>

[yolochka]

<p>Dear unicameral2013, if you are an MIT student, you are leaving a bad impression on your institution. By not willing to look at evidence and data you limit your view of the world to those conceptions instilled in you by other people. Just because an MIT admission counselor said so, it doesn’t mean he or she has no stakes in this argument. Otherwise, they would publish the stats for girls and boys in the application pool and among admitted students to prove that they don’t discriminate against boys. But they won’t and they won’t. And asking to me produce such stats shows your arrogance.</p>

<p>If you were a curious person you could’ve learned something new by looking at the data in those links and might have formed you own, informed opinion. I would respect it even if you still disagree with my conclusions. To me, the data point to a striking resemblance of the proportion of girls interested in STEM in the US and the proportion of girls in MIT applications. 30-70 at best. Now, I’m not understanding why the girls would be more self-selective than boys. Top girls and top best boys apply. For every top girl in STEM there are at least 2 top boys, and the ratio is still 30-70. So to get it to 50-50, MIT has to deny admission to some top boys (316 in my calculations), making competition among boys more difficult.</p>

<p>Why is this fact making you and other MIT female students on this forum upset? Why do you get defensive? Is it insecurity or something else? If MIT wants a balanced campus, it advantages females. When many LACs want a balanced campus, it advantages males. Life is unfair. You win in one place and lose in another. Be humble when you win or lose (vs. thinking your are the best).</p>

[PiperXP]

<p>It continues to be hilarious how naysayers ignore context.</p>

[lidusha]

<p>

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.

There were periods in my life before I came to MIT when I was lonely. It wasn’t about feeling intellectually superior. It was just loneliness. I was shy and I was weird. I’m still shy and weird, but I’m not lonely here.</p>

<p>

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.

There you go. And I was rejected by everybody but MIT and Caltech, including the universities that accepted your son. I probably don’t belong there and that might be why I was rejected. Keep in mind that all of these universities have huge pools of intelligent, qualified applicants to select from, even after they eliminate people who aren’t academically prepared or don’t fit in. They can afford to pick by personality, which, yes, shines through in essays, interviews, recommendation letters, and choices–academic and otherwise–made in high school. Read this: [The</a> Match Between You And MIT | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match]The”>What we look for | MIT Admissions)</p>

<p>I think it’s silly to draw conclusions from personal anecdotes about the proportion of girls interested in STEM and the relative quality of female and male applicants. At the same time, I also think that yolochka brings up a good point: as far as I’m aware the average SAT scores (or other stats) of male and female accepted applicants are not published. We don’t have sufficient data to accept or refute the hypothesis that standards are relaxed for female applicants.</p>

<p>Why are people getting upset? You’re asserting that a man had a right to be at MIT that was denied him in order to let a woman in. Some of us think this kind of thinking is wrong and that, at a larger scale, it can lead to discrimination against women in the workplace. It makes me very upset to think that someone might think I didn’t work as hard to be here because I’m a woman. I worked very hard to be here. I am not the best, but I am not less of a scientist for not having an SRY allele. A number of men have treated me like a pretty idiot. It hurts. I hate it.</p>

<p>

Life is unfair. You win in one place and lose in another. Be humble when you win or lose (vs. thinking your are the best).

There you go. Also, *you’re</p>

<p>Fun fact for everybody: yolochka is Russian for little Christmas/New Years tree. Take a break from arguing on the Internet and listen to this Russian holiday song about a little Christmas/New Years tree: [Villancico</a> Ruso (V lesu rodilas’ yolochka) Russian Christmas Song - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkLXbNAlQGo]Villancico”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkLXbNAlQGo) :)</p>

[molliebatmit]

<p>

Why is this fact making you and other MIT female students on this forum upset? Why do you get defensive? Is it insecurity or something else?

In addition to everything lidusha said above, this is an argument that happens over and over on CC. It’s not really because it’s personal – I similarly argue on behalf of minority and underprivileged admits, even though I don’t belong to those groups. (Though it is personal, don’t misunderstand: when your thesis is that women at MIT are unqualified, you are personally insulting every woman at MIT, and you shouldn’t be surprised when people find this insulting.)</p>

<p>

Now, I’m not understanding why the girls would be more self-selective than boys.

And this, in a nutshell, is why people find your arguments incredibly frustrating. Yes, if it were true that the male and female applicant pools were identical, and more women were admitted than men, then cats and dogs living together, etc. But this is not the case, as many people have pointed out to you. If you want to believe that every word coming from the admissions office is a lie, that’s fine, but you have to admit that they have more knowlege of the composition of the applicant pool, and of the contents of individual applicants, than you do.</p>

<p>

Otherwise, they would publish the stats for girls and boys in the application pool and among admitted students to prove that they don’t discriminate against boys. But they won’t and they won’t.

And if the stats were released, and female applicants (or female admits) had higher GPAs and SAT scores? Would that clinch the argument for you? Or would you just move the goalposts?</p>

<p>I’ll quote one more time the special issue of Nature about women in science, which I quoted on the previous page:

[quote]
In one frequently cited study, Christine Wenner</p>

[unicameral2013]

<p>yolochka, I don’t need to spend an hour wading through your ramblings to believe that more men are interested in STEM than women. I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that.</p>

[luisarose]

<p>@yolochka:</p>

<p>

Be humble when you win or lose (vs. thinking you are the best).

</p>

<p>Perhaps you should take your own advice rather than going on about how your son deserved to get into MIT. Do you not see how it’s possible that he just wasn’t a good fit for MIT? Princeton, Stanford, etc. are exceptional schools but they have very different admissions processes than MIT; admission to them doesn’t mean he “deserved” MIT.</p>

<p>And to quote Mollie,</p>

<p>

when your thesis is that women at MIT are unqualified, you are personally insulting every woman at MIT

</p>

<p>EXACTLY why I feel the need to continue responding. I’m not yet at MIT, but I will be next year, and the idea that they relaxed their standards because I’m a girl is insulting to me. I worked extremely hard to get into MIT, as did all admitted girls (and guys). So did many people who were rejected – both male and female – but there just isn’t enough room for all qualified applicants. And I refuse to listen to someone who thinks that I’m “underqualified” or that I took the spot of a more qualified male because I happen to be a girl.</p>

[limabeans01]

<p>Yolo ( oh the irony), it sounds like your son has some outstanding universities to choose from and I know you’re proud of him. You’ve made your point here ( it doesn’t matter if people agree with you or not) and it may be time to move on. Surely the amount of time you are spending on this topic is taking away from your family. Your son may pick up on your “vibe” and feel he let you down somehow ( I know that he didn’t). You have only a few months left with him, time to refocus! MIT isn’t the only game in town and certainly not worthy of “free rent” in your head.</p>

<p>Congrats to your son!</p>

[photodad]

<p>MIT does publish 6 year graduation rates for men and women on its Institutional Research / Students / Retention and Graduation Rates page. Women have a consistently slightly higher graduation rate. So it appears that MIT should be admitting slightly more women, not fewer, if you view graduation as an adequate measure of being qualified to attend.</p>

[molliebatmit]

<p>I found [url=<a href=“RSF Blog | RSF”>RSF Blog | RSF]this[/url</a>] terrific interview today with an author of a recent study on inequality. The study is actually about racial inequality and perceptions of race-based affirmative action, but some parts of it really capture the argument I’ve been trying to make (albeit much more eloquently) about women in STEM as well. </p>

<p>

I asked my interviewees what contributed most to their having the sort of life that they have now. A very large proportion said it was because they had worked hard, persisted, were honest, moral, etc. Even though 99 percent of the interviewees used help at some point in their lives for almost all of their jobs, only 14 percent of the interviewees mentioned that they had received help of any kind. In other words, the help itself was not salient to the interviewees. Most of the interviewees said things like, “I did it on my own” or “Nobody helped me.”</p>

<p>I argue in the book that there are perhaps two reasons why individualist thinking is so pervasive in American culture, not only among whites, by the way. The first explanation is the psychological tendency to see one’s own actions as more important to outcomes than the circumstances that one is in. So the interviewees readily thought about how hard it was for them to get the opportunities that they sought, how uncertain it was in terms of the likely outcomes, and how important getting these kinds of opportunities were for their lives. But they seemed to also think that the very fact that they sought and used help was a demonstration of their own motivation and hard work, not that it was an example of their being embedded in networks of social capital that might not be available to everyone.

The goal of MIT’s admissions policies is not to create diversity in the incoming class, nor to have a class that’s made up of equal numbers of men and women. That’s an outcome, but it’s not the goal. The goal is to strip away, to the best of the admissions office’s limited ability, the effects of the “networks of social capital” in which privileged admits are embedded, and to identify students who would be likely to benefit from and contribute to MIT’s own powerful network of social capital. </p>

<p>This effort has been successful in some ways, but less so in others – the recent study showing that low-income rural students of all races often attend community college or for-profit colleges when they attend college at all, despite being highly qualified, speaks to a gap in the recruitment and admissions process with respect to real economic inequality, not inequality between the top 1% and the top 10% of American families in terms of income. </p>

<p>An admissions process that doesn’t consider the effects of race, gender, income (etc., etc.) is not fair – it allows a thumb to stay on the scales in favor of privileged groups.</p>

[UMTYMP_student]

<p>

@molliebatmit

The goal of MIT’s admissions policies is not to create diversity in the incoming class…An admissions process that doesn’t consider the effects of race, gender, income (etc., etc.) is not fair – it allows a thumb to stay on the scales in favor of privileged groups.

</p>

<p>But hasn’t the Supreme Court ruled in Bakke v. UC Regents and reaffirmed in Grutter v. Bollinger that the only permissible use of race in college admissions is to increase diversity?</p>

<p>

@Justic Powell's opinion in Bakke v. UC Regents

We have never approved a classification that aids persons perceived as members of relatively victimized groups at the expense of other innocent individuals in the absence of judicial, legislative, or administrative findings of constitutional or statutory violations. See, e.g., Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 367-376 (1977); United Jewish Organizations, 430 U.S. at 155-156; South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 308 (1966). After such findings have been made, the governmental interest in preferring members of the injured groups at the expense of others is substantial, since the legal rights of the victims must be vindicated. In such a case, the [p308] extent of the injury and the consequent remedy will have been judicially, legislatively, or administratively defined. Also, the remedial action usually remains subject to continuing oversight to assure that it will work the least harm possible to other innocent persons competing for the benefit. Without such findings of constitutional or statutory violations, [n44] it cannot be [p309] said that the government has any greater interest in helping one individual than in refraining from harming another. Thus, the government has no compelling justification for inflicting such harm.</p>

<p>Petitioner does not purport to have made, and is in no position to make, such findings. Its broad mission is education, not the formulation of any legislative policy or the adjudication of particular claims of illegality. For reasons similar to those stated in Part III of this opinion, isolated segments of our vast governmental structures are not competent to make those decisions, at least in the absence of legislative mandates and legislatively determined criteria. [n45] Cf. Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, 426 U.S. 88 (1976); n. 41, supra. Before relying upon these sorts of findings in establishing a racial classification, a governmental body must have the authority and capability to establish, in the record, that the classification is responsive to identified discrimination. See, e.g., Califano v. Webster, 430 U.S. at 316-321; Califano [p310] v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. at 212-217. Lacking this capability, petitioner has not carried its burden of justification on this issue.</p>

<p>Hence, the purpose of helping certain groups whom the faculty of the Davis Medical School perceived as victims of “societal discrimination” does not justify a classification that imposes disadvantages upon persons like respondent, who bear no responsibility for whatever harm the beneficiaries of the special admissions program are thought to have suffered. To hold otherwise would be to convert a remedy heretofore reserved for violations of legal rights into a privilege that all institutions throughout the Nation could grant at their pleasure to whatever groups are perceived as victims of societal discrimination. That is a step we have never approved. Cf. Pasadena Cty Board of Education v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424 (1976).

</p>

<p>Rulings available here [Regents</a> of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke](<a href=“REGENTS OF the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Petitioner, v. Allan BAKKE. | Supreme Court | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute”>REGENTS OF the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Petitioner, v. Allan BAKKE. | Supreme Court | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute) and here [GRUTTER</a> V. BOLLINGER](<a href=“http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-241.ZO.html]GRUTTER”>GRUTTER V. BOLLINGER)</p>

[molliebatmit]

<p>I’m more on the side of Justice Marshall in UC vs. Bakke:

In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order. To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society.</p>

<p>I do not believe that the Fourteenth Amendment requires us to accept that fate. Neither its history nor our past cases lend any support to the conclusion that a university may not remedy the cumulative effects of society’s discrimination by giving consideration to race in an effort to increase the number and percentage of Negro doctors.

</p>

<p>At any rate, the admissions policies at MIT and other selective schools are obviously tailored to conform to Bakke, and to the Bollinger case: no quotas, race (/gender/family income status) as one plus factor among many, etc. I just disagree that the primary purpose is (and disagree with the court that the primary purpose should be) to create diversity in and of itself. Diversity is an end, but it’s not the purpose.</p>

[yolochka]

<p>lidusha

I think it’s silly to draw conclusions from personal anecdotes about the proportion of girls interested in STEM and the relative quality of female and male applicants.

I think I provided many references to data, not just “personal anecdotes”. I’m puzzled why MIT students and graduates have such aversion to data and don’t want to analyze it. It’s kind of hard to argue with people who dismiss your opinion without even trying to look at the facts that led to it.</p>

<p>molliebatmit

when your thesis is that women at MIT are unqualified, you are personally insulting every woman at MIT, and you shouldn’t be surprised when people find this insulting

iI you read what I wrote carefully, you would see that I never said “unqualified”. My argument has been that in order to have the “ideal” 50-50 gender ratio, MIT has to reject a number (in my calculation 316) of boys who are better than the girls taken in their place. The girls are not unqualified, it’s just they are not as good as some boys who got rejected. Does it mean that ALL girls are not as good as boys who are rejected? I don’t think so. In fact, I personally know girls who are better than any boys I know. So, you have a personal choice: (1) to be humble and think that perhaps there are people who are better than you but weren’t us lucky to get into MIT, or (2) to keep arguing on CC that you deserved to be admitted to MIT because you are the best of the best.
It seems my arguments are frustrating to people who can’t analyze data and make informed conclusions, but prefer to repeat what admissions counselors (who have stakes in this argument) say.

And if the stats were released, and female applicants (or female admits) had higher GPAs and SAT scores? Would that clinch the argument for you? Or would you just move the goalposts?

</p>

<p>that’s a good question. First of all, I don’t think test scores are the ideal measure of scientific potential. My guess is, GPA would be higher for girls and SAT (SAT II in particular) would be higher for boys. I would also like to see how many AP courses they took and what scores they got on exams. Although we already know, boys score higher, on average, than girls, even on Biology. I would like to compare transcripts to see what courses they took in high school. ECs would also provide information about their interests. I’d have to think what else we could use to gauge both past achievements and the potential to expand the limits of science. I thought this is what MIT was about. If we are only talking about preparing decent engineers, then a lot of schools could do it. I expected more from MIT.</p>

<p>And finally, molliebatmit, what’s frustrating is your inability or unwillingness to read what your opponent writes before coming with such sweeping conclusions:

Don’t kid yourself that this sort of discrimination only happens in the minds of people who are picking applications for postdoctoral fellowships.

I am well aware of discrimination women face in STEM and other areas. I will not refute it. What I’ve been trying to say all along is that creating artificial gender ratios at MIT will not change the situation. Instead of arguing here at cc, what have you done personally to get more little girls interested in STEM? Did you design programs for elementary schools girls to increase their interest and self esteem? Why is it an US IMO team almost never has a female? Is it because girls get discriminated? Their USAMO papers are not scored correctly by those evil male judges? Why most of the girls who ever got IMO medals came from Eastern European countries, and Russia in particular?</p>

[yolochka]

<p>limabeans01,
thanks for the advice! Of course, it is always convenient when an opinion you disagree with just disappears. In some countries this has become a common practice. Is it where you are from?</p>

[yolochka]

<p>luisarose,
I wish you the best at MIT. I’m sure you’ll graduate on time and will become a famous researcher and discover a cure from some deadly disease. I also hope you’ll learn how to think critically and analyze data.</p>

[iceui2]

<p>yolochka, I wish you the best too. I hope one day someone from your family will be granted the honor of being able to attend the most prestigious engineering school in the world.</p>

[molliebatmit]

<p>

So, you have a personal choice: (1) to be humble and think that perhaps there are people who are better than you but weren’t us lucky to get into MIT, or (2) to keep arguing on CC that you deserved to be admitted to MIT because you are the best of the best.

I don’t think those two things are contradictory. For one thing, I have never been shy about admitting that I was an unlikely admit to MIT in the first place – that I got tremendously lucky. I just don’t happen to think that my luck was about my gender. My husband (who is male) was also admitted over many people who had better objective stats than he did, and he’s been tremendously successful in his education and career. I think MIT made the right choice with both of us, but I do not think that choice was inevitable.</p>

<p>

It seems my arguments are frustrating to people who can’t analyze data and make informed conclusions, but prefer to repeat what admissions counselors (who have stakes in this argument) say.

I’ll ignore the ad hominem, but please don’t pretend that you don’t have a stake in this argument. </p>

<p>

I am well aware of discrimination women face in STEM and other areas. I will not refute it. What I’ve been trying to say all along is that creating artificial gender ratios at MIT will not change the situation.

And what I’ve been trying to say all along is that MIT is not creating artificial gender ratios – they are trying to see the potential in applicants beyond the cumulative discrimination they have faced their entire lives (e.g., studies showing girls get called on less often in math class, etc.). </p>

<p>I disagree, for the record, that selecting more people from underrepresented groups for outstanding STEM programs does nothing for the science pipeline down the road. It doesn’t solve the problem, for sure, but it does something.</p>

<p>

Instead of arguing here at cc, what have you done personally to get more little girls interested in STEM?

Well, I can’t say that arguing on CC takes up a huge percentage of my science outreach/broader impacts time, but I hope I don’t flatter myself that I am generally a helpful force for MIT applicants on CC. I have been involved with a PBS series on the “secret lives of scientists and engineers”, which tries to show that scientists have lives outside the bench, and that it’s possible to be a well-rounded person and a professional scientist. And through my work with PBS, I have been involved with several programs in the Boston area that encourage science participation for junior high and high school girls. Through my presence on CC and as an admissions blogger, and through my work as a teaching fellow at Harvard, I have mentored in person a number of MIT and Harvard students, and I’m happy to say that they’re now mostly in graduate and medical school programs across the country.</p>

[luisarose]

<p>

I think I provided many references to data, not just “personal anecdotes”. I’m puzzled why MIT students and graduates have such aversion to data and don’t want to analyze it. It’s kind of hard to argue with people who dismiss your opinion without even trying to look at the facts that led to it.

</p>

<p>My issue with this entire debate simplifies to this: your data, although valid, doesn’t really relate to this issue. <em>Overall</em>, yes, girls are less involved in STEM/score lower on AP exams/don’t often get to IMO, etc. But the female applicant pool at MIT isn’t made up of a random sampling of girls – that is, the MIT female applicant pool does not follow the statistical trends of the overall population. It is self-selecting in that only girls who think they have a shot apply – meaning that the only female applicants are those few who go “against the grain” in this respect.</p>

<p>The male pool is self-selecting too – but not to the same extent, because a lot of boys apply who are underqualified or who meet the basic requirements (grades/GPA) but are lacking in ECs or some other subjective trait. MIT Admissions often says that girls are more self-selecting because a higher percentage of female applicants are qualified, well-rounded, and competitive applicants, but they can’t prove that to us without releasing lots of personal data (because certainly GPA and scores aren’t everything).</p>

<p>Knowing the people that I know in my high school, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. I know smart, possibly “qualified” girls who didn’t apply to MIT because they knew they didn’t have a real shot at such a competitive school, and I know boys, also smart, who applied despite that, just to see what would happen. Obviously, this is anecdotal and means nothing statistically, but I do see what the admissions committee could mean by that.</p>

<p>But in general, I think I could believe what they say. If you can’t, of course, that’s your own belief and you’re entitled to it. There is certainly a lack of clarity here.</p>