You see the ratio of girls/boys in STEM in the general population is equal to the ratio in the MIT applicant pool, and you assume the distributions must be equal. But they are not. In the general population, I think the distribution boys and girls are probably very similar. But in the MIT applicant pool, they are not. There is a much wider distribution of boys, and the distribution of girls is much smaller. Many boys apply. Only the best girls apply. Because as a wise poster once said:
<p>I have been to presentations for Stanford, Princeton and Caltech in which they say exactly the same thing that the MIT blogs have said.</p>
<p>This is in front of standing room only crowds in large hotel ballrooms. </p>
<p>The message is so much the same it is as if they were reading from the same script. So I don’t find Ben’s comments in his blog either surprising, offensive or insensitive.</p>
<p>If you have perfect grades, scores and a ton of APs you may be rejected, but you may be accepted too! Any kid with that type of academic performance should understand that and not be offended by a blog post that says that grades aren’t all it takes.</p>
wow, I give up, hands up! Do you really think this is true? Without even taking a look at the links I posted here?
I started questioning MIT admission policies, and now I begin to question the abilities of MIT admitted students to process and analyze data. God help me!</p>
<p>I went back and read through all of those links you posted. None of it is relevant to my assertion that the distribution of boys and girls STEM capabilities in the general population is very similar. I am assuming they are both pretty standard bell curves. Why wouldn’t they be?</p>
<p>What I find amusing here is how people try to a conclusion about the “right” rate of acceptances based on an assumption multiplied by an assertion divided by a guess: voila: the male/female split should be 63.4:33.4 (doesn’t add to 100 due to rounding).</p>
<p>From reading parts of this thread the “math” that goes into this is based on “commitment”, “passion”, “shyness” (a negative), “talent”.</p>
<p>The admissions process is fair, but it is not deterministic.</p>
<p>And by fair, I am referring to a process that is conducted by humans.</p>
<p>Collegedad2013, I too have been to presentations by Stanford and Princeton and a few other places, though not Caltech. While a number of universities make it clear that they admit only a fraction of the applicants with 2400/2400/4.0, none of them said that such students are “frequently” rejected, because they “often knew how to grind, but brought nothing else to the table.” Did you hear that sort of remark, or just the first part? Stanford, Princeton, and Yale were unrelentingly positive at the sessions we attended. We did not go to a Harvard session, but would guess that it is similar to Y, P, and S.</p>
<p>Stanford did say on their web site that it wasn’t the case that the applicant “with the most APs wins.” That’s about the closest I’ve seen to MIT’s prose. And I think that Stanford has revised that out, in any event.</p>
<p>Since we’re making sweeping sexist generalizations here, we might as well assume it’s because boys are less well-rounded and picked MIT because they’re only good at STEM.</p>
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<p>The best part of this is that you’re telling us we don’t understand simple statistics (all of us idiotic women!), and you’re completely misunderstanding the statistics of what unicameral is saying. It’s not that the general population has the same number of STEM-interested men & women. We know that’s not true. The DISTRIBUTION is similar, though: men and women probably have similar top, average, and bottom students.</p>
<p>The difference is that for MIT, only the very top girls apply, so that distribution is very narrow. For boys, a range from medium-high to very top might apply, so their distribution is greater. Naturally, most of those medium-high students won’t be accepted. That’s why the admissions rate for guys is lower.</p>
<p>Friends, you are way over analyzing this. College admissions is a lottery not an application. If you do everything perfectly for your drivers test, you get a drivers license (that is an application process). You can do everything perfectly for admissions to a high level university and still not get in (that is a lottery). Too many qualified people and not enough spots.</p>
<p>THANK YOU luisarose. Just in case my posts #161 and #164 are not abundantly clear to you, yolochka, I will restate what I said in simpler terms.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In the general population of both girls and boys interested in STEM, you’re going to have girls who bad, mediocre, and good. You’re also going to have boys that are bad, mediocre, and good.</p></li>
<li><p>You have your panties in a bunch because the admit rate of girls is greater than the admit rate of boys. These admit rates are dependent on the number of amazing girls vs. the female applicant pool, and the number of amazing boys vs. the male applicant pool. So we are not looking at boys vs. girls here.</p></li>
<li><p>In the female MIT applicant pool, you’re going to have girls that are very, very good. In the male pool, you’re going to have boys that are very, very good, as well as boys who are OK. The reason for this, as you said yourself, is that girls are less confident in their STEM abilities and must be very motivated to apply.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>From these points, we can draw a couple conclusions.</p>
<p>a) All of the data you posted is irrelevant, yolochka. This is because in the general population, girls AND boys are both either bad, mediocre, or good. But data from the general population cannot be extrapolated to the MIT applicant pool because the girls are all very, very good, while only SOME of the boys are very, very good.</p>
<p>b) The the ratio of (very, very good female applicants)/(total female applicants) is higher than (very, very good male applicants)/(total male applicants).</p>
<p>Yolochka, earlier in this thread you dismissed Mikalye’s opinion, saying, “I’m sorry your opinion can hardly be objective.” because he once, 3 years ago,m out of more than 1000 posts said something that some thought was offensive. But in this thread alone you have out right offended many of the posters with your patronizing words. The way you speak down to people is extremely inappropriate. I agree that some have responded likewise to you but I’m more forgiving to them because I can see how they have been provoked. It would be nice if this thread could become more civilized. Let’s start over and choose our words carefully before we speak. Everyone could benefit from this advice, no?</p>
<p>Re the post by collegedad2013: I don’t have a problem with Admissions personnel stating that a student need to show passion and accomplishments in terms of something other than grades (or grades + scores). To me, that seems different from saying that they have “often” rejected people because they “brought nothing else to the table.” I suppose part of this depends on your interpretation of the phrase “brought nothing else to the table.”</p>
<p>If it is interpreted to mean that the application, when brought to the committee deliberation table, didn’t indicate the applicant’s other qualities, I could even see that as ok.</p>
<p>However, in my part of the country, when one talks about what a person “brings to the table,” they mean the whole set of qualifications and personal qualities of the person under discussion. And when one couples that with a statement that the student just knew how to “grind,” it seems pretty pejorative to me.</p>
<p>If the admissions rhetoric has changed in other places to be like that, I am sorry to hear it. I really don’t see the specific people I met at Yale or Princeton saying anything negative that would remotely resemble those remarks. (They might have moved on–some of the admissions staffers only stay for a few years.)</p>
<p>Do any other universities have those comments in writing?</p>
<p>I would greatly appreciate it if you would respond directly to this post instead of just reiterating your tired, flawed argument in your next post yolochka.</p>
<p>This:
<a href=“4”>quote</a> Assuming that girls and boys are equally likely to apply to MIT
[/quote]
is where your argument falls apart.</p>
<p>Girls are much less likely to apply to MIT. Period. You said it yourself, in that quote I have pasted of yours several times already. The average female applicant to MIT is simply stronger than the average male applicant to MIT.</p>
<p>Edit: Just to be clear, post #171 had a ridiculous 8 step proof before it was deleted.</p>
<p>I’ll have to take a look at the links you posted in post #97 later in more detail when I have time. However, right off the bat, it’s clear you are making an assumption that the tail of the AP-taking (the high-scoring regime) behaves the same as the area around mean. </p>
<p>People have used that assumption to reason that there must be affirmative action for boys everywhere because “girls test better” (mean test scores are higher.) Of course, this is a bad assumption. You have to look at gender distribution at the top-end to get any sort of idea.</p>
<p>Secondly, you still have not explained the Caltech admission rates. In the 90’s, there was no affirmative action at all (not sure about today), a fact that was confirmed by people who worked in the office. However, the admissions rates were 2-3 times higher for girls than boys.</p>
<p>If you’re trying to prove that the natural gender distribution without affirmative action would be 70-30 male-female, then no, you haven’t proven what you set out to do.</p>
<p>UglyMom, re post #172, I’d like to advert you to posts #88-#90 on this thread. Mikalye did apologize for calling the one applicant “only vaguely human.” However, if you read #90 as well, he said that he stands by his comment that “There are quite a few of those folks out there,” apparently with reference to people who are rather exclusively academically focused. (And have no friends? I don’t know anyone who has no friends, so it’s hard for me to think that there are “quite a few” of them.)</p>
<p>Actually, I would have preferred not to bring this up again. If it were just the single random comment by one MIT-affiliated poster, I would probably have dropped it by now. But as recently as March 31 of this year, ExieMITAlum, who says that she is an MIT interviewer, remarked that MIT did not want “robots” and “clones.” This followed a thread on which ExieMITAlum referred to “robotic clones,” very shortly after a set of objections to using that kind of metaphor about applicants. </p>
<p>I went so far as to suggest that we should institute “Celebrating Our Common Humanity Day.” Perhaps I need to expand it to a month-long celebration.</p>
<p>Just wanted to add to #177: “I am not friends with anyone who has no friends” would be a tautology. But I think it’s legitimate to say “I don’t know anyone who has no friends,” as a matter of observation.</p>
<p>you wrote "I suppose part of this depends on your interpretation of the phrase “brought nothing else to the table.”
(how do you do the cool quote things)</p>
<p>In the context of the overall comment, I didn’t take that badly.
I took it as a student who was performed really well on tests and took a lot of AP courses, but in the app, did not demonstrate that they could also bring stuff that you would get if the person performed really well on ECs (whether that is leadership, or music, or charity, or, or, or)</p>
<p>To clarify a little more, in my part of the country, to say “what a person brings to the table” is essentially the same as saying “what the person has to offer,” which would include personal characteristics. I have a hard time imagining any person who truly can offer <em>nothing</em> but scores and grades. I don’t believe that I have ever met such a person. It’s the “nothing” that gets to me.</p>