Girls vs. boys - the EA stats

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>BenG, the quote you highlight above from JerseyMom doesn't mean what you state it means. Saying the applicant pools might not be the same and citing several "maybe" conditions to explain that is not equivalent to asserting more intellectual promise.</p>

<p>I did not post-stalk JerseyMom to see what else she might have posted somewhere else in a different forum: no fair assuming your audience has non-local background knowledge. (Or, put another way, it's best to ascertain the common knowledge which your audience shares, rather than assuming. We may be smart, but we are not mind readers.)</p>

<p>maverach, can you point out where anyone other than you used the word "feminist"? What makes you assume those you address are "feminists" (and what does that term mean to you?) BTW, the male population at my son's high school was equally involved in humanities as the female population; I'm sure we can find exceptions to almost any generalization along those lines.</p>

<p>And on those notes, I shall quote benjones one further time, then agree with him that the discussion is unlikely to be productive. My apologies for prolonging it.
[quote]
Generally speaking, one school is not better than the other. Personally speaking, one school probably is - but only you can decide that. There's no point in debating it publicly.

[/quote]
</p>

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<p>You're welcome phoenix, I've been aware of this reverse-discrimination since 8th grade when we got our acceptance/rejection letters from the local science and tech school. Many an eyebrow was raised when the genius asian kid didn't get in over the...ummm...not-so-bright caucasian :)</p>

<p>mootmom, it was an assumption, probably a bad one. But isn't that the real issue here? The fact that females could be getting help they don't deserve and people are okay with that? Also someone posted (then deleted) a stat about humanities-based colleges and the female percentage being close to 80% in some cases (I believe the school was Amherst). So maybe your son's school is the exception here. I can also note that the females in my class are more motivated and do better on average than the males.</p>

<p>I went to a science and tech school the first three years of my high school career before I moved. I had a very solid application and was definitely qualified, however I was constantly haunted by the thought that maybe I didn't deserve to get in and a more qualified applicant was rejected because of me. The same will hold true if I get accepted to MIT. I will always wonder if I got a hand-out and because of that, someone didn't get to go to their dream school.</p>

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<p>I think Ben G. is right on the mark. There is simply no way to explain the huge discrepencies (Compared to Caltech, compared to years prior). MIT does institute an aggressive policy of gender affirmative action.</p>

<p>When I was at an MIT informational session, an alum specifically stated that MIT was in the process of leveling out the gender ratio.</p>

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<p>If you feel that way, why are you applying? An acceptance should be cause for joy, not for regret and wonder and second-thoughts. </p>

<p>Perhaps the true question is why many women are not confident about their ability to be as strong in science and technology as most men.</p>

<p>(PS: I choose to believe that NO ONE who is accepted at MIT need consider their acceptance "a hand out".)</p>

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<p>Good point, but I personally will have doubts no matter where I applied (well, except for UCONN :)), that's just me.
Is it really a question of confidence? I think it's more what women are drawn to and what subjects their brains are geared towards. Of course there are exceptions, I'm a chem/math nerd...all of my female friends are interested in and are pursuing humanities.</p>

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<p>mootmom -- JerseyMom submitted those maybes as possible explanations for why MIT's gender split of admits was so different from Caltech's split of admits given similar ratios in the applicant pools. "Maybe [MIT's female applicants] were smarter, maybe they were bolder". So please let's try to pretend that words have meaning. What she suggested was exactly what I said she suggested. </p>

<p>And then I explained why her suggestion was a terrible explanation for the difference in the results. See above.</p>

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<p>This is pure speculation, but can we explain the "huge discrepancies" by observing that MIT is not just a Science and Engineering school, but also has very attractive programs in Economics, Linguistics, Business, Architecture, etc. -- where the female interest may be higher? (Caltech also has respectable offerings in Economics, but one has to admit that its appeal in Economics is highly specialized.)</p>

<p>In other words, if we look at just the Science and Engineering departments in MIT, maybe the "huge discrepancy" vs Caltech disappears.</p>

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<p>4th floor -- in that case you'd expect MIT to get a larger fraction of female *applicants<a href="who%20are%20interested%20in%20those%20non-math/science%20programs">/i</a> whom it could then admit. But that's not what's happening. MIT has apparently not had so much success balancing the lopsided applicant pool with its nontechnical offerings.</p>

<p>I don't know how having a linguistics program makes it "fairer" (in the obvious sense) to take a 73/27 applicant pool and get a 53/47 admit pool. Could you explain the reasoning a bit more closely?</p>

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<p>"justifies?" I was under the impression that a 53/47 admit pool was not quite such a travesty.</p>

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<p>I edited the post to make it clearer what I meant ;-)</p>

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<p>Ouch :)
Also let's not kid ourselves, all you hear about is MIT as a science and engineering school. Sure those other programs are "attractive" or whatever, but c'mon, honestly? Very few people know of MIT and seek enrollment for that reason.<br>
"Justifies" doesn't necessarily have that negative connotation you're throwing on it zoogs (I don't think) :)</p>

<p>EDIT: DANG you all and your edits! hahaha</p>

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<p>Ben: Good point. One will have to believe that although MIT and Caltech have similar applicant gender breakdowns, somehow the MIT female applicants are more skewed away from Engineering & Sciences than the Caltech female applicants. Some hard figures will refute this line of speculation conclusively. But you are right; it does appear implausible.</p>

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<p>x_x I'm just confused now as to the whole point of discussion. Oh well.</p>

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<p>Maverach, keep telling it like it is.</p>

<p>As for the adults on this board, I'm dissapointed to see each little barb you twist when you're making your arguments. Next time you post, come here without trying to take shots at the other posters. Man, I just saw the movie Zathura, and I can't stand listening to any more arguing.</p>

<p>It was a good movie btw. The ending suddenly made the movie ten times more complicated, but then solved the whole thing in about a minute and a half (what? solving huge problems in a minute and a half? That's faster than CSI!). Anyhow, my hearty recommendation.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The business of defining merit and publicly justifying an admissions process is incredibly interesting stuff.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Ben G's quote (above) really hits the nail on the head. So why, oh why, must we have all the negativity in this thread? Take ANY student from MIT or Caltech and you're going to find yourself with a phenomenal kid. So I just don't see the point in beating this topic to death (and each other in the process).</p>

<p>If we really wanted to, Ben G and I could lay down what each school considers the "ideal applicant" and it would probably shed some light on the numbers. But I feel that we've already done that in a variety of other threads over the last year (do some searches if you really care).</p>

<p>But please don't attack Ben - his first post was merely standing up for Caltech and Caltech's methods, which is fine. (Ben is not sexist and I honestly don't think he deserved that line of implication.) But Ben's admissions experience is 100% Caltech, and mine is 100% MIT. There are so many subtleties and factors in a given school's admissions process, I think Ben and I would need to switch places for a complete admissions cycle before we could truly claim to understand all of the differences.</p>

<p>Still - and I'll probably get flamed for saying this - I believe it can be summarized, at least somewhat. In the spectrum between science and art, my impression is that Caltech's admissions process leans more towards the scientific end than ours does; our process is more of a balance between science and art. We spend a LOT of time with interpretation and context and things that often can't be quantified or predicted with formulas.</p>

<p>Our process looks for imagination, joy, passion, connection, dreams - the poetry in math and science, not just the numbers. Say what you will about it, but it works for us, it works for MIT, and I believe that it works for our students and our alums.</p>

<p>Talk the numbers to death, but when we use our process to build a class, this is how the numbers work out. And we don't apologize for that, nor should we.</p>

<p>Maverach, if you get into MIT, please don't insult yourself by thinking for one second that you got a "handout." We're perhaps the hardest school in the country to get into, regardless of who you are, what you look like, and how many X chromosomes you have. There are no handouts.</p>

<p>[EDIT] I thought I should add, since some folks tend to take what I say on this forum quite literally, that I'm not saying ideal applicants should necessarily be balancing art and science. :-) I was using those words to describe our process.</p>

<p>Also - for those who don't know, Ben G's girlfriend goes to MIT. I'm sure she'd be the first to back up what I said about him up there.</p>

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<p>Ben J. -- you're a class act, as your graciousness demonstrates, and MIT is lucky to have you.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Caltech's admissions process leans more towards the scientific end than ours does; our process is more of a balance between science and art.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I see what you're saying, certainly... our process probably lands closer to the numbers (by which I mean scores/grades/AP's/olympiad achievements -- I'm just guessing here, so please correct me if I'm wrong), so it's tempting to conclude that it's more influenced by them, more "scientific". Not knowing both processes, I obviously can't say for sure... but it's not an implausible idea. What pushes back against that intuition in my mind is that these particular words of yours resonate so well with what I look for in the applications I read:
[quote]
imagination, joy, passion, connection, dreams - the poetry in math and science, not just the numbers.

[/quote]
Especially from the perspective of the students and faculty who comprise the majority of our admissions committee, nothing is more important than finding the student who really gets it... who feels math in the way that mathematicians do, for example... who detects that certain secret sublimeness in his studies and can describe it back to us -- who can say the shibboleth of the scientific temple, if you like. We like to think it's hard to trick us, with numbers or whatever else.</p>

<p>Perhaps it's slightly different music that you and I look for, in slightly different ways, from slightly different backgrounds. And, as you have said before, therein is the beauty. Because the temple whose password you can say is probably the one you belong in.</p>

<p>--
By the way, Ben, I was at MIT last weekend and walked by your office about a dozen times in the Infinite. I really wanted to stop by but it was a hectic time (I presume for both of us ;-). Next time I'm around perhaps I'll drop in to say hi.</p>

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<p>Sigh.</p>

<p>I just gotta say, this gets really tiring after awhile.</p>

<p>1) maverach has a point, and here it is: people have forgotten what women's lib actually is. Women's lib happened so that women could be free to do what they wanted. If every woman in the world has her heart set on becoming a housewife, then I'm begging you, leave us all the hell alone and let us be housewives! Obviously that's not the case, but what I'm saying is that men and women are going to have different interests. As long as all women have an equal opportunity to become scientists and engineers if they want to, then it shouldn't matter what percentage actually follow that goal.</p>

<p>2) If you adults don't stop with this "he said she said" nonsense, I'm going to get very disappointed in you.</p>

<p>3) The only discrimination I have ever faced as a woman in engineering was because of affirmative action. It does nothing but cause all this unnecessary tension between the sexes by raising qualification questions.</p>

<p>4) Don't facilitate number 3. Don't use the fact that affirmative action does happen as an excuse to throw blanket generalizations about my sex. The highlight of my weekend was finding out that my female MIT student self scored a 96 on my calc test, so I'd thank you (collective) to take your questions about why I was admitted elsewhere.</p>

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<p>What's most significant is, benjones used the word "pwn" in a conversational manner! It's on page 1. :) Adults speaking l33t = breakthrough.</p>

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<p>I believe it's 1337... ;)</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I'm going to get very disappointed in you.

[/quote]
...</p>

<p>the implications of being dissapointed ahead of time... going to get... but you're already disappointed... lol, sorry that just stuck out to me</p>

<p>as for the whole l33t or 1337 thing... that's as annoying as someone saying pwned... why can't we just talk normally... [of course i'm a hypocrite since i use phrases like cuz, u, etc.]</p>