<p>texaspg, you said about me: “probably has no clue about the girl’s achievements while the male peacocks in that town are strutting their stuff and claiming glorious achievements.” </p>
<p>I think it’s you who has no clue of what pieces of information are available to me to make my conclusions. Also, calling people you don’t know “male peacocks” doesn’t speak well about you.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, I’ve heard that was true in the 80’s. However, by the late 90’s/early 2000’s, I don’t think this is true at all.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ha ha. This cuts both ways.<br>
My first day in grad school I sat behind a Wellesley alum who was wearing a T-shirt that said about MIT men, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” People gave me a hard time about that!</p>
<p>"I think it’s you who has no clue of what pieces of information are available to me to make my conclusions. Also, calling people you don’t know “male peacocks” doesn’t speak well about you. "</p>
<p>You have no idea what is available to me. How do you get away with calling girls mediocre but can be offended about male peacocks? Hurts doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Can we clarify? Yolochka said she/he is an educ researcher. Sorry, but then we get a 15 kid non-random sample? Is that right?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, it’s numerically true that to end up with a 50-50 gender balance with fewer females applying that the female admittance rate must have been higher. If it’s not clear, my point is that MIT says that the higher female admittance rate is driven by a higher concentration of talent in the female applicant pool rather than by a desire by the MIT admissions staff to equalize the gender ratio.</p>
<p>Then there is also swt = sunk without trace. Well, not entirely without trace, referring to alh’s post #1454.</p>
<p>I would just PM alh, but even though alh has been added to my contact list, PM’s still do not seem to be possible.</p>
<p>I realize that the discussion currently concerns women at MIT and “peacocks,” but to go back for just a minute to the issue of being human:</p>
<p>When I think about being human, being a full-fledged nerd (not just your ordinary garden-variety nerd), I immediately think of Mr. Spock from Star Trek, the half-human, half-Vulcan committed to pure logic and the rejection of emotion–kind of robotic. </p>
<p>When Spock died as he resolved his own “Kobayashi Maru” problem (through self-sacrifice), Kirk spoke as Spock’s body was committed to space, and said:
I have cried every single time I have viewed this scene. (It’s ok, I am female for those who don’t already know.)</p>
<p>Anyway, to precis my point: There is emotional power in being called “human.”</p>
<p>thumper1, I also find this focus on MIT fascinating. Count my S1 as one of those kids who “would not walk across the street to apply” to MIT, despite the math and science SAT’s, SAT ll’s and AP scores that could have put him in contention along with other BWRK’s. Just not his cup of tea.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>MIT thrived for a long time with a skewed male/female ratio. There are lots of colleges in the Boston area, including some women’s colleges.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If they’re anything like the Cylons from either the old or the new series, they may possibly be much more interesting dates than some of the students at more mainstream universities…including Big 10 universities with a great party scene. </p>
<p>Then again…interesting here may not be suited to everyone’s taste. :D</p>
<p>
The republic survived for 140 years without women having the vote. </p>
<p>Keep digging, yolochka, at least it’s entertaining.</p>
<p>I know at least one MIT community member that is deeply offended by Pizzagirl’s use of “robotic clones” as a perjorative. Even robots have emotions.</p>
<p>[The</a> speaking robot @ MIT - YouTube](<a href=“The speaking robot @ MIT - YouTube”>The speaking robot @ MIT - YouTube)</p>
<p>
How did HE get in?</p>
<p>texaspg,
"You have no idea what is available to me. How do you get away with calling girls mediocre but can be offended about male peacocks? Hurts doesn’t it? "
Again, you make assumptions about someone you only have information from a few posts in a public anonymous forum. For your information, I’m not offended and it doesn’t hurt. Generally, I can’t be offended by people I don’t know and who don’t know me. Moreover, I don’t claim to know what’s available to you. It’s you who are making a lot of claims about me. </p>
<p>Now, for someone who mentioned that my sample is not random. I didn’t claim it was. If you look at published research, you’ll be surprised how much knowledge has been gathered through observational studies. I repeat what I said: I know approximately 2 boys who where admitted to MIT, 8 equally talented boys who were rejected, and 5 girls who were accepted (I’m not saying I know all who applied to MIT from my town). Of these 5 girls, only 1 was the same caliber as the boys. This is my judgement, based on information I know about these kids. You don’t have to believe me, and you don’t have to insult me, too. </p>
<p>Now, only after I observed that year after year talented boys from my town are passed over by MIT in favor of much less talented girls, I found the admission data that explained it to me. And for this reason I do not believe those applications from girls are so much stronger than applications from boys, that the rate of admission can be so different. It seems it’s just mantra that people affiliated with MIT admissions or graduates who benefited from such policies like to repeat to make them look good. I’m sorry I don’t buy it.</p>
<p>yolochka, Just curious, How are you judging the “caliber” of the applicants you have known about?</p>
<p>“Now, only after I observed that year after year talented boys from my town are passed over by MIT in favor of much less talented girls, I found the admission data that explained it to me.”</p>
<p>You are counting boys and girls and making claims. This is not considered evidence.</p>
<p>Evidence is when you provide their admission results and show that the boys got into other top schools except MIT and girls got into only MIT and nowhere else because they got priority at that school.</p>
<p>I’m going to guess that yolochka is one of the 20 boys on a Robotics team that has only one girl (like my D’s FIRST robotics team). The boys regularly make comments about how girls aren’t good at spatial relations, tell her to go work on fundraising or the newsletter instead of working on the build, try to send her on errands out the lab, tell her there is only “room” for two people to work on the robot at a time (but let other boys who come into the lab start working on it so there are soon 4 people with their hands on it). Then say that the girl does not have the same level of EC quality as the boys do. This is a girl with a 2380 SAT, 800 on Math II subject test who just got into U of Chicago and plans to major in physics. So no slacker in the brains department, and genuinely interest in technical subjects. I have a lot of mistrust of high school/college level boys who criticize whether girls applying to tech schools have sufficient ECs.</p>
<p>I’m also gonna guess that on average the girls that got into MIT had higher grades than the boys, but you probably have no visibility into that.</p>
<p>I think this just a case of yolochka citing the ORM card, Over Represented Male.</p>
<p>PG wrote
</p>
<p>I don’t think the poster was trying to be insulting or hurtful. A lot of negative language is sort of embedded in our culture. It can be a social norm. If your kids are lucky enough to take some sort of Gender Studies class, maybe they can explain this idea to you as mine did to me. And then maybe you can explain it a lot more clearly than I am able to, even though I am going to try my best.</p>
<p>I think we all tell our children when they are very young not to call people names, that it isn’t nice and hurts feelings. I think “robotic clones” is name calling and it definitely has the potential to hurt feelings, maybe the feelings of a high school senior reading this thread. Even if people aren’t part of our affinity group - and especially if they aren’t part of any affinity group (completely alone? that is a real minority) I don’t think they deserve to be called names.</p>
<p>Gender issues in science are a tricky thing. I think we may see equality of opportunity in practice in a generation. At least, the situation is much better now than when my mother was not permitted to take physics in high school (no girls were), and was directed into bookkeeping instead.</p>
<p>Sandra Day O’Connor was recently interviewed on NPR in connection with her new book, a historical account of the Supreme Court. O’Connor graduated high in her class from Stanford Law School. She applied to 40 firms that were hiring Stanford Law grads and got a total of 0 interviews. Finally, the district attorney in San Mateo county permitted her to work for him, for free. And actually, he was one of the more enlightened ones! At the entry level, I think that women graduates of law schools now have roughly equal opportunities with men. I think there is still an imbalance in the odds of making partner in a law firm. </p>
<p>Clearly, all of the barriers are not down. But some of them are falling. As more fall, the attitudes of the boys as sketched by inparent are likely to change.</p>
<p>Combining work with a family still poses special challenges to women in most cases. We may not have that worked out in a generation.</p>
<p>(It has not escaped me that part of the difficulty Marilee Jones had in her earlier life was connected with the difficulty that a woman with a bachelor’s degree from a less-well-known school had in getting a lab job at MIT to begin with.)</p>
<p>Do we accept results from one limited study of 15 or so kids from one local pool- possibly only one high school? Does that make sense? I think, at best, it could be said to be representative of that sort of kid in that particular hs- or known to that particular “researcher.” Assuming that person knows more than some personal observations, without the back-up detail.</p>
<p>(-- and Yay! about Chicago.)</p>