<p>LMAO@Bovertine! :)</p>
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<p>Do you happen to be an innovative Goth, Hun, Vandal, or other barbarian group who had superior strategic, geopolitical analytical skills, and who isn’t afraid to institute change in what may be a moribund system overseen by an elite enfeebled by centuries of luxurious living and a diet with a gross excess of some heavy metals? /j/k</p>
<p>Just trying to inject some levity in these heated discussions. :D</p>
<p>@yolochka: I’m not going to try to convince you that your assessment of the talent at your kid’s school is incorrect. However, I will point out that I often see less talented boys taken over more talented boys as well. The female pool in the country is talented enough that MIT shouldn’t really need AA for girls. </p>
<p>However, no one really knows how AA is done at MIT; obviously, they do have some preference or they wouldn’t be practicing AA… Perhaps they use it for disciplines that still have less females in it. While there are a ton of women in bio and chemistry, there isn’t a lot in computers and probably not in the robotics field.</p>
<p>Finally, you mentioned that the rejected boys got into good places like Caltech, Stanford, etc. Most elite schools have gender AA for females in STEM. Caltech is the only place I’ve heard that doesn’t have this. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that STEM admissions at these places would be free of gender preferenes as you would seem to imply.</p>
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And did these inferior girls do poorly at MIT?</p>
<p>Perhaps you could post a hypothetical resume representing a collage of them so that we might also form personal judgements as to their relative value?</p>
<p>"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. "</p>
<p>Yes. Your judgment based on NOT seeing their essays, NOT knowing how well or poorly they interviewed, NOT knowing their letters of rec, and potentially NOT knowing all of their ECs since plenty of kids have ECs that aren’t “known” to the school busybodies, er, other parents. Do you know all of these kids’ GPAs and SAT scores too?</p>
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<p>Admitting the one 3.9/2200 circus clown over the 200th 4.0/2300+ class president is completely consistent with the holistic admission & class-crafting concepts. </p>
<p>Let’s face it, as you approach perfection, the available measurements (GPA and SAT/ACT) aren’t very good discriminators. 4.0/2300 just isn’t a significantly better indication of academic potential than a 3.9/2200. So the unique EC becomes a plausible deciding factor. For the most selective schools to abandon holistic class-crafting, we’d probably need to adopt a national curriculum and grading standards along with harder standardized tests. Or, colleges would need more rigorous approaches to judging quality (not uniqueness) in extracurricular activities … or maybe an Oxbridge-style academic interview system. These alternatives would be politically or technically hard to implement in the USA.</p>
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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>But again, you’re jumping the shark here. Did the MIT interviewer SAY to the student, “it was nice meeting you but I’m not going to recommend you for admission because I think you’re a robotic clone”? Do you think at MIT orientation they say, “Welcome to both our robotic clones and our cool kids?” People are allowed to think negatively of other people, you know. Am I not allowed to think some people on CC are rather in-the-box and constricted in their thinking?</p>
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<p>There is no reason to assume that interests of the sexes are the same or that the distributions of their abilities are the same in all areas. In 2012 there were 73,844 males with math SATs of 700+ and 44,838 such females, according to [Total</a> Group Profile Report - College Board (2012)](<a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/TotalGroup-2012.pdf]Total”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/TotalGroup-2012.pdf) .This may explain why certain majors have more males than females. Overall, women earn more college degrees than men. I don’t see why male over-representation in a few areas is considered a problem when male under-representation in many more areas is not.</p>
<p>A recent book about why there are fewer women in some STEM fields is
“The Science on Women and Science” (2009), by Christina Hoff Sommers, and online articles by her can be found by Googling “christina hoff sommers science”.</p>
<p>Well, that’s a wildly inaccurate assertion, Beliavsky, given that men are given a tip in most majors and at most universities just because they are men. So, in most cases, women have to have a “better” academic record than their male matriculants, with the rare exception of a few stem majors or stem heavy unverisities.</p>
<p>A balanced class, or as balanced as possible, is an aim of most universities in the country, though it is easier for the elites to get this since they get to choose the best of both.</p>
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<p>By most universities, you mean Kenyon College.</p>
<p>There is no tip for men at top colleges. Women have higher average SATs, but men outnumber women at the higher SAT ranges at which one becomes competitive for a top 20 school.</p>
<p>tk21769, #1526: We may be closer to agreement than it appears. If I posted my entire admissions philosophy, it would constitute a tome that no one would read (and even I might fall asleep in the middle of writing it).</p>
<p>Please take my comment that you quoted in the context that I had posted (a bit ahead of that comment) a list of reasons that a student might accumulate B’s in science/math, despite being a brilliant student with very high potential. (Nb: I am not saying that Dick Zare got a B from the teacher who “hated his guts;” he almost certainly got an A. However, depending on the teacher, in the same circumstances, the student might get a B or worse.)</p>
<p>I appreciate that differentiating among applicants becomes more difficult as they approach the accomplishment ceilings. Added: in categories where the ceilings exist; there are categories of accomplishment with no ceiling.</p>
<p>I can’t disagree that admitting the person who joined the pre-existing Organic Rutabaga Growers Association and participated in the Rutabaga Curling Championships is consistent with holistic admissions practices and crafting a class.</p>
<p>I think I had written just ahead of the statement that you quoted that I was all for MIT’s admitting brilliant students who had a few B’s, even in science/math.</p>
<p>I just don’t hold with the admissions philosophy that a funny essay or a unique EC should be the decision-tipper. (CNN Newsline: Sales of rutabaga seed packets are up all over the U.S.! Experts wonder whether this is related to the ferocious peahen invasion.)</p>
<p>The rodeo clown that MIT admitted is actually distinct from some of the other cases. As I understand it, rodeo clowns put themselves at risk in order to distract animals that might otherwise injure rodeo riders who have fallen off. So, when this first came up on a thread, I differentiated them from other people with “unique” EC’s. This does not touch the issue of the treatment of animals in rodoes–which as I understand it can still vary quite a bit from location to location.</p>
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<p>I agree, Hunt. Of all people you should know how coy I am. Remember our lively conversation over Asian numbers in the Ivies where you pulled out EC sheets to show that Asian numbers were limited because of the types of EC they were involved in, and I countered by counting the number of Jewish names in the same sheets and came to a different conclusion for Jews? I have a feeling Ron Unz must have read the stuff and decided to do a more vigorous data analysis on it.;)</p>
<p>Some while back I promised someone (who read some of our more colourful exchanges) to retire the acid tongue. So far I have kept my promise, although I must confess that I was tempted on more than one occasion to break it here.</p>
<p>I blame it on the British for teaching me the art of exchanging insults as merriment, but then they also taught me to keep my emotions in check and to keep a promise if made. To top it off, they gave me the best education I could have asked for at the time all in all it was not a bad trade-off for one started with little.</p>
<p>Re Pizzagirl’s post #1527, of course people can think anything they want to. At the risk of seeming overly repetitive, I believe that if a student’s difficulties with social interaction reach the level of a disability, it is wrong to make fun of them for it. As I understand it, it can actually be physically painful for some of the people with high-functioning autism to look another person in the eye. </p>
<p>oldfort mentioned people who constantly look at their feet and rub their hands during the interview. I did not think that oldfort was making fun of these interviewees, just describing their behavior. However, these are practically classic signs of high-functioning autism, to the point that one of the associates on Boston Legal was portrayed in just this way. </p>
<p>I grant that there are jobs for which a person with high-functioning autism would not be a good fit–but there are many, many for which the person would be an excellent fit. I don’t think that colleges should artificially shut them out.</p>
<p>The “robotic clones” are a different group. I plan to address that issue tomorrow (if the thread is still open), after alh and I have finished celebrating “Celebrate Our Common Humanity Day” today. It’s a short day.</p>
<p>I got the urge to take a computer programming course a couple of years ago (C++). The students were half my age. There were 45 males and 10 females. After the third lecture, 7 of the females had disappeared, and 5 of the males, the same. By the fifth lecture, we were into the topic of pointers, and 2 females were left. During that lecture, one of the females asked a question which was stated in a way that showed she was clearly struggling with the material. The professor shrugged off her question in the manner of “You’ll need to figure that out by looking at the course material already covered,” which was more or less his personality with students. His impression was that the material was already facile enough that it did not require personal attention. There were no females left by the sixth lecture, and about 27 or so males. About half of the students remaining had taken some kind of AP computing course, or had covered the topic already in high school. Late into the course, an administrator showed up after the lecture to query the group and to hand out a questionnaire. The administration was interested in why certain courses and majors had a low retention rate. The reasons I listed as number 1 and 2 were the uncomfortableness of the seating and the poor air conditioning system. It occurred to me later that they should be querying the students who were dropping out of the course early on, or, even by the second lecture, to preempt problems, if they were really interested in improving the situation. Nearly all the students remaining in the course were independent studiers – they sort of figured out the logic of the material on their own. I think a lot of STEM discipline work favors the more introverted methods that tends to be more prevalent in males.</p>
<p>I also know from being in study groups with mostly men or mostly women that there is a different study method among genders. Males tend to hit a few specific subjects, sometimes, only one, and then go off to figure out the rest on their own having grown impatient being trapped in a study group or review session. Females tend to use study group time to socially bond and they share information much more freely and tend towards more comprehensive coverage, possibly because they “move together as a group” and the study groups last a long time (in my perspective). This strategy has advantages and disadvantages in that it can help most people in the group “ride the curve” when most people know the same material. The failure of this method occurred prominently in a neuroanatomy midterm when a small group of “lone studiers” scored very high on a difficult exam, in the high 80s, and the “group studiers” all received scores in the 36 to 61 range – mostly because they missed coverage of about 3 large sections of important but obscure information that “wasn’t covered in class”. Many people in this group had probably never scored under 90 in their entire lives. More than half the class failed that exam; the low score was 20 something and the administration had to intervene with a re-exam to prevent a mass exodus/expulsion of students.</p>
<p>As for robot clones, you, too, will be assimilated.</p>
<p>“There is no reason to assume that interests of the sexes are the same or that the distributions of their abilities are the same in all areas. In 2012 there were 73,844 males with math SATs of 700+ and 44,838 such females, according to Total Group Profile Report - College Board (2012) .This may explain why certain majors have more males than females.”</p>
<p>Be that as it may, can you understand why here in the year 2013, MIT would like to achieve a roughly 50-50 gender balance? I recognize you might not have cared about the presence of women on campus, but can you understand why many young men might, and might find an academic environment of (say) 85-15 unappealing?</p>
<p>(and don’t say - but your D attends a women’s college. I’m aware. I’m also aware that the vast majority of smart young women find a women’s college a turn-off, and the women’s colleges know that too.)</p>
<p>So glad you are back on the thread QuantMech. You always make me laugh and give me lots to think about. I will join in the “Celebrating our Common Humanity Day” celebration.</p>
<p>Addendum to #1533: I think it is possible, though undesirable, for a person to make fun of people without making fun of them to their faces. The same holds for making fun of categories of people. The undesirability of it holds redoubled if we are talking about making fun of an unnamed, but specific subgroup of the category.</p>
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<p>I am always learning something new, PG. Have you?</p>
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<p>They did not win the derby because they are Catholics; they win it because they are rich. </p>
<p>This is a diversion tactic, isnt it? I am still waiting for an answer to my question: If looking out for the next generation is not the motive, then why are you so negative towards Asians? You think perhaps you may be hardwired that way?</p>
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<p>The optimist in me says yes; the realist in me disagrees.:)</p>
<p>“I recognize you might not have cared about the presence of women on campus, but can you understand why many young men might, and might find an academic environment of (say) 85-15 unappealing?”</p>
<p>And that is why Simmons College.</p>
<p>Hey, PolarBearVsShark: I have never been in a study group (well, maybe once in high school, during class, when it was forced upon us), and I am female.</p>