<p>Careful, or someone with mistake your talking with constant harping (and by constant I mean constant). :-/</p>
<p>that doesn't even make any sense.</p>
<p>I do remember what I was going to say though, but now I have homework to do :P</p>
<p>
[quote]
MIT uses its gender balanced class as a major marketing tool
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</p>
<p>Yes they do. And to good effect. What’s more, they like it that way, and so do many of the students.</p>
<p>
[quote]
and also wants to pretend that it's achieved without gender-based admissions preferences.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>All selection is based on preferences. There is no pretense. The common data set is out there, and they openly speak about their recruitment practices. It would be pragmatic for any student to pay attention to those numbers and preferences. What is disingenuous, or BS as you put it, is the constant haranguing of whether or not MIT women are qualified because of these preferences and then disguising it as some higher level intellectual discourse. Again what is the debate? Are you whining that it’s not fair?! As mollieb has repeatedly said, MIT likes it one way, and you seemingly want it another. </p>
<p>Okay, I'm done. I have to pick up my husband at the airport.</p>
<p>It makes sense to me :)</p>
<p>^exactly...and round and round you go^</p>
<p>
You're kind of off in your own little reality there. Find a post where I talk about MIT admissions not being 'fair'. Find a post where I complain about how MIT does its admissions. And please, find a post that suggests I don't think MIT women are qualified. </p>
<p>Otherwise, you have no evidence the ridiculous claim that I am "disguising it as some higher level intellectual discourse," when in reality, all I've done is brought up the discussion after someone else brought up Caltech.</p>
<p>
<p>OK back to your discussions, folks, sorry for the aside.
Sigh, could you at least look over what we've posted on this forum before you condemn us - you'd look a little more credible that way. Here, I'll help you out: find a post that you feel indicates that I've come to 'camp out' here and 'stir things up': <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?searchid=6620551%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?searchid=6620551</a>. Then we can talk.</p>
<p>
[Quote]
...well, people are still talking, so I'm still talking too.
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<p>l0lll mollie, nice retort</p>
<p>3Ks --</p>
<p>cghen is right in #186 about the nature of his contributions to this debate. But I have said MIT admissions is "unfair" because, in a broad sense, I believe that colleges that treat people like domographic currency are acting immorally. There's nothing wrong with me saying that, and here's why.</p>
<p>Most people realize what I'm about to say, but there are two levels of the debate here. One level is about whether MIT has gender-based admissions preferences and, more generally, what their admissions process really cares about (beyond the cookie cutter PR lines). The other level of the debate is about whether MIT's policies are right and whether they make sense from a broader perspective.</p>
<p>The first level is merely about the existence of gender preferences. On and off (though mostly off) MIT admissions people deny that they exist, and then people look at numbers to see whether that denial is plausible. And it's silly, 3Ks, to say all admissions is based on preferences and that's all there is to it. Clearly you wouldn't let someone get away with that if their "preference" was to reject black people automatically. The precise nature of the preferences matters and all that people are trying to do at this level is see through the smoke and determine what the preferences really are. A recent turn in the debate has been "you guys at Caltech have the same thing we do", and cghen has very cogently explained why this argument fails. In any case, people seem to be moving closer to a consensus opinion about the existence of gender-based preferences, but the fact that there's still a discussion suggests that facts haven't unequivocally settled the issue. But more facts come out every day. What, 3Ks, is your problem with people trying to figure out how MIT admissions works and what they consider important? That's all that's going on.</p>
<p>At another level of the debate people talk about affirmative action for women and minorities as a broader social and moral issue. ([url="<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=277166&page=2%22%5DHere%5B/url">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=277166&page=2"]Here[/url</a>] is an example of this, featuring some truly enlightening and serious debate on the question.) Normative debates are tricky because MIT will decide what MIT will do and they certainly won't care what I think is Right and Wrong. But by fleshing out the deeper issues and consequences of affirmative action, we can (and often do!) change minds and understand our own views and others' views better. MIT is a deeply idealistic place (Ben Jones is an inspiring example of this idealism) and many representatives of MIT stress the importance of fighting for fairness and improvement in the world beyond just our academic work. When we argue about AA as a moral issue, we discuss whether AA fits into broader notions of fairness and whether it's something we might be proud of in 50 years. Maybe, 3Ks, you don't like to see people discussing the merits of an issue you've made up your mind on, but I don't really care very much what you like. These debates are productive and interesting and often they change the world. So more power to us :)</p>
<p>That's a very good summary, Ben. Thanks for posting that (where I might not have been as clearl due to being upset!)</p>
<p>
[quote]
At another level of the debate people talk about affirmative action for women and minorities as a broader social and moral issue. (Here is an example of this, featuring some truly enlightening and serious debate on the question.)
[/quote]
And I very much preferred that discussion to this one. That one felt much more thoughtful and intellectual, I think.</p>
<p>EDIT: Ohmigod, embarrassing. So in post #120 on that thread to which Ben linked, I mentioned
[quote]
At any rate, I'm taking a course this semester called Social Issues in Biology, and we'll be discussing "the 'science' of behavior, ethnicity and race" on February 8. I'm hoping to pick up some interesting discussion points from the class. (I am also hoping that I do not have to utter the words "On this college discussion board I frequent..." during the in-class discussion. But I think it may be unavoidable. :))
[/quote]
That day in class, I totally did mention CC. And it was just as embarrassing as I thought it would be.</p>
<p>Whyd you mention it molle? :P</p>
<p>Did anyone recognize it? !</p>
<p><a href="3KS%20wrote:">quote</a> There is no pretense. The common data set is out there,
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The MIT common data set obscures at least one crucial matter about admissions, which is the breakdown of enrollment by both race and gender.</p>
<p>To race- and gender-balance the class MIT needs to employ reverse racial AA for females (that is, to have a superabundance of white, Asian and affluent females) and redoubled AA among the males. There would be a telltale signature of this in the bivariate breakdown of the admits or matriculants.</p>
<p>The admissions rates by group would also be interesting to know, but private universities never release those figures. Many release the enrollment breakdown by both race and gender, but MIT has a reason to not do so.</p>
<p>FWIW, this is what MIT's previous Freshman Crew coach told us about MIT admissions:</p>
<p>There are five categories that a student is rated on, and the scale is 1 to 5.</p>
<p>The categories are: Academics (GPA, course load, teacher recs), Athletics, ECs, Test scores (APs, SATs, ACT, contests etc.) and the Essay.</p>
<p>A score of 2 in any category means immediate denial. </p>
<p>After totals are computed, then other factors play a role, such as gender, AA, demographics, etc.</p>
<p>I think I know of some current students who wouldn't have gotten above a 2 in athletics.</p>
<p>Sorry, I should have included that not having an Athletic Dept. recommendation does <em>not</em> hurt one's chances -- but having one does give athletic students a chance for extra points.</p>
<p>^^ Ahh, ok. Makes sense :P</p>
<p>
[quote]
not having an Athletic Dept. recommendation does <em>not</em> hurt one's chances -- but having one does give athletic students a chance for extra points.
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</p>
<p>The "does not hurt" is impossible in a zero-sum competition.</p>
<p>Extra points for athletics means that if there is any decision to be made at all about your application given the non-athletic factors (i.e. those alone do not automatically mark you as a superstar ACCEPT or an unqualified DENY), chances of admission are lowered by a lack of athletics.</p>
<p>"What is disingenuous, or BS as you put it, is the constant haranguing of whether or not MIT women are qualified because of these preferences and then disguising it as some higher level intellectual discourse."</p>
<p>No - what I think is disingenuous is to conflate "less qualified" with "unqualified" and to stifle debate in this way - you shout with a wounded and insulted tone, "are you accusing me of being not qualified?" and end the discussion. </p>
<p>You can't have it both ways - if you admit (and as you say it's no secret) that a "preference" exists then what does this mean other than that they take people who are otherwise "less qualified" provided they are of the "correct" race/gender? It's logically impossible to say both that "a preference exists" and to say "all applicant groups are equally qualified" - one of those statements cannot be true. Nor is it useful to question the validity of the measurement tools for what constitutes "qualified" (basically SAT and GPA) unless you are willing to discard them entirely. They obviously rely heavily on SAT and GPA as filtering tools, they just "spot" certain groups more points based on their skin tone/chromosomes.</p>
<p>Now what can be said is that almost all MIT admits are "minimally qualified" above some (fairly high) threshold level and are therefore capable of doing the work. But this does not negate the possibility that some are more qualified than others or that as strong as the student body is, you couldn't select one that was even MORE strong and would make even greater contributions to society if you used another screening method that did not rely on "preferences" to artificially depress the chances of certain applicants.</p>
<p>I think that the big thing that "preference" (affirmative action, diversity, whatever buzz word is used today) advocates blind themselves to is that admissions is essentially a zero sum game because the # of seats at MIT (or any other top instutition) is fixed in the short run. So for every "preference" beneficiary there is an "unpreference" victim. Psychologically, they have defended themselves by talking of giving certain candidates a "boost" or a "leg up" which sounds good. In the now prohibited Michigan undergrad scheme they would literally add points to your admissions index score if you were a certain color. After the SC ruling they are no longer this explicit but they are still in effect doing the same thing. If they did it as subtracting points from say white and Asian males (which is exactly the same thing) then suddenly the scheme does not sound so appetizing but just like old fashioned race and gender discrimination but with the beneficiaries shifted around.</p>
<p>YES! You said it exactly right.</p>
<p>What's strange is that AA advocates tend to insist on a strange doublethink, as you say above better than I can. I think it's legitimate to make the institutional decision to sacrifice a bit of selectivity in some groups for a bit of diversity. (I don't agree with the decision, but it's certainly their right.) But let's at least not try to pretend that you can have your cake and eat it too. This is like people who say we can raise spending, lower taxes, and balance the budget.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the extreme discomfort with admitting the simple truth about what AA entails suggests that most people agree with me on the moral side of the issue. They know what's being done is deeply questionable, and would just prefer to pretend that some magic is happening which makes it so there's no trade-off.</p>
<p>I support MIT's efforts to increase the diversity of its student body. According to Caltech's website (<a href="http://diversity,caltech.edu/dpg.html)%5B/url%5D">http://diversity,caltech.edu/dpg.html)</a>, from 1990 to 2002, only one percent of undergraduate students were African American. Only 6 percent were hispanic. In contrast, at MIT 6 percent of undergraduates are African American, and 12 percent are hispanic. </p>
<p>Ben Golub posted earlier that he participated in admissions at Caltech, and said that if there were two equally qualified applicants, then regardless of gender or ethnicity, the Caltech admissions committee would "flip a coin." I find that a rather pathetic response to Caltech's board of trustees' call to increase diversity on the campus. In fact, that is a far more conservative response to diversity than is allowed under the Supreme Court's recent ruling in the Michigan case.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that as a parent, I want my child to experience diversity in higher education. I hope that she encounters the best and the brightest from as many ethnic groups and nationalities as possible, and for that reason I do support MIT's efforts to reach out to under-represented groups. That's my choice, as a consumer. I just don't think what Caltech offers is worth paying for.</p>