<p>btw, would you guys consider stealing something from us again -- maybe the Righteous Sense of Indignation or the Commitment to Meritocracy -- so that i could actually GO on the free trip to boston this time?</p>
<p>We've got the real thing already. What do we need a blow-up doll for?</p>
<p><em>sniffle</em></p>
<p>.</p>
<p>P.S. We get prefroshies today! <em>bounce bounce</em></p>
<p>Why does this thread still exist?</p>
<p>No seriously.</p>
<p>Why why why why why.</p>
<p>I am so sick of this topic, and I don't understand how the rest of you are not. This MIT forum has 3 types of threads- "hey do I have a chance," "OMG AA" and "Wow MIT girls are ugly." And you know what, all that happens when the last 2 get brought up is people fight and get mad and insult each other and nothing constructive comes out of it.</p>
<p>Seriously.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>hmm, laura -- as ben j. said, this is probably one of the most constructive discussions in recent memory about this topic, modulo some nonsense here and there.</p>
<p>also, complaining that some unfortunate issue comes up over and over and over and over again is like complaining about the smoke detector when the toaster is broken.</p>
<p>(at the very least, you might hope that problem #2 would fix #3. but i myself have no complaints about at least one mit girl :-)</p>
<p>Hmm.... since nothing's actually being argued anymore, if I may:</p>
<p>benjones - <em>bounces</em> Yay, I DID know what I was talking about!</p>
<p>BenG - Have fun with your prefrosh, try not to lose TOO many of them to MIT next year. ;-)</p>
<p>LauraN - Oh dear, MIT women ugly? I disagree, but then I suppose I'm biased. Hey, you either go for brainy chicks or you don't, no apologies necessary.</p>
<p>Whenever I see those "MIT women are ugly" threads, I get the most troublesome urge to, like, start posting naked pictures on the Internet. Does that count as constructive?</p>
<p>Who says "MIT women are ungly"? MIT girls are hot (& very smart)!</p>
<p>Okay apparently this thread is rapidly morphing into topic #3... so to get it back to race in admissions (and not attractiveness of anyone at MIT, since these topics have both been beaten to death), I suggest this scenario:</p>
<p>You are the captain of a baseball team, you will have a year (or four) to train the recruits, but you must decide now who will be on the team. You are trying to judge the potential of these kids, not their current abilities, since you have confidence in your own abilities to train them to the full extent of each of their abilities. Roughly half the tryouts have played for years and are very talented, but they have already been trained and may or may not improve tremendously during your training. The other half is decidedly worse at the game (in any direct match between the halves, they would likely lose) and it seems to you that they have not played much, yet they are very athletic, and obviously they show interest in baseball just by being tryouts in the first place. They come from a group among which baseball tends to be less popular. They have less current ability, but you have reason to believe that they will improve greatly under your coaching.</p>
<p>By judging on pure merit, you might pass over a good deal of undeveloped talent among the group that is athletic but previously were not very interested in baseball, and THAT will not go very far to assure, as BenG said earlier, "that a kid we reject is unlikely to eventually become a better [baseball player] scientist than one we accept." Particularly if another, very nice team decides to scoop up a few from the "unproven talent" pile. ;)</p>
<p><em>hopes this reroutes the thread</em></p>
<p>You are essentially saying that being a member of a minority group is a good proxy for {not having been exposed to/not developing much interest in/not getting much encouragement in} math and science. Thus, less current ability might not be indicative of less potential. By compensating for that with race preferences, we try to track potential more closely.</p>
<p>If this were true, we would be done and you would win. I'm not so sure, though. I think the particular people who benefit most from AA (i.e. who get in) have had a lot of exposure and encouragement to science and mathematics in their good upper and middle class schools, and special programs (the better kinds of affirmative action that start earlier on). Despite all this, they don't end up demonstrating ability in science at the level of other groups.</p>
<p>In other words, I buy the essential foundation of your argument -- that those who haven't had a chance to demonstrate talent shouldn't be tossed out without further examination; they may have a lot of latent talent. I just question the notion that race is a good estimator for the property in question. We can measure whether they have been exposed/encouraged in other ways: goodness of school, education of family, number of math and science programs done, density of MIT alumni in the person's neighborhood, etc. etc. etc.</p>
<p>The notion that black people by virtue of their blackness and no other measurable feature that an admissions process can detect are inherently disadvantaged and underexposed to science strikes me as shortsighted and racist. Do you really think we can't find less loaded things to measure than the color of their skin?</p>
<p>(Also, "educationally disadvantaged/underexposed due to their blackness" is a rationale that the MIT brief seems explicitly to reject.)</p>
<p>" I think the particular people who benefit most from AA (i.e. who get in) have had a lot of exposure and encouragement to science and mathematics in their good upper and middle class schools, and special programs (the better kinds of affirmative action that start earlier on)."
Bang on target...For one I feel that AA should be based on financial status not race...I have been saying that for many years in my country....the logic behind my reasoning is that a white guy or asian with a family income of less than say 30k..and living in a really small town setting is waay more disadvantaged than a NY living Black with an income of say more than 60k an year.....I mean i just dont get it...AA was meant to uplift the minority communities...aka to give them opportunities to rise to standards of the white's and provide themselves with facilities..so I fail to understand why they do not finish a family's eligibility for AA after 1 or 2 generations...Is this really helping anyone that you are constantyl rich minority kids or whatever other minorities you may have.....See basically i dont know about what happens in USA..but atleast in India such policies create tension between the students of different classes and even the meritorious minority students suffer due to these screwed up regulations...</p>
<p>Btw that advice is good only considering that MIT or other schools do take rich minority kids...(coz i got the idea that they presently do after reading your posts)</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Oh dear, MIT women ugly? I disagree, but then I suppose I'm biased. Hey, you either go for brainy chicks or you don't, no apologies necessary.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>
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Who says "MIT women are ungly"? MIT girls are hot (& very smart)!
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Game, set, match.</p>
<p>you go to CALTECH, right, gracielegend?</p>
<p>I guess I'd like to bring up a slightly different variation on the admissions argument, just because of a comment I got on my blog recently that I found slightly amusing and perplexing... and offensive.</p>
<p>So as many of you might know, I wasn't a crazy all-star Miss Universe of Math or anything when I applied to MIT. I got a 690 on the math section of the SATI and didn't care, because at the time I took the test, I was taking it to prep for the PSAT and didn't plan on applying to any east coast schools anyway. All of my major extracurriculars were in the performing arts.</p>
<p>I don't think I was explicitly discouraged from pursuing science-related extracurriculars, but they certainly weren't advertised to me, and I didn't make an effort to go out and find them. I decided I wanted to be a biologist in tenth grade, but I didn't see any reason to make that an extracurricular. The lead role in the school musical was for extracurriculars. Science was for staying up late at night reading books.</p>
<p>Anyway. So I wrote about my situation in one of my first</a> blog entries. People find it via Google all the time, and I keep getting comments on it.</p>
<p>The most recent comment is this:
"So in otherwords the most popular kids get in? Because that's what it looks like. Shouldn't it be wholly based on your Academic Potential? Because that's why you're going to study at MIT?"</p>
<p>I guess my question is, should it be based solely on Academic Potential? (I like the capitalization. Gives it a certain slightly ridiculous elitist flair.) I mean, sure, I did drama in high school, but I don't think that makes me a bad scientist. And I think I have just as much, if not more, Academic Potential than your run-of-the-mill what-have-you applicant. </p>
<p>So what do you use as an infallible Academic Potentialometer?</p>
<p>That's a hard question, mollie, and one whose answer I don't know. (I guess at academic potential here and there when I read application folders, but I don't have a coherent theory of exactly what determines it.) I do know, however, that the academic potentialometer doesn't, and shouldn't, care how much light your skin reflects or whether your bone structure is a certain way or whether your ancestors were from a certain group.</p>
<p>pebbles -- i wouldn't be so crass as to support GracieLegend's claim, but you could have showed us up a little more there... then again wilingness to disrobe for frivolous reasons (like stolen cannons) typically correlates inversely with actual attractiveness.</p>
<p>--
P.S. Silly CC knocked this over to a new "page" but there is a more serious response to Mollie's question about the academic potentialometer at the end of the previous page.</p>
<p>
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you go to CALTECH, right, gracielegend?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Yes, and hence my standards have hit rock bottom. However, the standard in that picture corresponds to the 7th circle of Hell.</p>
<p>By the way, were you in that picture?</p>
<p>
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but you could have showed us up a little more there... then again wilingness to disrobe for frivolous reasons (like stolen cannons) typically correlates inversely with actual attractiveness.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Ben, you're my hero.</p>
<p>don't be too shocked to find the 7th level of Hell out of your league ;)</p>
<p>p.s. does it matter if I'm in the picture?</p>
<p>i would think it only matters to determine the extent to which gracieLegend should pebbles-proof any sensitive parts of his face.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
don't be too shocked to find the 7th level of Hell out of your league
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Trust me girl, I'd rather take a life-long vow of chastity than be any part of this league. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
p.s. does it matter if I'm in the picture?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>No need to be defensive. A simple "yes", "no", or "I'm too embarassed to admit it" would suffice.</p>
<p>BTW, what is up with so many MIT girls dying their hair?? Is this your nod towards Japanese anime for horny old men?? Green hair doesn't make you any more attractive, independent, bold, or free-thinking. It just makes people take you less seriously.</p>