Let's set this straight about MIT admissions

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>I've noticed that many fellow guys here grumble at the disparity between the male and female acceptance rates (9.7% for men, and 22.3% for women).</p>

<p>Many people believe that this is because MIT favors women in an affirmative action like way, that the bar is "lowered" for women.</p>

<p>Let it be known, realized and accepted that this is at all not the case. The reality is that women who apply to MIT are in general more superior than men who apply. </p>

<p>Why? It comes down to societal standards. Any guy that is somewhat decent at Math/Science and wants to pursue it in college will likely apply to MIT. However, when a girl overcomes the societal standard that Math/Science is for boys, and decides to pursue it in college, she has to usually be pretty damn good at math/science.</p>

<p>When the pool of accepted men and women are compared, grades and SAT scores or so close its practicaly equal (who "wins" by a slight margin varies from year to year).</p>

<p>And if thats not enough, guess what?</p>

<p>The average GPA of girls attending MIT is higher than the boys.</p>

<p>So, please, lets not complain about girls "unfairly" taking the spot of more deserving boys. That's just not the case.</p>

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<p>i don't like statistical comparisons altogether, bc if MIT accepted just on a stat-based system, it's average GPA would be 3.9-4 UW (Olin's average is like 4.2 weighted) and its average SAT would be well over a 2300. But I agree having a higher acceptance rate for women isn't affirmative action-esque.</p>

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<p>Huh. I agree with pretty much your whole post (in the words of an admissions officer who shall remain anonymous, "The female applicant pool kicks the male applicant pool's ass"), but I haven't seen a gender-wankery thread in this forum for a while. I'm surprised you're posting this now in particular.</p>

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<p>"I've noticed that many fellow guys here grumble at the disparity between the male and female acceptance rates (9.7% for men, and 22.3% for women).... Let it be known, realized and accepted that this is at all not the case."</p>

<p>Ok... I agree that the bar is not lowered for women.</p>

<p>"The reality is that women who apply to MIT are in general more superior than men who apply. "</p>

<p>What metric are you using for "superior?" And is there any indication that the "superiority" that girls have over guys when applying actually carries through to any meaningful statistic later on in life? I'm not aware of any study done on MIT students that shows that some "superiority index" results in a higher correlation of that applicant doing super well upon graduation, especially with analysis between the two genders.</p>

<p>"Why? It comes down to societal standards. Any guy that is somewhat decent at Math/Science and wants to pursue it in college will likely apply to MIT. However, when a girl overcomes the societal standard that Math/Science is for boys, and decides to pursue it in college, she has to usually be pretty damn good at math/science."</p>

<p>Man I wish I could explain away things so simply. Look, a large chunk of the applicant pool is just substandard to the rest of the applicant pool. People aren't admitted solely because they can graduate from MIT (which is what the "70% of applicants could have done fine here" is about). They are chosen because they will flourish (and blotts!) and own at MIT. So yes, if more males apply than females, and there is an equal number of badass females and males admitted (look I'll even use your own words!: "When the pool of accepted men and women are compared, grades and SAT scores or so close its practicaly equal (who "wins" by a slight margin varies from year to year)."), and there is a large chunk of substandard males who applied, then yes, the average male will look worse than the average male.</p>

<p>My analysis isn't anywhere close to complete, but I'm trying to show you that your reasoning is too simple for this complicated case.</p>

<p>"The average GPA of girls attending MIT is higher than the boys."</p>

<p>And guess what? You forgot to take into account that people take different majors, and different majors have different difficulty. So your comparing the average GPA of the two genders without differentiating with respect to how many from each gender go into which respective majors and other committments (like UROP's), which is naive.</p>

<p>I'm not out to say that girls > guys or vice versa. I'm suggesting that your reasoning is flawed, and you are declaring very bold points without real backing. </p>

<p>PS: If you are really interested in this discussion, take a look at Caltech's statistics. It's very useful in helping draw information on a nearly pure merit basis since at least according to their policy, the admit pretty much on pure merit.</p>

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<p>Or, might the disparity occur because of the fact that less women apply to MIT? MIT would want to fill their class with as balanced a male to female ratio as possible, so even if you're accepting roughly the same number of females, because it is out of a smaller pool, your admit rate is going to be higher.</p>

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<p>exactly. And besides, I find it amusing that all of a sudden people get upset if anxious teenage boys sing the same tune they did in elementary school. Do you seriously think people grow up?!?</p>

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<p>Eh, girls still have cooties in my book ;-D jk</p>

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<p>And boys are still made of snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails...</p>

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<p>I question the more "pure" merit system that Caltech claims it has. The difference between a 2250 and 2350 can really come down to a few questions and a different curve. So, I agree with MIT's mentality that at a certain point, its pointless to differentiate people on merit on such things like a 100 point difference on the SAT's. (On a 2400 scale)</p>

<p>And on making bold points: I know I can't really give the exact numbers that prove this point, but I merely restating facts provided by people from the MIT's admission office. </p>

<p>As a previous poster said, an adcom from MIT actually stated that "The female applicant pool kicks the male applicant pool's ass"</p>

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<p>I think it is fruitless to try and argue that the male applicant pool to MIT is 'superior' to the female applicant pool based solely on admit rates. In order to determine 'superiority', you would at least need access to all of MIT's acceptance/rejection histories, and the applicant files for all the past candidates.</p>

<p>But to attempt to prove that girls are 'superior' to boys at MIT using GPA is equally ridiculous. How is GPA the all-inclusive measure of success in college? Of course the politically correct types will dispute this, but it is beyond obvious that some majors are far more challenging than others, while some select majors are also subject to more grade inflation than others. Also, is a 3.5 GPA with a double major in two of the most challenging majors 'inferior' to someone with a 3.8 GPA in the easiest major at MIT?</p>

<p>Clearly not.</p>

<p>Your intent may have been to prove wrong those that state that the guys applying to mit are superior to the girls, but you are just as foolish as them if you are trying to prove the opposite with the limited data at your disposal.</p>

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<p>I agree with differential and bob99975. A lot more guys than girls here major in electrical engineering/computer science, which is considered to be one of the hardest majors at MIT. A lot more girls tend to go into Management or one of the humanities, which aren't nearly as tough. The female applicant pool is incredibly strong, but I wouldn't be so quick as to jump to the conclusion that they are superior to the male applicant pool.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
A lot more girls tend to go into Management or one of the humanities, which aren't nearly as tough.

[/quote]

Uh, 86 of the 200 current management majors are women, and 67 out of the current 128 HASS majors are women (stats</a> here). So no, neither of those examples are true.</p>

<p>IIRC, Ben Jones' original assertation was that women graduate at higher rates with higher GPAs than men at MIT, even after differential major choice was taken into account.</p>

<p>I agree with differential that this issue is treated (generally on CC and in life, not just here) in an absurdly and inappropriately simplistic manner.</p>

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<p>Sorry for my simplistic approach in assumptions and bold statements; I recalled that there was data that proved them, but I didn't know where it was.</p>

<p>Thanks Mollie for finding the data!</p>

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<p>I will add my voice in support of the point that the assertions made in the original post are simplistic and not well defended -- in that post or since.</p>

<p>To Mollie -- the numbers you quote don't show what you say they show. Women make up about 43% of the MIT student body, so women are disproportionately represented in HASS. I am almost sure that women are underrepresented in math and physics and overrepresented in the biological sciences. So there is a lot going on that complicates the picture in terms of comparing overall male and female academic achievement at MIT.</p>

<p>Jessie and Mollie -- regarding the appeal to authority here, I realize that Ben J.'s word may be authoritative for you, and I like and respect him as much as anybody. But no serious discussion of such a big issue can rest on the say-so of one person about the trends in datasets that, as far as I can tell, are not available to anyone else. (E.g., major-adjusted GPA.) If these points are to be taken seriously, they must be defended by data or at least a paper summarizing the methods. Who knows what the quality of the statistical work is? Statistics produced in the dark by not-totally-disinterested parties and relayed through hearsay are not overwhelmingly persuasive. I do hope someday a serious debate can take place, but that can't happen until at least some of the methodology is available for objective professionals to examine.</p>

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<p>"IIRC, Ben Jones' original assertation was that women graduate at higher rates with higher GPAs than men at MIT, even after differential major choice was taken into account."</p>

<p>Yes but you can't just say well 200 girls are in EECS and 500 boys are in EECS. The 200 girls in EECS seem to on average have a better GPA than the 500 boys. </p>

<p>This doesn't make sense because people are select what major they are going into depending on what their strengths and interests are. The 200 girls might have been the ones who spent a lot of HS time working on EECS stuff or are among the sharpest in their batch. So do you compare them to the top 200 boys in EECS? I'm not sure, but averages don't work here.</p>

<p>Maybe it's just me, but I can spot out that this analysis definitely isn't something that can be done back-of-the-envelope.</p>

<p>I also think that admissions has a certain agenda when it makes comments like that on their blogs. In particular I have noted that the admissions student blogs are representative of a subset of MIT that wants to be represented. Of course you can't drag people from the depths of MIT out to start blogging, but it also means that the MIT blogs have to be taken with a grain of salt, a la a slight professional touch since so many applicants read them. They have a positive attitude, a great diversity and are almost always politically correct... something I seriously doubt that real MIT students are always like. (Not that MIT blogs are bad, I've enjoyed reading them, but its horrible when people draw anecdotal evidence from these blogs about what MIT MUST be like).</p>

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<p>
[quote]
But no serious discussion of such a big issue can rest on the say-so of one person about the trends in datasets that, as far as I can tell, are not available to anyone else.

[/quote]

Has this really crossed the line into a serious discussion? I didn't think so, and in the absence of real data for me to pick over personally in an honest-to-goodness publication, I think I'm justified in citing Ben. I don't think that's the last word on the matter, but I think that in the absence of any other data, it's at least worth bringing up.</p>

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<p>^^It's interesting that you keep bringing up that girls have higher GPAs on average, but you neglected to mention that males have a disproportionate fraction of the highest GPAs. If you looked at the several hundred people in the training camps for the U.S. math, chemistry, physics, and biology teams, and also the Putnam top 50, what would you find? Would it be overwhelmingly girls? </p>

<p>Marilee Jones said that the academic superstars were mostly male, but then the people who are spectacular flameouts are also male. It averaged out that the females had a slightly higher GPAs. She attributed this to personality difference between genders--that females are satisfied to be in the middle group and males want to stand out or something like that.</p>

<p>BTW, on another thread you mentioned that your brother was not a very serious student, characterizing him as a "typical boy." I wonder how many people would get away with this type of characterization if it were describing a female instead of a male.</p>

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<p>Mollie -- I certainly have no issue with you bringing up Ben's remark. I'm just pointing out that not too much weight can be placed on that kind of analysis. And notice that admissions offices have complete control over which data are released. So saying, "In the absence of other data, we may as well bring up what they gave us" gives them quite a lot of leeway to persuade you with highly selective data release -- which, indeed, they do.</p>

<p>One thing about which there is no doubt is that the real picture here is extremely complicated, with some facts that make women look A LOT better than men academically and other facts that make men look A LOT better than women. Yet the MIT admissions office tends to emphasize one side of this very much. (The Marilee Jones quote above is an interesting exception.) I have no problem with that. Women are an underrepresented minority in science and deserve all the encouragement MIT can give them. It's just that when we try to figure out what the real truth is, that kind of PR slant isn't useful anymore. </p>

<p>So my real point is that we have to distinguish cheerleading for women in science (which I think is wonderful) from a real discussion of how men and women compare academically. The contributions of MIT admissions officers fall squarely in the first category because they don't meet the standards for evidence that a scientist could take seriously. My only goal is to point out that their remarks should be perceived with that in mind.</p>

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<p>It's not an issue of women being smarter or men being smarter.</p>

<p>This is the way I see it:</p>

<p>The fact is that there are many more men than women applying to MIT, and MIT wants to maintain as close a ratio to 50:50, m:f as it can (without compromising the school's characteristic prestige and mindpower), since skewed ratios tend to detract from the school's environment.</p>

<p>If 100 males and 50 females apply, if there are 20 spots, and if MIT wants to stay close to that 50:50, there is going to be a higher acceptance rate for females simply because there are less females applying.</p>

<p>MIT has about a 60:40, m:f ratio.</p>

<p>12 males are accepted
8 females are accepted</p>

<p>12 out of 100 is 12% male acceptance.
8 out of 50 is a 16% female acceptance.</p>

<p>The exact number of male and female applicants is on their common data set.</p>

<p>Whether or not males have higher SATs/GPAs than females won't affect the above reasoning unless there's a huge disparity in scores. And there isn't, since I'm pretty sure that MIT has more able applicants than the school can handle.</p>

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<p>Note that I cited a remark by an admissions officer made to me personally in a private office during a friendly conversation, not one that was stated publicly for PR purposes.</p>

<p>"Merit" is defined differently by different institutions. Telling someone to look at the statistics of a school that admits "pretty much on pure merit" is questionable, because that school is going by their own definition of merit. This isn't meant to knock Caltech - presumably they know what factors make up the best model of merit for their own institution.</p>

<p>One could make various arguments about the performance of the genders once they're at MIT, but it isn't actually useful in a debate about admissions policy except to demonstrate that the people who got in were meritorious enough to be there. It's not really the issue.</p>

<p>The issue here also isn't whether men or women are smarter, at least not to me. It's that people are apt to claim that female students have not had to jump through the same hoops as male students to get to MIT.</p>

<p>Differential, you really have a thing about the blogs. Not all entries are positive, and MIT students actually ARE a pretty diverse group, contrary to popular stereotype.</p>