<p>It’s not that getting a 2400 is easy. It’s that it isn’t really important. </p>
<p>We know, statistically, that people below a certain SAT score (in each section) tend to struggle at MIT, and people above a certain score tend to do well. Once people have hit those marks, the weight that we assess to the SAT diminishes rapidly. </p>
<p>In other words, we use the SAT as a predictor of performance, which is what it was designed for, and how its creators intended it to be used. Once you break that barrier, your candidacy depends on the rest of your application.</p>
<p>I figure that anyone who scores 2200+ understands how formulaic the SAT is, and has had enough familiarity with the types of questions presented.</p>
<p>I should note that this applies to URMs as well, and this is what I think confuses people about affirmative action at MIT. It’s an attribution error. </p>
<p>People see that a URM with 100 points less on the SAT got in instead of someone else and assume it was an affirmative action boost, whereas in reality it’s because that URM had a more compelling application in context, and they may have also beat out another URM with a higher test score but a less compelling reason to admit.</p>
<p>It appears that many are finally becoming very aware of the slanted playing field caused by Affirmative Action policies. It’s simply unfortunate that some have to be personally victimized by the policy to come to this realization. </p>
<p>I congratulate those accepted, but I must also extend my condolences to those very well-qualified individuals who were curiously waitlisted or denied. </p>
<p>@PiperXP Wait… white males are pushed harder than minorities or women? Care to explain this? Also, should someone really be penalized if they are pushed harder to succeed? Isn’t that good parenting?</p>
<p>Also (speaking from an Asian standpoint), something that really bothers Asians is that they feel like their best will simply not be good enough… that they are disadvantaged from the start simply because they were born Asian.</p>
<p>Those specific numbers aren’t precisely correct, but yes, that’s the general point. They aren’t quite cutoffs, but there are points at which the SAT/ACT tests generally predict success at MIT and generally predict failure. </p>
<p>We look at plenty of other stuff - grades, teacher recs, etc - but that’s the general gist of how we use the scores: as predictors of success or causes for concern, not as qualifiers in and of themselves.</p>
<p>It isn’t true or statistically significant. As someone else posted (in reference to the article from 1999) our URMs score above the median for all Ivy League Schools. </p>
<p>Again, it’s an attribution error - seeing someone with a lower score who was accepted, and attributing the acceptance to something easily apprehended, like race, than other, contextual factors.</p>
<p>We have no “upper-boundary cutoff.” Everyone will be challenged at MIT, even the kids with IMO triple gold medals. </p>
<p>With your description, though - yes, we would view someone with high scores and good (even if not perfect) grades as someone who could “do the work.” And then we move on to other factors.</p>
<p>It’s still true that a lot of people feel that way though. A lot of us hear horror stories of good Asian students getting rejected because they weren’t as good as other Asian students despite being better than another person of race X.</p>
<p>… are you really unaware of how even within the same school, the dynamics for different minorities are not the same? How, say, males are encouraged to pursue higher math while females are told that women aren’t good at math (despite studies showing that women have “caught up” in math, so to speak), or that more is expected of white students than, say, Hispanic students?</p>
<p>And no, this isn’t about penalizing those who were pushed harder - but it is about recognizing the extra effort made by people with less opportunity (which can exist in the same setting). This goes in all directions, though. A person (say, male) who goes to school in east LA has probably overcome a lot more than a person (say, female) at TJHS if they are both qualified MIT applicants.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth (which is probably not much, given that many CCers as a whole would rather come up with an unfair conspiracy theory than examine what actually happened), I’m sitting in a student office with a dozen other students (all white or male or both - I’m the only URM female in the room) who are bewildered by how strongly you hold on to your misconceptions about a place you’ve never really experienced.</p>
<p>Finally, I’d like to point out that, as unbalanced as CC is, there are still many rejected URMs and accepted ORMs on the decision threads.</p>
<p>@kldaace - I don’t know about you but I was always hearing stories about my parents’ Asian friends’ children who were amazing and all got into HYPSM and hoping I wouldn’t be too much of a disappointment. I know admissions doesn’t always make a lot of sense but I haven’t really seen Asian applicants discriminated against in my area, although the stats on CC look terribly intimidating. But then again CC exists to intimidate. :P</p>
my stats are somewhere in the EA thread.</p>
I know admissions doesn’t always make a lot of sense but I haven’t really seen Asian applicants discriminated against in my area, although the stats on CC look terribly intimidating. But then again CC exists to intimidate. :P</p>