<p>
Please, compare graduation rates of electrical engineers and chemical engineers at MIT to those in biology and management in sloan. Then look at see how those are populated by gender. That's the information that I'm talking about could affect the overall graduation rate.</p>
<p>cghen:</p>
<p>Do you have the stats? Could you post them or links to them? Thanks.</p>
<p>Higherlead:</p>
<p>I thought the Grutter decision was about numeric quotas.</p>
<p>I don't have the stats. I'm just trying to point out that if there are discrepancies in those areas, that will affect the overall graduation rate between females and males. I know there are differences in major population by gender at Caltech, and the graduation rates in those majors may also vary - certainly average GPA does.</p>
<p>I'm not sure what good measures of college outcomes would be, but I think gradiuation rates is a poor measure at highly selective colleges.. If I was in charge of admissions at MIT, I would hope that most of the admittees would end up well above the "barely able to graduate" level.</p>
<p>We do not know how many students are "barely able to graduate" nor do we know how many of those who would fall in this category are male or female. But this does not seem to deter anyone from casting aspersions on the women admitted at MIT. At least my S's male chums are free of gender bias when bemoaning that the trashing of Marilee Jones taints their own admission as much as that of women. (oh, and the specific chum is an International Olympiad medalist).</p>
<p>As for myself, I repeat that Marilee Jones fraudulent representation of her own credentials did not affect the admission decisions made by her committee.</p>
<p>Re "We do not know how many students are "barely able to graduate" nor do we know how many of those who would fall in this category are male or female."</p>
<p>I agree with this statement, and my comment wasn't directed at MIT or women in particular; I hope the "at least my son's chums are free of gender bias" comment wasn't directed at me.</p>
<p>The first time I was struck by the inadequacy of graduation rates as a measure of success in college was in Harry Lewis' book, when he used graduation rate data to argue that Harvard athletes did as well academically as the rest of the student body. Grades seem a better, but still imperfect, measure, and Mollie has reported that MIT women do better on this metric than the men. As I said in my (studiously gender neutral) post, I'm not sure what the best measure of success in college would be.</p>
<p>
The admitted students (male and female) are hurt by Ms. Jones and her fraudulent deeds, not the trashing of her. They should be (and many are) directing their anger at Ms. Jones, not those criticizing her. </p>
<p>This also hurts those high achieving rejected students. When over 20,000 kids put their heart and soul into their MIT applications, a cumulation of hard work over many years, they expected to be judged by a fair process run by honest people. When the whole process is tainted by this, it is much harder for the rejected students, many of them also would do well at MIT, to simply move on without asking "what if?"</p>
<p>Unless one thinks that the admitted students were not worthy of being admitted, then I fail to see how Ms. Jones' lies call their admission into question.
As for rejected students, one thing to keep in mind is that there are more applicants than available spots. That is true of MIT and that is true of other selective colleges where Jones did not work. Having someone other than Jones in the MIT admission office would not have changed it. And once again, the policy was not Jones' alone. Nor was it necessarily her own initiative. The Board of Trustees decided on a policy and chose the Dean accordingly. Not the other way around. This is why I doubt very much that it will change now that Jones is out of the picture.</p>
<p>Aedar:
A basic measure of success is graduation. One can be more successful insofar as getting better grades than someone else. But unless criteria are set so low as to make failure nearly impossible, there is no reason to challenge graduation rates as a good metric.</p>
<p>Some folks on this thread have complained that MIT did not follow an "objective process." I think what this means is that they looked beyond test scores and gpa.</p>
<p>Is there any highly selective educational institution that does that? Don't all make judgments that go beyond the numbers? Don't all claim that they use a holistic process to build an entering class?</p>
<p>Bitterness waves going high in this thread. I think it was incredibly cocky of Ms. Jones, but also a proof of how bureaucraticized for the worse our society has become if a college drop-out actually doing a sufficiently good job has her entire body of work deemed invalid over that fact.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why do your son and his chums feel their qualifications being impugned? Not for any of them are not worthy, but rather because Ms. Jones being a fraud and cheat taints the integrity of MIT admission process and all those involved in the process.</p>
<p>Edit:
What I meant is that many people are questioning not the worthiness of the admitted students but rather the integrity of the process, one that headed by a fraud and cheat.</p>
<p>But the Dean of Admission didn't set the admissions policy, nor did was she the only one implementing it.</p>
<p>I do not have a kid at MIT. He did not apply there. It's not my fight. But I have seen plenty of posts on this thread suggesting that Ms. Jones used criteria that were unfair and biased, especially biased toward women. If that's not impugning the qualification of admitted students, I don't know what is.<br>
Impugning the integrity of the process is also impugning the integrity of the outcome. I don't see how one can separate the one from the other. I do, however, claim that it is possible to separate the issue of Jones' credentials from the process itself. Those who claim that the process was tainted should specific exactly how it was tainted. Repeating that she was a fraud and cheat does not make it so.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Some folks on this thread have complained that MIT did not follow an "objective process." I think what this means is that they looked beyond test scores and gpa.</p>
<p>Is there any highly selective educational institution that does that? Don't all make judgments that go beyond the numbers? Don't all claim that they use a holistic process to build an entering class?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think there may be some other institution on the left coast...</p>
<p>I'm sure that applicants to Caltech have more to offer than SAT scores and GPAs.</p>
<p>And I'm sure that Caltech doesn't just use test scores and grades. If so, they wouldn't need an admissions office to make decisions - They could just write a multivariate formula.</p>
<p>From Caltech's website:</p>
<p>There are a lot of numbers and formulas at Caltech—but not at the Admissions Office. The decision-making process is much more of an art than a science here. We do not put your numbers into a computer to calculate your admissibility. Rather, we read every application to get a sense of who you are and whether you would be a good fit for Caltech.</p>
<p>Each student is considered in the context of his or her background. Every student has different resources, depending on his or her family, school, and community situations. Students are not compared to one another, even if they come from the same high school, because each student has a different set of life circumstances.<a href="http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/applying/decisions%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/applying/decisions</a></p>
<p>"There is no “trick” to gaining admission. There are no formulas that assure success, and even for experienced application readers it is impossible to predict the outcome for a particular applicant without reading the entire application. There are no automatic cutoffs for any criteria that we might consider, and every application submitted for admission to Caltech is read.</p>
<p>The best advice I can offer you is to take your time on the application. Answer all the questions fully, make sure that you spend time on your writing, and be sure that the application accurately reflects your interests and accomplishments.</p>
<p>Caltech’s admissions process is unusual in the way in which faculty and students are involved. Virtually every student who is offered admission to Caltech has had their application read by a Caltech faculty member and an undergraduate student, as well as by one or more members of the admissions staff." <a href="http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/applying%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/applying</a></p>
<p>Jeez such a firestorm of posts in less than 10 minutes. I'm glad momfromme can find Caltech's website. I was half-kidding about Caltech (although I could have been talking about another school). </p>
<p>Still, Caltech admissions does seem a bit more merit based.</p>
<p>When people say that Caltech uses numbers more than other schools in admissions, they (should) mean it in one of the following ways:</p>
<p>1) People with strong scores in distinguished math/science based exams (AIME, USAMO, USPhO, etc.) are given more credit at Caltech than at other schools. </p>
<p>2) It is a necessary, but by no means sufficienct, criteria for acceptance that one demonstrates an ability to do well in math and physics. The SAT is somewhat useful in gauging analytical ability, and so if someone has a low SAT score, that will raise a red flag. This can be overcome with things like AP scores, better tests for math and physics, but in the end, if there's any doubt an applicant has not demonstrated ability in math and physics, that person will be rejected. </p>
<p>Do NOT think, however, that this means that a good SAT/GPA/etc. gets anyone into Caltech - that is very far from the truth.</p>
<p>The difference between Caltech and MIT is in both points 1 and 2.</p>
<p>For MIT (correct me if I'm wrong):</p>
<p>1) MIT weighs other criteria higher (relative to Caltech) such as essays and non-science ECs.</p>
<p>2) If a person does not do so well in science classes or does not indicated strong ability in math or science (relative to Caltech applicants) he or she can still be accepted.</p>
<p>I have no dog in this fight personally. I only responded after seeing some people extolling her excellent work and wanted to point out the damage she had done.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>These are all highly charged issues, A.A., gender balance, definition of "merit". That why the admission process needs to be fair, transparent, and above board. For it to be fairly perceived, it has to be not only fair but also have the appearance of fairness. Her being the spokesperson of these missions, has done terrible damage to the image of MIT admission.</p>