<p>
Yes, there is certainly female self-selection in both pools.</p>
<p>However, notice that Caltech admits females at 1.7 times the male rate, while MIT is 2.6. Either MITs females are (on average) more qualified than Caltech applicants, or MIT must be doing something to favor women. Since MIT ends up with nearly a ~50-50 split in total admissions numbers, and both schools really share a very similar pool of applicants, I'm going to go with the latter.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn</a></p>
<p>berurah, thanks!</p>
<p>---------------------------- Caltech ---------------------------------------- MIT
----------------- Applied -- Admitted ---- % ---- %F/%M :::::::: Applied -- Admitted ---- % ---- %F/%M</p>
<p>2002-03 Men ...... 2014 ------ 373 ---- 18.52% ---- 1.70 ---------- NA ------- NA ------- NA ------ NA
-------- Women ... 601 ------ 187 ---- 31.11% -------------------- NA ------- NA ------- NA ---------</p>
<p>2003-04 Men ...... 2407 ------ 337 ---- 14.00% ---- 2.00 --------- 7651 ------ 885 ---- 11.57% ---- 2.54
-------- Women ... 664 ------ 183 ---- 27.56% ------------------- 2898 ------ 850 ---- 29.33% ---------</p>
<p>2004-05 Men ...... 2120 ------ 374 ---- 17.64% ---- 1.70 --------- 7669 ------ 898 ---- 11.71% ---- 2.34
-------- Women ... 641 ------ 192 ---- 29.95% ------------------- 2797 ------ 767 ---- 27.42% ---------</p>
<p>2005-06 Men ........ NA ------- NA ------ NA -------- NA ---------- 7608 ------ 758 ----- 9.96% ---- 2.61
-------- Women .... NA ------- NA ------ NA ---------------------- 2832 ------ 736 ---- 25.99% ---------</p>
<p>"Ben Jones has said on this forum that female applicants to MIT (and I quote) "pwn" male applicants."</p>
<p>So Mollie, do you think if MIT did gender-blind admissions they would end up with more women than men?</p>
<p>reflectivemom just for the record, I never commented on filling out recommendation forms.</p>
<p>Andi - you're right - I apologize. I meant to address my question to mathfromme and northstarmom.</p>
<p>I have done recommends for a number of MIT applicants and I have no problem with the recommend form. I fill in the boxes and then attach a letter addressing the questions. I think the questions are good in that they ask the teacher to try to descibe the students traits in more depth than he/she might do in a typical letter. The letters are just one part of the package that in total is used to evaluate a candidate. If the letter is not very detailed it will not add or subtract, I would guess, if it is a good recommend that supports everything else in the application. If a candidate is borderline or has some part of the application that may be questionable, a good letter may help. Some teachers , especailly those who are being asked to evaluate, do know a lot about what makes a candidate "tick" and their evaluations are a valuable part of the application.</p>
<p>Sort of sad, but expected , that the false resume of a 28 years ago has resulted in a questioning of everything related to admssions at MIT.
Except for hiring practices, I do not see how this will change anything at MIT. Their admissions process has been developed over a long time. IMHO it is a great school and will continue to be so after this all blows over.
Of course the gender, AA and school versus school wars will go on, on any and all threads, that give posters an opening.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Ben Jones has said on this forum that female applicants to MIT (and I quote) "pwn" male applicants.
[/quote]
I'll assume Mollie means "own."</p>
<p>And of course Ben has to say that. He doesn't want to admit to a quota or unequal treatment based on gender. It would open a can of worms. As far as his loyalty to Ms. Jones, just look at the two of them trying to act like rock stars on stage. Someone many posts ago wrote about MIT seeming to have a cult of personality established in the admissions department. I think that's a good assessment. </p>
<p>Can anyone with even a tiny exposure to prabability & statistics really believe that MIT has a women's admit rate 2 1/2 times that of men solely because women applicants "own" men?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sort of sad, but expected , that the false resume of a 28 years ago has resulted in a questioning of everything related to admssions at MIT.
[/quote]
Olddad, I think they are seperate issues. Those questions have always been around. They're just being brought up because Jones/admissions/MIT is in the news together & all the advancement of women & her claims of 10% of admits being non-traditional MIT types ties in.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Can anyone with even a tiny exposure to prabability & statistics really believe that MIT has a women's admit rate 2 1/2 times that of men solely because women applicants "own" men?
[/quote]
Colleges have practiced some measure of social engineering for many years. That's what AA, low income recruits, geographic diversity etc are all about. It doesn't necessarily follow that the girls, minority or poorer kids are not capable. Harvard and every other selective college does the same thing in creating a class.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So Mollie, do you think if MIT did gender-blind admissions they would end up with more women than men?
[/quote]
I think the admitted class would end up looking pretty similar to the one that exists now -- presumably the MIT data would look more like the Caltech data, and MIT gets more female applicants than Caltech does.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Can anyone with even a tiny exposure to prabability & statistics really believe that MIT has a women's admit rate 2 1/2 times that of men solely because women applicants "own" men?
[/quote]
Caltech's data has women admitted at almost twice the rate of men, and they don't use gender-based affirmative action. I don't see how it's so difficult to believe.</p>
<p>Sj, I didn't say that the beneficiaries of social engineering were not capable. Not at all. Never implied it, either, because I don't believe that for a second. </p>
<p>Mollie, Caltech & every other school is not going to come out and admit to quotas. They'll call it holistic admissions or some other name. I think you are being overly sensitive because you are a woman at or graduating from MIT. Whether male or female, you are an individual & should be judged as an idividual. But pretending that women as a whole don't get an admissions boost won't change the reality.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's too bad we can't simply celebrate a college dropout done well.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>We can celebrate a peerless work of performance art, sustained over a decade. Marilee is an artist who has now brought tears of laughter and joy to people the world over. She has engineered (sic) a pop-culture moment of the highest order -- the ultimate Extracurricular Activity.</p>
<p>Her admissions accomplishments are less spectacular.</p>
<p>My point about the recommendation letters is that the well-crafted letter is far more important than the boxes to be checked. For one thing, those boxes often ask you to compare the candidate to other students and student pools vary by educational institution.</p>
<p>momfromme:</p>
<p>Of course, student pools vary by educational institution. But most teachers and profs will say something like "best student I've taught in my xxx years of teaching at this school (or string of schools). Unless they've taught at both HYP and Podunk U, profs will not be expected to compare students at Podunk U with those they taught at HYP. Same with high school teachers.</p>
<p>I have more than a passing familiarity with statistics, and also with discrimination lawsuits, having tried a few in my time. And yes, I can believe that the female applicant pool is stronger than the male one. The problem with the statistics that everyone is citing is that it assumes that the male and female pools are randomly selected. They're not. They're self-selected, and I can well believe that the female pool applying to a technical school is more heavily selected by the females with greater strengths than with the males. (Of course, I have no first-hand information that this is true; it is simply an "equally likely" scenario.)</p>
<p>There are lies, damned lies and statistics.</p>
<p>"It's too bad we can't simply celebrate a college dropout done well."</p>
<p>And who would be the college drop-out? Ms. Jones was never a full-time college student.</p>
<p>I can believe one does not need a college degree (or even 3) to work in a college admissions office. However, she was the Dean of Admissions (not simply in a clerical job within that office). As such, that person, I assume, can hire (or fire) others, shape policy, and make application decisions. Also, as a self-proclaimed "PhD trained scientist," people may have thought she was reviewing applications with that trained background in mind (which might have eliminated someone else being on the committee who actually had such qualifications).</p>
<p>To suggest that we should "celebrate" her actions and her fabrications, boggles the mind. Whether mini was joking or not when he made this statement, this rather scewed way of thinking is, in part, what allowed her to also think this was acceptable behavior and something to be "celebrated."</p>
<p>Even her stated apology, "I misrepresented my academic degrees," suggests that she is still suffering from delusions. Her statement implies that she had academic degrees, she simply "misrepresented" them. In fact, she should have substituted "fabricated" for "misrepresented."</p>
<p>
Hmmmmmmm, mini. Wondering if you're also "celebrating" the lies of Clinton and Bush. After all, each of them has done <em>VERY</em> well for himself...</p>
<p>Are those who question the qualifications of women and URMs admitted to MIT guilty of racism, bigotry, and gender bias just for raising the question? Not necessarily. Admissions is a process that consists solely of assessing qualifications. When an admissions dean misrepresents her own qualifications, it raises serious questions about the degree to which she misrepresented the way she assessed the qualifications of applicants to MIT (and if she was the Dean, and published books about her approach, I trust that her troops of admissions officers followed suit). Looking at the percentage of women applicants who are admitted to MIT and comparing that to the percentage of male applicants who are admitted, it is clear that MIT discriminates against men, or women have suddenly gotten a whole lot smarter than men. Why doesnt MIT publish stats showing the GPAs and SAT scores of every category of student applying to MIT, including race, gender and socio-economic status, and the percentages of those groups who were admitted to MIT. That way students could see if MIT has, and is, assessing the qualifications of students in the kinder, gentler way that Jones claimed they were doing, while she was encouraging students to eschew perfectionism and high grades and an excessive attention to extra-curriculars, or if there were different standards for white males and Asians than for other categories of applicants. Then students could make their decisions about where to apply (and where they have a chance of admission) with all the information at hand, not just based on some sappy PR posted on MIT blogs by supposedly well-meaning but fraudulent admission officers like Jones. After all, this is a school that is supposed to seek the truth, above all, isnt it? Why not tell the truth? Or will it cut down the number of applicants, and lower MITs standing in the college rankings? Does this all really come down to colleges that dont want to get a lower grade in the college rankings? </p>
<p>Furthermore, re gender bias and affirmative action: what is being practiced at MIT is affirmative action for women and URMs; in my opinion, it is discriminatory and unfair. No-one likes being discriminated against, for any reason, whether it has to do with the color of their skin, their gender, their race, or their socio-economic status. I speak as a woman who participated in a class-action suit for gender discrimination against a company that I promise you all know the name of, in one of the first class action affirmative action lawsuits in the U.S. At that time, I felt that affirmative action, for women at my workplace (and for minorities everywhere) was the only way to break the logjam in employment discrimination in the U.S. that existed. We won the lawsuit (FYI, I received no money from this lawsuit), and things changed in that industry. I do not believe affirmative action is needed in that industry anymore. I do not believe that affirmative action is the way to change things anymore. We have a generation of young people, all of whom have been brought up to believe that everyone, regardless of their skin color, race, gender, or national origin, should be given equal opportunity. Young white males today want equal opportunity as much as minorities and women. When my own son applied to college, I could not say to him, yes, son, we support equal opportunity, but it does not apply to you. You will have to accept second-class citizenship, and accept being discriminated against because you are a white male. Never mind that the sins of your elders were committed by your elders, and you werent there, and you didnt do it. You should quietly accept your second-class lot in life, until the now-privileged groups, the women and under-represented minorities feel they have gotten their rightful share of justice at the table of educational equal opportunity. Too bad, my son. Thats the way it isyou are a second-class citizen when it comes to educational opportunity in our land. No, I couldnt say this to my own son. He has a right to equal opportunity. I did not bring him up to accept joining the ranks of the newly, now-fashionably oppressed. If MIT, and all of the other colleges in the land want to try to fix the ills of our society at the college gates, at least they ought to have the guts and decency to be honest about what they are doing. Personally, I think the problems ought to be fixed starting at the gate to kindergarden; once you get to the gates of college, it is too late. And if colleges have a compelling need to advance people with lesser qualifications to make up for past wrongs, perhaps they should start with the administration and faculty, not with the powerless students. And the backlash from the victims of affirmative action has only begun. People dont want to go to a doctor who they think might have been admitted to medical school because of affirmative action, or cross a bridge designed by a civil engineer admitted to MIT because of affirmative action, and on and on. We want our lives in the hands of the best-qualified people possible, regardless of race or gender. That is why affirmative action, at this point, is destined to do nothing but sow another variety of seed of turmoil and conflict in our society. One poster asked, when will the women who benefit from affirmative action policies at MIT say enough affirmative action is enough? When they have sons, and have to explain why they are being discriminated against at the gates to college, thats when. URMs will give up affirmative action when whites stop feeling guilty, and refuse to continue eating their own young in the college admissions process to make up for our countrys past sins. Let them all be judged on their merits, academic and extracurricular, please.</p>