MIT Admissions Have Become A Complete Joke

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<p>First of all, in my post I never described women and minorities as either unqualified or qualified. I think most if not all of the admitted students at MIT are certainly qualified to graduate and "Succeed" at MIT. My point was if you actively try to get a certain demographic into your school (and by actively I mean making admissions easier for that demographic), then you'll certainly end up with a less talented class. I never talked about SAT scores as an objective measure of merit either, although I think they are useful to a degree. </p>

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Honestly, not sure ;). Although I think there are too many factors involved to actually draw a strong conclusion from this.</p>

<p>I personally think the difference in MIT's student body as of now compared to a student body composed under a purely merit based admissions wouldn't be very large. I have no evidence to back up my claims other than just logic. This is the way I think about it:
-An institution wants to enroll "talented" students but at the same time wants a "healthy mix" of students.
-Say we have two students, student A and student B.
-Student A is slightly more talented than student B. (Of course you can't quantify talent, but if you put the two students side by side and look at their GPAs, SATs, Classes Taken, Extracurriculars, Accomplishments, and other factors you can be reasonably sure that a student is more talented than the other.)
-Student B gets in because of some form of preferential treatment.</p>

<p>My point is if you have different standards of admissions for different demographics you will have a less talented student body, because situations like the one above (which I don't think is unreasonable) will occur.</p>

<p>@ Pebbles, I don't think MIT's admissions are broken. I'm merely trying to argue that preferential treatment results in a less talented student body. I really think there is a difference, and that it can't be ignored- it may be somewhat negligible but to say it doesn't exist is what I'm trying to argue against.</p>

<p>Man, I'm going to thank God everyday that MIT decided to suck it up and have a "less talented" admissions pool then, because as far as I can tell they're looking out for their students when they run admissions like they do. I certainly can't speak for every MIT student, but I for one know for a fact I would be miserable at this place if they didn't decide to run admissions with a bit of subjectivity. Honestly, I don't care if the kid next to me got a 2400 on the SATs or if he's a hobo who wandered into the institute and got handed an acceptance letter, if he's someone who I'd like to hang out with I really don't mind how he got here or what his merits are.</p>

<p>But hey, maybe other people do care that everyone on campus is 100% qualified for their view of MIT standards, I don't know.</p>

<p>The purpose of the MIT admissions process, and indeed that of Harvard, is to try to figure out who the people are that are applying. It has long been recognised that there is a disconnect between the application folder and the individual. I have met some very, very bright applicants who I knew were going to be rejected because of the image that they were trying to project to MIT. The fact of the matter is that MIT is highly competitive, and that you cannot really afford to blow any section of the application. </p>

<p>I have interviewed candidates who clearly were just having a bad day. Clearly it is unfair that a lifetime of attentive study and application can be blown in one bad day when you throw up on the interviewer's rug, but hey, it can happen, and life isn't fair.</p>

<p>I have met many, many people who are great on paper and useless in real life and vice versa. MIT goes a long way towards trying to get past the paper, sometimes mistakes may be made, but over all, very few of them.</p>

<p>To Mit's credit if someone had started this post on the Princeton board all of the Princeton ringers would have circled and gotten the person booted as a troll. MIT is very transparent and loaded with super smart kids- been there seen it. MIT is no cake walk.</p>

<p>I'm not criticizing MIT's admissions process. In fact MIT was one of my dream schools (the other being Caltech). I just want people to recognize that <em>using preferential treatment</em> has a negative aspect to it. Sklog<em>W and Mikalye, you both missed my point completely. My responses aren't about whether or not MIT's admissions policies are good or bad. Sklog</em>W, please read my posts before you decide to comment.</p>

<p>Okay, let's look at your logic. It's impossible to number 1-15000 the applicant pool in terms of talent but it's okay to compare any two: Makes sense.</p>

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-An institution wants to enroll "talented" students but at the same time wants a "healthy mix" of students.

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<p>Okay, we're on the same page here. This is true. At least I think.</p>

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-Say we have two students, student A and student B.

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<p>Okay, yep.</p>

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-Student A is slightly more talented than student B. (Of course you can't quantify talent, but if you put the two students side by side and look at their GPAs, SATs, Classes Taken, Extracurriculars, Accomplishments, and other factors you can be reasonably sure that a student is more talented than the other.)

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<p>Um... this is where the problem starts. I have a couple of objections. Student A is a Nationally Ranked Violinist who composes and plays in several symphony orchestras. He has been playing from a very young age. Student B is exceedingly devoted to community service, and has been traveling the world working as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.</p>

<p>Will student A be more successful as a biologist or student B? 17 is a VERY young age to be judged so minutely. </p>

<p>But for argument's sake let's say that holds. OKAY. Mr. PwnzDeleOwnz the Senior Admissions officer has decided that Student A is "a LITTLE more talented" than Student B. Maybe he went to his concert.</p>

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-Student B gets in because of some form of preferential treatment.

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<p>Wait, why does Student A have to be rejected? The way college admissions works is that every person is compared against the POOL of applicants, not against ONE other student. Who says that preferential treatment for student B guarantees that a MORE talented student A is rejected in its stead? Couldn't a LESS talented student be rejected? Well, no, because there are a certain number of students MORE talented than student B and in order to take Student B one of them must be rejected, therefore reducing the talent of the admitted body right? Well, in order for that logic to hold we have to know every person who is 'more talented' than a particular individual in the applicant pool, aren't we back to ranking students again and didn't we say that that was impossible?</p>

<p>MY point is that it's impossible to make a statement like 'preferential treatment results in a less talented student body' without proposing that admissions is about lining students up and taking numbers 1-1500. If the process did involve something like that, exactly 1500 would be admitted each year, which is simply not true :/</p>

<p>EDIT. okay i started drafting this a while ago and i hit the submit button like 40 minutes later and there were all these posts. I don't mean to attack you, Pwnz(...), I really would hate for you to feel ganged up on. I'm merely exploring the question that you put out there. I hope you are not offended in any way.</p>

<p>A white kid from my school got accepted to MIT two years ago with a 1420 SAT, 3.69 GPA, and no science/math ECs that I knew of. He was good at football though. The other ECs he had listed on the yearbook were nothing impressive at all. Me on the otherhand, i scored a 1560, have a 4.2 GPA, aced my APs and SAT IIs, did a bunch of science related ECs in and out of school in addition to some noncompetitive tennis and viola. I ended up getting waitlisted. I did get into stanford and caltech, and I know there were people with much more impressive stats who also didnt get in, so I cant really complain. But I do think that MIT should try to be more like caltech and less like Harvard in its admissions. Honestly, whats MIT trying to do by recruiting athletes? Win the NCAA? An "Institute of Technology" should select students based on their potential in science and engineering, and not on irrelevant talents that will somehow contribute to "diversity." But hey, MIT can run their own admissions the way they want to.</p>

<p>I pretty much agree with everything you said pebbles, although I think that while you can't rank applicants from 1-1500 you can most certainly distinguish between them. You don't necessarily need a lining up of students from 1-1500, but I think people can and do mentally categorize applicants with respect to quality. You're right about an applicant competing against a pool rather than a specific person, my example fails in that respect. If you can categorize applicants than you can say that an average student who was a URM got in over an above average student, and in that sense you are giving up "talent" as defined by the categories. At least that's the way I think about it.</p>

<p>It's hard for me to agree because I've seen a case where a wealthy URM with mediocre stats and nothing special is accepted over a kid who won many math competitions, went to ISEF, had amazing scores, was universally considered a genius and a good guy, and was an amazing writer. I know you aren't supposed to compare people with people but rather a person vs the applicant pool; but it's hard for me to believe that accepting the URM over the other applicant wouldn't detract from the talent in the student body. To be honest this argument isn't going anywhere, so I'm just going to drop it.</p>

<p>Pebbles and Molliebatmit, thank you for actually responding to my posts.</p>

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Honestly, not sure . Although I think there are too many factors involved to actually draw a strong conclusion from this.

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<p>Oh, I see. So by knowing that we make an effort to accept a balanced class you know that the MIT student body is less talented, and you think that an SAT score is sufficient for judging a person's ability to succeed, but when we have actual data indicating that women do better than men at MIT, NOW there are just too many factors.</p>

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So by knowing that we make an effort to accept a balanced class you know that the MIT student body is less talented

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You shouldn't have to make an effort to accept a balanced class, that's my point. If you do, then yes I said it was my belief that you would have a less talented student body. Hypothetically if you have 1 girl applying to MIT for every two boys, and you assume that male and female applicants are equally talented, then trying to strive for a 1:1 M/F ratio will make admissions easier on girls and harder on guys. </p>

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and you think that an SAT score is sufficient for judging a person's ability to succeed

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When did I say that LauraN? Did you even read what I wrote? </p>

<p>Anyways it was nice debating with you guys.</p>

<p>I don't think that the argument of "Admitting less qualified girls" (if, in fact, that is what's going on...which I don't believe) will be an issue much longer. MIT is taking steps to reduce the gender gap in science and engineering that is societal, and this is good. When the gap has closed and everyone is on an equal footing, they won't have to do that anymore. But for now, for how our society is RIGHT NOW, it is essential to get more girls into science because they have traditionally not been encouraged into these fields.</p>

<p>I'm a white girl from SC, 2360 SAT scores, 13 AP classes by the end of this year, and I was waitlisted at MIT but will be attending Stanford next fall. Clearly, less qualified girls aren't just admitted for the hell of it. I realized that SAT scores aren't the end-all-be-all, but I know that I could handle MIT and am "qualified" to be there; but, the competition with the other white girls (and the rest of the applicant pool, for that matter) was/is very very tough.</p>

<p>Anyway, what MIT is doing is necessary and good. Try to have a good attitude about it. It's hard to do when your admission decision letter doesn't say what you want it to, but trust that MIT is doing what is best for MIT. Why would they do otherwise? :)</p>

<p>Will student A be more successful as a biologist or student B? 17 is a VERY young age to be judged so minutely. </p>

<h2>But for argument's sake let's say that holds. OKAY. Mr. PwnzDeleOwnz the Senior Admissions officer has decided that Student A is "a LITTLE more talented" than Student B. Maybe he went to his concert.</h2>

<p>Let me give you an example of Harvard/Stanford admissions to demonstrate how a lack of objectivity can give bad results:</p>

<p>Person A:
1600 SAT (perfect, old scoring)
generally 800's on SATII's
USAMO qualifier (top 160 in country through two rounds of Qualifying Exams for the US Math Olympics team)
AHSME score: about 145 out of 150 (this is the first Qualifying Exam for the US Math Olympics team)
top 5 violinist in the state
research: INTEL semifinalist
many state and national math/science awards
perfect student, took most advanced curriculum (took number theory/group theory senior year)
soccer team for 3 years-average player, made varsity
personality: softspoken
ethnicity/gender: Asian male</p>

<p>Person B:
high 1400's on the SAT
700's on most of the SATII
AHSME score: 70 to 80 out of 150
-started a bunch of clubs, in one case founded a club which took over a cultural festival that another club was already running in order to take credit for it--sort of a "hostile takeover" I guess
-has reputation for being a BS artist among students
-generally good student, can memorize but not good at reasoning so gets mostly A's
-had trouble in calculus, getting a "B".
tennis team for one year (JV)
personality: very agressive</p>

<h2>ethnicity: Asian male</h2>

<p>Person B got in everywhere (Harvard, Stanford, Princeton) while Person A got rejected at these three places. Person B goes to Harvard while Person A goes to Case Western Reserve University. After going to grad school at Stanford in engineering, Person B decides to quit engineering and become a concert violinist with a well-known professional orchestra.</p>

<p>I think the question of preferential treatment for women and URM is separate from the general question of the value of objectivity in admissions. Besides, the URM issue is imposed on MIT by federal law, isn't it? For the record, the women who went to MIT from my high school were not any less qualified than the males. </p>

<p>My arguments were pertaining to who gets in among non-URMs. For a school like MIT, I think they should take in who looks smarter and more motivated based on test scores, grades (not just GPA but who is the best student in the classes), awards, taking the maximum difficulty offered at one's high school, looking for opportunities outside of school to challenge themselves, any outstanding musical talent (which I consider an intellectual activity.) Recs are perhaps most important as long as they ar in line with the other awards. Leadership should only be a small component and only be tested by something like student government where other students actually have to vote for you, not things like starting 500 pointless clubs. If someone is poor and has to work an outside job, then I think admissions should be a bit easier, but their recs should still indicate that they are one of the best people that had ever come out of their high school.</p>

<p>Well said barberconcerto.</p>

<p>Well there must be some merit to the original posters argument to create such a stir</p>

<p>I always thought that MIT was one of the most meritocratic colleges. In fact that's one of the main reasons why I want to go there. Compared to what other colleges are doing, I don't see how anyone can say that MIT accepts "athletes like crazy". I know that if you're the captain of the crew team at my school, you're guaranteed in at schools like Princeton and Stanford. Not at MIT. Same with nationally ranked tennis players and basketball players.</p>

<p>Anyways, since we seem to be using personal anecedotes in this thread, I don't know about the OP's school, but the students from my school who've been accepted to MIT over the past several years have all been amazing people without any exceptions.</p>

<p>And SAT scores don't mean anything.. I mean whos smarter: A) a person who makes a couple of mistakes (maybe because he stayed up late the night before researching a computer algorithm that interests him), like 2+3=6 or something equally trivial, and ends up with a 760 on his SAT Math section,
or
B) a person who spends months taking SAT prep classes, retaking the tests over and over again until he is able to get 800 every time?</p>

<p>"You'd think, though, that with such faulty admissions policies, MIT would cease to be such a math/science powerhouse... its blatantly weak student body really should have no business sweeping the Putnam competition."</p>

<p>Putnam Competition is not dominated by MIT at all. Harvard and Caltech are the top players.</p>

<p>The following table lists Teams with First place finishes (as of 2006 competition):</p>

<p>First place Team (s)
25 Harvard<br>
9 Caltech<br>
5 MIT</p>

<p>MIT had half of the top 25 and 25 out of the top 77 finishers in the Putnam...pretty sure that is more than anyone else.</p>

<p>I always thought that MIT was one of the most meritocratic colleges. In fact that's one of the main reasons why I want to go there. Compared to what other colleges are doing, I don't see how anyone can say that MIT accepts "athletes like crazy". I know that if you're the captain of the crew team at my school, you're guaranteed in at schools like Princeton and Stanford. Not at MIT. Same with nationally ranked tennis players and basketball players.</p>

<p>Anyways, since we seem to be using personal anecedotes in this thread, I don't know about the OP's school, but the students from my school who've been accepted to MIT over the past several years have all been amazing people without any exceptions.</p>

<p>And SAT scores don't mean anything.. I mean whos smarter: A) a person who makes a couple of mistakes (maybe because he stayed up late the night before researching a computer algorithm that interests him), like 2+3=6 or something equally trivial, and ends up with a 760 on his SAT Math section,
or</p>

<h2>B) a person who spends months taking SAT prep classes, retaking the tests over and over again until he is able to get 800 every time?</h2>

<p>good post...completely agree.</p>