<p>Mollie, I love how you effectively shut down all flamers by asking them to read 35 pages of this thread. MIT education paid off :P</p>
<p>I was surprised to see this raise its ugly head again. Oh well.
Sonicexx said it well. You can't "rate" creativity. Sure the ad com can make a mistake here and there and overlook someone who might have done well there, but for my tastes, I find it encouraging that they will give some of the less stellar (stats wise) apps a look. There are diamonds in the rough out there. I should think places like MIT would like to find them and take the credit for polishing them up :-)</p>
<p>Mollie, I have not read all 35 pages....but I'm not a flamer in any way. =] </p>
<p>"Well clearly there are still lots of brilliant kids at MIT. But there could be a lot more. Maybe that's not the school's ideal of a "well-balanced class," but it certainly is not fair to the kids that deserve to be there.</p>
<p>And the URM's and girls I know that got in from my school over the last few years, honestly had NOTHING over the much more qualified, non-URM non-female (mostly males ) candidates who were rejected.</p>
<p>Caltech has a much fairer admissions process, which is probably why it's risen tremendously relative to MIT over the past years in terms of the public's awareness."</p>
<p>--From the OP, very much at the beginning</p>
<p>I don't know, in all honesty, as much as I think most private schools are somewhat mysterious in how they really ultimately select students, I think the biggest problem with this thread and similar ones is that quite a large percentage of those here will not try to understand the goal of MIT's <em>undergrad</em> admissions process. I think it's safe to say the graduate school processes at schools are, though not entirely predictable, quite a bit more so -- it's ALL about proving your academic worth in a special area, EC's are thrown out the window. </p>
<p>Different schools run by different philosophies, and the bottom line is that these "perfect applicants" rejected from MIT may very well be accepted at Caltech, and then go to MIT for grad school. I don't know if there are students admitted to MIT who really do not do great things once they get there...maybe. I think there are probably some of those at any undergrad school. But my general point is that while it may seem "obvious" to some of us that a perfect math or engineering applicant should be accepted to MIT's undergrad, well it may just be that MIT has accepted too many of those, and doesn't see it fit to admit 100% of those, which it SURELY could, given how likely it is these students would accept the admissions offers if received. </p>
<p>The question basically is -- is it OK for such amazing students to go elsewhere for undergrad, and then head to a no doubt top graduate school, or is it CRIMINAL to leave them out of MIT's undergrad program. I think it would be criminal only if there weren't other top schools waiting to accept these people. Hopefully the given student will make it to MIT for grad school...where it really counts more.</p>
<p>I doubt people will EVER stop quarreling about such a topic, though. It's just a reality =] </p>
<p>"Its also beneficial to get lesser awards...too bad they dont realize just beucase you can get 2400 doesnt mean you arent normal."</p>
<p>This, I think they do. I think the main issue with your post is that it is full of guesses, although I am not bashing your worries entirely at all. I have made long posts before, which you're free to look at some day, about how an issue with the common population [NOT necessarily with any undergrad school's admissions office] is to think "Oh, another perfect little 2400 kid..." -- they come as a diverse lot. Anywhere from my friend who doesn't give a damn about his grades, and slacks off entirely, but is actually one of those naturally brilliant Russians, to the workaholics. There is no way to neatly package someone's personality like that, and someone with no school EC's or anything can be MORE interesting as an individual than half the rest of the population. I recognize this. But I think, so do the admissions guys. They've easily heard all the criticism you all are offering, I imagine...</p>
<p>I don't think everyone uniformly wants MIT to become like the IIT's of India necessarily [where there's a big, enormous, challenging admissions test that basically determines your entry to the undergrad program]. I've discussed this on another thread. There are huge flaws with that process too. </p>
<p>I think people aren't upset so much by the fact that MIT rejects some insanely talented applicants, as they are by how TOUGH it is to tell, with ANY certainty, the outcome of an application. You can't even begin to guess, it seems. It's a little annoying when you can only say "OK, just a shot in the dark" even for the most insanely talented applicants. Part of the issue is that the admissions office doesn't want to prescribe something, because everyone will start doing it, and yet when they make it a more fluid [though well thought out] process, so many complain. </p>
<p>If this were graduate school admissions, there's a clear answer on what to do...but this isn't. I think people need to talk about what they believe the philosophy of undergrad admissions should be, in order to make meaningful comments on this subject.</p>
<p>By the way, just a little other tidbit -- if you purely want to predict who's going to do great academic work in the future..well the sad thing is, it's <em>quite</em> hard to based on a high school application, I imagine. Once one gets to college, and the opportunities are far more boundless than they were in high school, one can change drastically, and start taking advantage of them ferociously. Some of the students accepted to MIT with less perfect profiles may actually take advantage of MIT and do insane things. </p>
<p>Is it UTTERLY clear that the more standard perfect applicants would do better things in MIT, and would the overall student dynamic be more conducive to an academically charged atmosphere of good work? The talented applicants whom you speak of can do well at almost any top school, and I think the only certain issue arises when things get so haphazard that such a student could not get into <em>any</em> top school. </p>
<p>So again, if MIT 100% rejected the very high scoring, super talented applicants, I'd say there's something fishy...but it doesn't. We then have to evaluate its goals carefully, and weigh this philosophy against our own about undergrad admissions.</p>
<p>
Why would anyone have to do that? I have yet to see an instance where someone I personally know to be an "insanely talented applicant" did not have a clear shot at acceptance.</p>
<p>I would think any otherwise "insanely talented applicant" had in fact some negative attribute that ended up legitimately edging that one particular "insanely talented" rejectee behind all the also "insanely talented" acceptees.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Different schools run by different philosophies, and the bottom line is that these "perfect applicants" rejected from MIT may very well be accepted at Caltech, and then go to MIT for grad school. I don't know if there are students admitted to MIT who really do not do great things once they get there...maybe. I think there are probably some of those at any undergrad school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There are indeed applicants who seem to outrank other applicants who do not do "great things" once they get into a top-ranked (or even a lower-ranked) school. You hear about these people all the time. Why would so-and-so who was a superstar HS academic, EC, etc. be struggling? The answers vary. But it would be difficult to argue that the (statistically) lesser-qualified admit who wound up graduating was somehow (actually) lesser-qualified than the superstar admit who did not. (Especially since the goal of the admissions committee seems to be to admit the people who are most likely to graduate.)</p>
<p>In MIT's case, we do not know how the admissions committees interpret the essays or interviews, but I imagine they use them to try to gauge how well the student is likely to function in the MIT environment. This certainly has a bearing on how likely the person is to graduate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But my general point is that while it may seem "obvious" to some of us that a perfect math or engineering applicant should be accepted to MIT's undergrad, well it may just be that MIT has accepted too many of those, and doesn't see it fit to admit 100% of those, which it SURELY could, given how likely it is these students would accept the admissions offers if received.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ah, but if they're all applying to the same set of top-ranked schools, they're not necessarily going to accept MIT ... I don't know how this factors into admissions, however. But it could be like university faculty hiring. Someone on CC posted something awhile back about not being able to recruit URMs to a low-tier university because if offered a position at a top-tier university as well, they'd almost certainly take it.</p>
<p>Here's my take, short and sweet, ready?</p>
<p>Nowhere does it say that MIT accepts the best and the brightest.</p>
<p>Never have I heard anybody affiliated with MIT say that they want the smartest kids only.</p>
<p>MIT is very difficult to get into, and part of the reason is because it's hard to pin down exactly what MIT looks for. If all it took were academics, MIT would be easy to get into.</p>
<p>MIT accepts students who make it diverse and interesting, not people who make it brilliant, the two just happen to coincide for a majority of cases.</p>
<p>MIT is not competing against schools like CalTech, it plays its own game and picks its own students, it does its own thing, and has its own successes.</p>
<p>I personally know one of the "less-qualified" acceptees you're talking about... Sure her scores aren't that great, but want to know why? Because she has a disability. She's got stellar ECs and everything, and her scores are still above-average. There's more to 'merit'/'qualifications' than just numbers, you have to also learn how to interpret them in context (this sounds kinda like statistics now).</p>
<p>"Ah, but if they're all applying to the same set of top-ranked schools, they're not necessarily going to accept MIT"</p>
<p>Well yes, but I think you see my point, which is that MIT could make it a lot easier for a certain kind of applicant to get in if it wanted to. And I'm pretty sure a certain kinds of people really would go to MIT over any other school if they got in. For instance, quite a few EECS majors I know. Of course there are other top schools, but you can imagine quite a few top engineering students would find it hard to reject an MIT admissions offer.</p>
<p>"Here's my take, short and sweet, ready?</p>
<p>Nowhere does it say that MIT accepts the best and the brightest.</p>
<p>Never have I heard anybody affiliated with MIT say that they want the smartest kids only."</p>
<p>The short and sweet take does what I tried to do in my long post pretty much as well, and is a good one. As long as top people end up somewhere great, and as long as quite consistently, MIT classes are very high caliber, I don't think one can argue the school's doing a bad job. People <em>can</em> suggest improvements, but these need to correspond to general admissions philosophical statements...</p>
<p>I think far too many people don't understand that it's a waste of energy trying to precisely and exactly correlate where exactly you get accepted to how strong of an applicant you are. The right attitude seems to be that if you get accepted to a great school, kudos to you, but if you don't get accepted to a particular one, look forward to another. Nobody's saying that you're not a smart student if you don't go to MIT...go somewhere with other smart people, and make the best of your undergrad years if you really care that much.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well yes, but I think you see my point, which is that MIT could make it a lot easier for a certain kind of applicant to get in if it wanted to. And I'm pretty sure a certain kinds of people really would go to MIT over any other school if they got in. For instance, quite a few EECS majors I know. Of course there are other top schools, but you can imagine quite a few top engineering students would find it hard to reject an MIT admissions offer.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't have the data available on how many people applied to at least two top-tier schools with the intention of going to MIT if accepted, but perhaps someone else does. It strikes me that many people state other schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, CMU, etc. as their first choices, even if they apply to MIT as well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't have the data available on how many people applied to at least two top-tier schools with the intention of going to MIT if accepted, but perhaps someone else does. It strikes me that many people state other schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, CMU, etc. as their first choices, even if they apply to MIT as well.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not untrue, and in no way would I suggest otherwise. I am talking mainly of engineering students. Obviously some will end up at CMU, Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford...and some even at Ivy Leagues. My point is that MIT could increase the number of both accepted [and likely incoming] students of a certain kind, and deliberately choose not to.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And I'm pretty sure a certain kinds of people really would go to MIT over any other school if they got in. For instance, quite a few EECS majors I know.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Where else did they apply? It strikes me that even among candidates considering engineering studies, people who apply to MIT also apply to CMU, Stanford, Berkeley, and other top engineering schools. It's not clear that for these people, MIT is the clear #1 choice. Even here on CC, you hear about people who've turned down MIT when accepted to other schools.</p>
<p>Yeah, I understand this, it's what I stated in my last post -- I certainly know there are several good engineering schools. If you reread what I've written, it'll be clear that I don't think everyone getting into MIT will attend. My point is different, and mainly is to hopefully discourage people from wildly, thoughtlessly condemning any given system, which seems to happen all too often in a thread like this.</p>
<p>Big Brother 1984, It has been a couple of years since you've said this statement, but I was reading this thread and just had to comment.</p>
<p>"I don't doubt your application was pretty. Infact, if I wanted a school that'll take me on the basis of how pretty my application was irregardless of the actual effort I put in high school, I would've gone to Harvard."</p>
<p>Irregardless=NOT A WORD</p>
<p>I just had to say something, because I feel you were being a jack*** to sklog.</p>
<p>I'm an MIT alum, EECS (course 6) class of 1968, so have had 40 years to consider what it meant to attend MIT. At our 40th reunion there was general agreement that most of us would not be admitted in competition with today's applicants - even though our class of 800 was 20% smaller than today's entering classes. For most of us, being an MIT undergrad was the hardest thing we've ever done, yet all of us would do it again in a heartbeat. Of course, people who attend reunions self-select and those who have great memories might tend to be over-represented among reunion attendees, but I was on the reunion committee and talked to a random sample of about 100 former classmates and those who didn't come simply had conflicts or couldn't afford it in this economy.</p>
<p>What impresses me about this thread is that a significant number of very smart, very articulate, and impressively open-minded people with ties to MIT or Caltech have invested an enormous amount of time in this debate about admissions policy. I hope some of these posters will consider jobs in MIT or Caltech admissions because I think their voices are cogent and passionate. But like all jobs that try to predict the future, college admissions is extraordinarily hard. And there is obviously no single approach that can be proven best.</p>
<p>I was a professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Physiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for 17 years. I sat on the MD/PhD admissions committee for most of that time. I've seen a lot of extraordinary applicants and I hated having to choose among them, but I would never advocate making such choices on pure numerology. We just wanted to admit the "best" men and women we could get. But we all accepted that "best" was decidedly subjective. Furthermore, this subjectivity is vital both for the school and the applicants. It's why people, not machines, make these decisions best.</p>
<p>So my bottom line is that the wit and civility and keen intelligence that characterizes this thread (at least the 18 pages I read) would be far better invested in solving bigger, more pressing, problems. The real world is in trouble; we need you out here.</p>
<p>[10 char] ..........</p>
<p>"MIT Admissions" is a singular noun. Can we please not bump this thread anymore it bothers me every time.</p>
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<p>Because as a kid, being a girl back in the early 1980s, I was prohibited from using the Timex computer my dad had bought. I wanted to learn programming, my bro wanted to play games (I was 13, he was 9). He got the computer all to himself on the grounds of being a boy. No amount of fighting, whining or arguing could change their minds. “Look at the other girls, they don’t use computers” was all I got for my ambitions.</p>
<p>Now, I’m supervising programmers. My brother is doing nothing for a living - because he also got all the inheritance from my quite wealthy parents. BTW, When I complained to my aunt about it being unfair, she told me matter-of-factly “Why, all of us did it like this, the sons get the estate, not the daughters”. So while I’m still ****ed off like hell, I have no time to complain. I’ve got to work (and count my blessings that I’m not flipping burgers but doing meaningful work, unlike many other talented girls).</p>
<p>So, that’s why, for starters.</p>
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<p>For those of you who think that women cannot compete on the merits, consider this:
Albert Einstein, the superhero, did not believe that the publication of the ground-breaking paper on the theory of relativity would have any importance or the work itself had any value. His wife, however, was convinced it would win the Nobel price. She was so sure of that that she made it her only request in the divorce settlement, long before a word was even published. How could she have known unless she understood better than her husband, what that work was all about? </p>
<p>Mileva never finished her physics degree because she got pregnant with Albert and being pregnant for a student was a no-no (even the fact that she, as a girl, could study in the first place, needed some major lobbying by her father). And so she never got to give a single lecture. </p>
<p>As Albert’s wife, she stayed home with the kids, and the research, while Albert admirably worked his butt off in a brain-numbing clerical job which kept him busy practically around the clock (which left him no time for any research). Mileva the housewife was the one who worked on the research which is now solely attributed to Albert Einstein. He did not even know the maths to back it up, she was the math wizard. There is plenty of proof for that, even though Albert later went out of his way to destroy evidence of Mileva’s relevance for his research. </p>
<p>On top of that, witnesses who saw the original paper remember seeing the names of <em>two</em> authors on it: Albert’s and Mileva’s. </p>
<p>Plus, after divorcing Mileva and leaving her with their two kids (one of the kids was mentally ■■■■■■■■), Albert Einstein’s creativity suspiciously ended. He got all the fame, but without Mileva, he failed to deliver anything beyond that point of any meaningful importance.</p>
<p>Do some digging of your own, this is just the tip of the iceberg. </p>
<p>[Mileva</a> Mari? - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Marić]Mileva”>Mileva Marić - Wikipedia) </p>
<p>He was a big a…le. Read his letters and you will know what I mean (I read the German originals and it’s disgusting to say the least).</p>
<p>So, do girls have the brains for MIT? Who knows. Give them a chance to prove themselves.</p>
<p>Why is is always the trolling threads that experience thread necromancy and rise again to hunt zombie-like for brains.</p>
<p>Please let this thread die. It did not deserve 36 pages the first time round.</p>