MIT Admissions Have Become A Complete Joke

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Aedar hit the nail right on the head above. sakky's talk about how "meritocratic" admissions does not necessarily result in "meritocratic" cohorts is a category mistake. Meritocracy is a term that applies to admissions processes. Caltech could admit a class based on academic merit alone, have nobody accept the offer, and the admissions process would be no less meritocratic.</p>

<p>As for many people preferring a school with lots of girls and biased admissions as opposed to a school with a bad ratio and fair admissions, that's not a big surprise. For teenage boys, few things beat girls, and certainly not "fair admissions".</p>

<p>Then again, while sakky worships the market's wisdom, I'll still take a more skeptical view. Not everything the market wants is good. In the market for intro econ textbooks, what wins is dumb and dumber. Every time you remove an equation and add a picture of an economist, your book sales go up. That's why there are no major intro econ textbooks aimed at people with an IQ above 80. At Caltech, professors who want one have to write their own.</p>

<p>Just one small example of how blindly catering to teenagers doesn't always produce the best outcomes from some more thoughtful perspective.</p>

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Every time you remove an equation and add a picture of an economist, your book sales go up. That's why there are no major intro econ textbooks aimed at people with an IQ above 80.

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LOL!!!
The -really- sad thing is that our son's teacher for AP econ doesn't seem to understand Mankiw's text, I guess Mankiw will have to go farther down market with the next edition :)</p>

163

<p>Oh, so much to respond to</p>

<p>For SAT breakdowns that go beyond 25%-75% from MIT admissions, the best I have seen is here: <a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml&lt;/a>
While mean scores are not reported per se, one can produce a pretty close estimate of mean scores from this data set. (which is left as an exercise for the reader).</p>

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2) I don't understand the claim that if top admitted students choose not to attend the admission policy isn't meritocratic. It might not be maximzing the number of highly-rated students who enroll, but "meritocratic" is a property of the admissions procedure, based on an idea of procedural fairness, it is not a property of the outcome of that process in terms of enrollments.

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<p>OK, I agree with Ben that the meritocratic nature of admissions is a quality of the admissions process rather than related to matriculation. However, Sakky is completely right when he says that having a meritocratic process is largely irrelevant to having a meritorious class, because you simply cannot ignore matriculation.</p>

<p>This reminds me of an exchange quoted recently on Jane Espenson's blog, where she recalls an episode of "Perfect Strangers" where Balki is testifying in court:<br>
Lawyer: Do you notice anything odd about this photograph?
Balki: It is borderless.</p>

<p>Balki's statement is completely true, and yet completely irrelevant. So is having a meritocratic admissions process.</p>

<p>In the context we are discussing, consider the completely meritocratic and fictitious Lower Kennicut Region Technical University in Kennicut, Iowa. This hypothetical college publishes precisely the GPA and scores necessary to get in. Indeed, it accepts all students with a SAT I Math and/or verbal scores >700. And yet, despite a completely transparent and meritocratic process, the college ends up with mean scores below 500, and with no admittees with scores above 700, because those students DON'T WANT TO GO. Meritocratic and meritorious are largely unrelated.</p>

<p>MIT is looking for a meritorious class, and to get that, they are willing to sacrifice some of the meritocracy, but not much. </p>

<p>I am an EC (an interviewer) and worse, an international one, where the admit rate is roughly 4%. Now that is even scarier than it sounds, because the US rate is bouyed up (or more correctly down) a bit by a number of students without much of a chance of getting in who are applying as a "reach" school. That doesn't happen very often with the international applicants. With one or two exceptions, everyone I have interviewed in the past 5 years has been extremely academically gifted. And yet, I know that MIT is going to only take 1 out of 27 of these extremely bright people.</p>

<p>So given these capable, distinguished, bright, likely to be rejected students, how does MIT pick them. The match criteria on the website sound fluffy and yet, in my experience, they are the surest indicator of whether people get in. And I can tell you, it was a big surprise to me when I started interviewing, but you can actually easily tell how well someone matches the school, quite a lot of the time.</p>

<p>I have met several bright, capable students with stunning scores who simply could not work with others. They by and large won't get in, but read any of mollie's posts on problem sets to see how happy that kid would be at MIT. </p>

<p>There is the (perhaps apocryphal) story of the applicant who brought their teddy bear to the interview, and all of the interviewer's questions were discussed with the bear at length before the candidate answered. The EC's report wondered if the candidate had the emotional maturity for MIT. </p>

<p>I have met a few folks who are robots, who read physics textbooks as a hobby and have no human friends to speak of (most of these won't get in, the most brilliant sometimes will).</p>

<p>In a purely meritocratic system, one that only looks at the numbers, most of these kids, some of whom may be quite damaged, will get in. Many of them may then be unhappy. </p>

<p>MIT has enough academically qualified applicants to fill their incoming class several times over. A purely fair, but entirely unsatifying system might be a lottery. Instead MIT tries to admit based on the match criteria on the website, and what they are actually looking for is for students who will be happy at MIT and who will thrive on the MIT experience. Literally how well they match MIT.</p>

<p>Caltech's meritocratic admissions do not really consider or care whether the students will be happy and thrive on campus (which is of course why many of them don't), merely whether they can do the work.</p>

<p>Is Caltech's system more transparent? Yes. </p>

<p>More meritocratic? Yes. </p>

<p>Better? In my opinion, not by a long way.</p>

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<p>This speculation about whether or not Caltech's more meritocratic admission procedure results in more academically capable students actually going to Caltech is silly. Surely the average SAT scores of matriculated Caltech and MIT students are published somewhere.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
2) I don't understand the claim that if top admitted students choose not to attend the admission policy isn't meritocratic. It might not be maximzing the number of highly-rated students who enroll, but "meritocratic" is a property of the admissions procedure, based on an idea of procedural fairness, it is not a property of the outcome of that process in terms of enrollments.

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Caltech could admit a class based on academic merit alone, have nobody accept the offer, and the admissions process would be no less meritocratic

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<p>Sure, the process would still be "meritocratic". But so what? The end result would not be a meritocratic * class * which is what ultimately matters.</p>

<p>Again, as a case in point, I would repeat - I find Berkeley's admissions to be highly meritocratic in the sense that if you have the numbers, you will get in. You rarely have the cases at Berkeley where somebody with superstar numbers gets turned down whereas somebody from the same school with much weaker numbers gets in. But I would strongly hesitate to say that Berkeley's * student body * to be highly meritocratic, relative to the top private. Again, this is because a lot of top students who get into Berkeley will choose to go elsewhere.</p>

<p>Aedar, you said it yourself - what counts is the quality of the students, and by that, I'm sure you mean that quality of the students * who matriculate *, not just those you admit. Who cares about the quality of students who are admitted but choose not to enroll? How does that help the school?</p>

166

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Just wait until you have to start fretting about graduate school -- graduate school admissions criteria are even less clear. (And yet nobody complains.)

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<p>Well, actually, yeah they do. I've heard some of them complain rather loudly.</p>

<p>However, I would call and raise you by pointing to the way that hiring and promotion is done in the private sector. If you think college admissions are subjective, private sector hiring/promotion/firing decisions are * really * subjective. Most states are at-will states meaning that your employer can terminate you at any time for any reason or no reason at all. You can be the absolute best employee in the company, and get laid off anyway. For example, if the company decides to eliminate your entire department, then it doesn't matter how good you are, you're out of a job. Heck, I would argue that there are certain companies where doing excellent work actually * increases * your chances of getting terminated. For example, you might be so good at your job that your manager begins to fear that you will replace him, so the safe thing for him to do is terminate you. I know a few people to which I strongly suspect this has happened.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
4) I also strongly disagree that one can learn as much taking graduate classes at a "top 50-100 school" as one can at Caltech, MIT, or their competitors. In part this is because grad student quality falls off much more quickly than faculty quality does, and this serves as a constraint on the classes.

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<p>Then take a reading class with a prof - where basically you run a specialized "class" of one student (yourself) and you do the assignments and readings that the prof wants you to do. I've done this. I know many others who have done this. I know molliebatmit is doing this right now. You don't need a formal class with lots of other students in order to interact with profs.</p>

<p>Heck, you may not even need the prof at all. You really want to learn advanced material that your school can't provide? Then get the textbooks and read them yourself. Or if the subject is so advanced that there isn't even really a textbook available, then read the latest research papers from EBSCO, Proquest, or JSTOR. If only a few schools in the world offer an advanced graduate course on a particular subject, and you don't happen to go to that school, then you can kindly ask that prof at that school for the syllabus for his course (rarely will you get turned down), and then do all the readings on that syllabus. Sure, you might not learn as much as you would within a formal class, but you can still pick up quite a lot if you're diligent.</p>

<p>What I would say is this. If you are really so good that you can exhaust all of the offerings at any top 50-100 ranked school, and you still have the thirst to learn more, you're probably well suited to get your PhD. And the PhD process requires * extensive * self-study. There's not always going to be a formal class available that will teach you the things you need to learn to advance your particular research. In fact, your research is supposed to be original, which by definition means working on topics that others cannot teach you anything about (if they could teach you that topic, then by definition, it isn't original). You're going to have to learn how to teach yourself. </p>

<p>Heck, sometimes teaching yourself is often times actually * better * than taking the formal course, simply because, frankly speaking, a lot of profs are poor teachers. Many times in my life have I found myself in courses in which the prof really didn't add any value over and above what I could have taught myself. Heck, in some cases, they arguably actually * subtracted * value, in that the teaching was so poor that it actually served to confuse you.</p>

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<p>I think we're getting somewhere too sakky.</p>

<p>But you do agree that the class that matriculates to Caltech each year is indeed, highly meritocratic? It's not like Caltech students are dumb, which is what your tone suggests. Infact, they're probably even smarter than MIT students overall (based on grad school placement figures). I'd also say that the smartest individuals from Caltech could also compete on the level of the smartest undergrads from MIT.</p>

<p>That said, we could probably just debate on the sole issue at hand: meritocratic admissions - with respect to elite institutions.</p>

<p>For some reason, Caltech has been able to maintain consistently high undergraduate standards - which means their method of admissions/school promotion is succeeding. Dan Golden's book has also actually praised Caltech on this, and on the fact that Caltech is one of those "few" elite colleges that practise meritocratic standards.</p>

<p>Some here have already attempted to answer my question as to why people overall are highly dissatisfied with MIT admissions, and not with Caltech's/the Ivies'. sakky, I'll take your explanation about the Ivies "brainwashing" with the emotions of rejectees, but I'm going to say that CAdream's explanation of MIT admissions trying to be more profound, and highly overblown - trying to be a something to everybody; even the rejectees, when in their minds, MIT is only of a something to the acceptees - is more likely.</p>

169

<p>Another interesting thought...</p>

<p>collegealum314, an MIT alum, is seemingly displeased with current admissions practises, whereas Mikalye, another MIT alum, is quite fine with them.</p>

<p>Perhaps both of you are acquainted differently with what MIT is all about - due to your different experiences with the institution?</p>

<p>Perhaps you could disclose what years you graduated from MIT?</p>

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<p>I was in the class of 2000.</p>

171

<p>what do your grad placement figures say? I'm curious. I'd be surprised if within the students who apply to grad school, Caltech students get into grad school at a significantly higher rate than MIT students. Are you sure it's not a difference of goals? I think your repeated claim that Caltech students are of "higher quality" than MIT students is a little too hopeful.</p>

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<p>I'm class of late 70's. Way back in the dark ages Alums were complaining. This is so far from being a new issues it is unbelievable.</p>

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<p>I dunno. I dont want to sound like I work for the admissions department or anything, but maybe this heavy involvement by the alums (complaining) is a sign that they have a strong sense of pride about their alma mater. Which then makes one wonder, why aren't the other colleges' alums complaining?</p>

174

<p>A few points:</p>

<p>I agree with sakky that you can get an outstanding education at a state school or a smaller private school. In fact, if you look at the bachelor's degrees of the professors at CalTech or MIT, many of them went to state schools. (Engineering is a bit different; many of MIT's faculty went to MIT for both bachelor's and PhD.) </p>

<p>The reason people are upset with getting rejected has little to do with the education. Frankly, I think the education at a place like Northwestern may be superior to Harvard. Many ambitious seniors see getting into a college sort of like qualifying for the olympics; when they get rejected, it's like the college saying, "No, you are not <em>really</em> an elite student." To use an analogy, it's like training your entire life for the decathlon, setting the world record in every event, and then they give the gold medal to someone with marginal athletic ability. It's not like the person started training/studying to get that gold medal originally, but that gold medal comes to symbolize success. </p>

<p>Also, I disagree that people complain more about MIT admissions than ivy admissions practises. Plenty of people are upset with the ivy league schools. I'm sure part of the reason people are highly critical of MIT admissions is the MIT blogs. Harvard admissions doesn't ever talk about their admissions process. All you see is the results.</p>

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<p>And hiding information is better? This puzzles me.</p>

<p>Changing topics, I'm an alum, class of 2006.</p>

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<h2>"And hiding information is better?"</h2>

<p>No, not at all.</p>

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<p>Oh cmon pebbles, I'm not your arch nemesis. I just like good discussions.</p>

<p>I saw some grad placement figures quite a bit ago, but I forgot where they are now.</p>

<p>Ask simfish for them...simfish has data on just about everything college. You can't argue statistics.</p>

<p>And I'm not being too hopeful when I say Caltech students are overall, of higher "quality" than MIT students. This has basically been asserted on CC (especially on the Caltech forums), and one statistic doesn't lie:</p>

<p>Caltech:
SAT Critical Reading: 690 - 770 99%
SAT Math: 780 - 800 99%</p>

<p>MIT:
SAT Critical Reading: 660 - 760 97%
SAT Math: 720 - 800 97%</p>

<p>Obviously there are other intangible, subjective factors. However, when the MIT class admitted consists of a - significant - portion of URMs, unhooked but well rounded applicants that aren't really good at science specifically, etc. etc., it's going to be less competitive than a class that admits mostly strong candidates - and does a decent enough job retaining them.</p>

<p>pebbles, I'm not sure what you mean by a "difference of goals." MIT and Caltech are both "institutes of technology" are they not? To most people, the only thing that matters in a college is reliable grad school placement - not my words, but the words of one poster on an Ivy thread.</p>

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<p>what do the percentages refer to? </p>

<p>Grad placement? It's confusing because you have them next to the SAT score.</p>

<p>also, what does "unhooked" mean?</p>

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<p>^
No they're not grad placement percentages. They're the %age of students who submitted the SAT scores.</p>

<p>I think though, that Caltech grad placement is around 80-something percent. Again, I don't know the specifics.</p>

<p>mollie, it's unfortunate that because of the MIT blogs, some people are not happy with admissions.</p>

<p>But perhaps people are really not pleased with the way MIT admissions has been presented to them? I'm puzzled here too.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Then take a reading class with a prof - where basically you run a specialized "class" of one student (yourself) and you do the assignments and readings that the prof wants you to do. I've done this. I know many others who have done this. I know molliebatmit is doing this right now. You don't need a formal class with lots of other students in order to interact with profs.</p>

<p>Heck, you may not even need the prof at all. You really want to learn advanced material that your school can't provide? Then get the textbooks and read them yourself. Or if the subject is so advanced that there isn't even really a textbook available, then read the latest research papers from EBSCO, Proquest, or JSTOR. If only a few schools in the world offer an advanced graduate course on a particular subject, and you don't happen to go to that school, then you can kindly ask that prof at that school for the syllabus for his course (rarely will you get turned down), and then do all the readings on that syllabus. Sure, you might not learn as much as you would within a formal class, but you can still pick up quite a lot if you're diligent.</p>

<p>What I would say is this. If you are really so good that you can exhaust all of the offerings at any top 50-100 ranked school, and you still have the thirst to learn more, you're probably well suited to get your PhD. And the PhD process requires extensive self-study. There's not always going to be a formal class available that will teach you the things you need to learn to advance your particular research. In fact, your research is supposed to be original, which by definition means working on topics that others cannot teach you anything about (if they could teach you that topic, then by definition, it isn't original). You're going to have to learn how to teach yourself.</p>

<p>Heck, sometimes teaching yourself is often times actually better than taking the formal course, simply because, frankly speaking, a lot of profs are poor teachers. Many times in my life have I found myself in courses in which the prof really didn't add any value over and above what I could have taught myself. Heck, in some cases, they arguably actually subtracted value, in that the teaching was so poor that it actually served to confuse you.

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<p>I made the same arguments as well. I think the main issue is that many students just don't have the motivation (or imagination) to go into the depths that you just described (Even one of the Goldwater scholars at the University of Washington, who was extremely intelligent, did not go into grad courses until his junior year). There are problems with the state system - among them - the socialization system tends to make people conform to the traditional undergraduate education track in the state schools. It's certainly a lot easier to be motivated when all of your peers are highly motivated and when you have grades from difficult classes to motivate yourself. But that sort of motivation is an external sort of motivation that will hurt one's performance in graduate school - researchers should be motivated enough to pursue problems independently of whoever the hell their peers are. </p>

<p>It's certainly a mentality that needs to be changed. It's certainly not helped by the educational system - which subjects people to the mentality that they need an instructor to learn something - which is certainly not helped when the institution has pre-requisites and graduation requirements (students can get past them, especially with the help of a sympathetic professor, nonetheless, few who are capable elect to do so). There are also a number of professors who do get offended when you cut class, and who intentionally cover material in lecture that isn't in the textbook to increase class attendance rates (which is especially irksome when the instructor is a poor instructor).</p>

<p>Even Caltech has poor classroom attendance rates (source: happyentropy and the Caltech Abstract Algebra course). But happyentropy said that the professors generally don't mind that.</p>

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[quote]
Sure, the process would still be "meritocratic". But so what? The end result would not be a meritocratic class which is what ultimately matters.</p>

<p>Again, as a case in point, I would repeat - I find Berkeley's admissions to be highly meritocratic in the sense that if you have the numbers, you will get in. You rarely have the cases at Berkeley where somebody with superstar numbers gets turned down whereas somebody from the same school with much weaker numbers gets in. But I would strongly hesitate to say that Berkeley's student body to be highly meritocratic, relative to the top private. Again, this is because a lot of top students who get into Berkeley will choose to go elsewhere.</p>

<p>Aedar, you said it yourself - what counts is the quality of the students, and by that, I'm sure you mean that quality of the students who matriculate , not just those you admit. Who cares about the quality of students who are admitted but choose not to enroll? How does that help the school?

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<p>Caltech admissions does the best job it can for the type of institution that it is. As Ben Golub pointed out again - not all of the best students are hardcore into academics. Many of them do care about more superficial features in colleges - such as girls and opportunities to pursue extra-curricular activities.</p>