<p>No, you don’t know. You are pretending to in order to make a point you’ve already convinced yourself of. </p>
<p>The admissions process is not that simple. I, and the rest of the admissions team at MIT/elsewhere, do not work 70 hour weeks, October through April, to just look at race / scores and go WELP THIS IS EASY. </p>
<p>Your post is patently, fundamentally wrong. That’s a harsh thing for me to say, and I apologize for any offense. But I am trying to dispel prevalent myths here, and I find these sorts of assertions not only incorrect but frankly insulting for the way in which they disparage not only our hard work but also the applicants in our pool, both those we do and do not admit.</p>
<p>I’m actually being perfectly honest with future applicants. We might admit either of those students. We might reject both. The hypothetical African-American student may be more well-matched than the Asian student, and we’d take him; or, it may be the other way around. This summer I mentored several FGC Asian-American immigrant students at MITES; they’ll be joining us this year in the fall in the Class of 2015, and I’m super proud of that.</p>
<p>This idea that college admissions at selective universities just boils down to box check -> you’re in is wrong. My job would be a lot easier if it was right - but then again, I wouldn’t want to do my job. </p>
<p>As to your last point - MIT does have a limit on the number of international citizens whom we can accept each year, but that’s also because we’re one of only two schools in the country that is need blind AND full need for our international students. Other schools do have quotas - but they are quotas of cost, where they figure out what their financial aid budget is and then deny students who would put them over the budget. In order to preserve the integrity of our need-blind and full need processes, we do limit our international citizen cohort to about 10% of the incoming class. It allows us to take the best international students we can and guarantee MIT will be affordable to them, and I’m pretty happy with that.</p>
<p>I get your point but no other need-blind college in the United States has any quotas, and they seem to do perfectly fine with International Admissions and Financial Aid. There’s really no excuse for having a quota in this day and age.</p>
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<p>But you can’t deny that a huge preference exists for Hispanics and Blacks over East and South Asians, right? If MIT wasn’t allowed to practice AA, wouldn’t its student composition reflect more that of schools that don’t use AA either?</p>
<p>Maybe it is just the case at MIT, but at every other college (accept those who are in a state where AA is out-lawed) would take the African American. Of course, they will argue other wise, and that they are not performing an act of racial discrimination. But, who are we kidding… If that were the case, schools wouldn’t ask for an applicant’s race.</p>
Please explain why a large number of Asians who have test scores, GPA’s, class ranks, and number AP’s taken either comparable or better than the 50th percentile of incoming Freshman class are wait-listed/rejected while the majority of URM acceptances have stats not within the top 50th percentile. I understand that you can’t incorporate essays and teacher recs into a scale, but it wouldn’t make logical sense to say that there is a PREVALENT TREND demonstrating that MOST of these URM’s were capable of producing higher quality essays and recommendations than the Asians.</p>
<p>This entire “affirmative action concept” puzzles me. I’m not sure what it’s trying to solve. Is it for the sake of diversity? I’m sure that a university population of 20% Black, 20% Hispanic, 55% white, and 5% Asian would be equally as diverse than a population of 5% Black, 5% Hispanic, 70% white, and 20% Asian in terms of philosophies, political opinions, and personalities. The assumption that all people of the same race have similar personalities is very shallow.</p>
<p>OMG EVERYONE JUST STOP BEING RUDE TO EACH OTHER! Honestly, I trust @MITCHris because HE. IS. AN. ACTUAL. ADCOM. The rest of you may like to play “adcom for the day” on the Chances boards, but he does this for a living. There have been federal investigations into the AA practices of Top Tier schools, and even those haven’t found anything being done wrong.</p>
<p>Stop sulking because you are all white as snow. I’ll most likely just put down White anyway because people like you would get all angry if I try to “gain an advantage” by putting down my actual race/ethnicity. If you don’t get in and someone else does, the reason is because they were better suited for that school. So find another school and be happy there, instead of lamenting to strangers online about how “reverse racism” stopped you from getting into a college that only accepts an extremely limited number of students anyway.</p>
<p>And as for the hypothetical Asian and Black kid story that was brought up earlier, if they were both qualified, chances are that they would BOTH be accepted. </p>
<p>So… just stop!</p>
<p>And honestly, I would hate to go to a college with 40% Asian people. Just like I would hate to go to a college with 40% Hispanic students or 40% Black students. I want DIVERSITY. That’s the point of AA.</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure what race you are, but it sure sounds like we’re getting a URM’s point of view. Look at the statistics. It is a fact URMs are admitted with lower stats. I would love to see some facts about the federal investigations going on because they must be either looking for the wrong thing or missing something. Also, you said you would hate going to a school where it is 40% one race. Well many students hate the idea of going to a school where racial discrimination is practiced.</p>
<p>Also, everyone lay off Chris. Hes taking time out of his day to help us. Be appreciative.</p>
<p>but you have no problem going to a school that’s 40% white? what’s wrong with going to a school that’s 40% black? do you mean that people’s skin colors are indicative of their character, interests, and personality?</p>
<p>MITChris, I’m a little confused by your explanation for limiting the number of international students because of financial aid. do you mean international students tend to be low-income and therefore need more aid than domestic students? otherwise, how is limiting the percentage of international student helping MIT remain full need? (in other words, hypothetically speaking, if you admit domestic students in place of internationals, doesn’t MIT have to give out the same amount of grants?)</p>
<p>i don’t believe many of us think of the process as coming down to box check -> you’re in. Rather, we’re apprehensive of this seemingly random and subjective determination of who’s a better “match”. what would make one applicant a better match than another?
forgive my ignorance: even though adcoms like you have been so helpful and trying to be as open and transparent as possible, this admission process is like a mystery to us outsiders looking in.
MIT and other schools have always admitted that race/ethnicity plays a role in this “match” process between the school and the applicants, so what I cannot understand is why race should be in the equation in the first place. if an African American student is a better “match” for MIT because he has the interests that make him a great asset for the school, then that’s great, admit him! if an Asian/white/Hispanic student is, then let’s take him! what role does race play exactly in this process?</p>
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but are the URM students admitted to MIT more socioeconomically disadvantaged than those applicants of other ethnicity? i always hoped this is true, so i would love to hear the answer from an admission officer.</p>
that is harsh. we had this same discussion in my high school government class once, and many of my classmates of mixed ancestries clearly had trouble pinpointing what they should put down for their race on the US census. this ambivalence had nothing to do with “gaming” college admissions, as most of them are not even applying to any elite universities that one would just know by the name.</p>
<p>We do take good matches, regardless of their race and ethnicity, and we turn away highly qualified URM students who are not a good match! </p>
<p>The role race and ethnicity plays is, as our affirmative action statement says, essentially a role of understanding that student’s life and experience. Some students have overcome a disadvantage based on their race/ethnicity. Others, geography; poverty; first-generation status; etc. Sometimes a mix of all of the above. </p>
<p>And I understand the “mystery” thing you’re talking about. Like I said, I know this process is fraught with information asymmetries. We try to do the best we can to make it as transparent as possible, but in the end, adcoms are the only ones who see the full information in each folder, and that fundamental fact is never going to change. </p>
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<p>Often, yes. That said, we take disadvantage into account for impoverished non-URMs; we also know there are disadvantages that go beyond how much money you have in the bank. Things like - how good your school is, the opportunities available in your community, whether you have any academic role models in your life, etc. These often correlate with wealth, but they are distinct from it as well. </p>
<p>There is also the question of diversity. We look for all sorts of diversity - socioeconomic, geographical, cultural, and yes, ethnic. Having all sorts of different folks (different in all different ways) is a good thing in and of itself. It is important to interact with different sorts of people, and important that colleges can provide their students with people who are different from each other in many ways. Race is only one of these ways, but that does not diminish its importance. That’s why integration was important at the time of Brown and why it is still important now. </p>
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<p>I agree. Except that, in the case of Clearbrooke, she had the opportunity to indicate multiple ethnicities, and she chose to identify exclusively as African-American, explicitly because she was trying to game the system. </p>
<p>No one in this thread - or in our office - has a problem with multiethnic applicants honestly struggling to come to terms with their racial identity, any more than an applicant struggling to come to terms with their gender identity. </p>
<p>What is problematic is flat out lying on your application. That is simply not OK.</p>
<p>This is a bit further afield than where this thread started, but I wanted to briefly elaborate on what I meant by this point: </p>
<p>Assume, for the moment, that every student we admitted to MIT was the same. White males who all scored 800s on the math SAT. Asian females who all won biology research awards. Or, all poor URMs from urban communities. </p>
<p>This is an extreme example, but it demonstrates the problem of a lack of diversity broadly defined. If everyone at MIT was exactly the same, even if they were all highly qualified (just let in everyone from a major city with a 2400 on the SATs), it would be a bad thing for all involved. There would be no different skill sets. There would be a much narrower set of life experiences and perspectives from high school, and that would continue through college. People would not be able to bring different, disparate viewpoints to all aspects of their college life. Intellectual, ideological, and interpersonal cross-pollinization would totally cease. </p>
<p>This wouldn’t be good! And so we don’t do things that way. Selective college admissions is about finding the right mix of students who will, as a collective, form the best class that can be admitted to that particular university at that particular time. </p>
<p>As we say on our site: </p>
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<p>Not everyone is going to agree with every decision we make. Some people would strike a slightly different balance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, students who were admitted tend to think the schools that admitted them made the right decision; students who were not admitted understandably disagree. </p>
<p>Point is: when people bring up hypothetical comparison cases (and real comparison cases are never that simple), it’s really just arguing over the margins. Folks aren’t really disagreeing with the overall model of admissions. And fundamentally, I think most people would agree that admissions committees should put some thought into constituting a broad, interesting, diverse class, and not just take the top 1,000 people who score on some test. If you do believe in the “national examination” - well, that’s how things work at many overseas schools, and I can tell you that many are moving towards holistic admissions because they believe our model produces better results. </p>
<p>This is somewhat of a derail from the main point of this thread. But I think it’s important for adcoms to communicate and educate, as clearly as possible, why and how we make the decisions we do. And to show that it’s not about checking boxes. It’s about the people we bring together to form your family for the next four years of your lives.</p>
<p>MITChris has the best argument on CC for race being an important part of a holistic admission. I argued elsewhere for the removal of race in college admissions, but now I see that’s simplistic.</p>
<p>MIT however might be in the minority where the holistic approach works reasonably well. Perhaps a technical school is more objective even in a subjective holistic selection process. I know MIT is now quite strong in non-technical areas as well.</p>
<p>I think people in your occupation contribute to the notion that there is a “strategic advantage” in being a so-called “underrepresented” minority. It doesn’t help, for example, when “RiceChris” tells the New York Times that “From an academic standpoint, the qualifying records, the test scores, how many AP courses, they may all look alike…That’s when we might go and say, ‘This kid has a Spanish surname. Let’s see what he wrote about.’ Right or wrong, it can make a difference.”</p>
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<p>Clearbrooke was simply being a rational individual. Don’t blame her for playing by the rules of the game; blame those in charge who keep sending contradictory signals: “Oh, race isn’t that important, but we’ll never stop using it in admissions.”</p>
<p>The only schools that don’t cap foreign enrollment are those seeking to make money by admitting as many full-pay (zero financial aid) internationals as possible. Everywhere else, there is either a numerical limit or a budget limit and both types of cap are logically equivalent where there’s no recruitment of the full- or high-paying foreigners. The school knows that every additional foreign student will cost, on average, approximately X and under a budget limit it means that it’s impossible to admit more than some known number. The X and the international enrollment are forecast and planned each year before the admissions cycle. In addition to aggregate enrollment and tuition/FA numbers, the university needs to know how many staff will be needed in the foreign student office, the budget for lawyers and administrators to deal with the student visas, and so on.</p>
Let me just say that as a multiracial teenager, I find this extremely offensive. Unless you yourself are multiracial, you cannot possibly come close to understanding the identity issues involved. Just because people you know haven’t had these issues or don’t talk about them doesn’t meant they don’t exist, and the struggle has really little to do with college admissions, that’s just a part of life that once again brings up the issue. I’m a quarter black so my skin is quite pale but I show a lot of African American features, so my identity is quite ambiguous- white people usually see me as white, while most black people I’ve talked to (not that there are a lot in my area) can tell that I’m mixed, so I can’t base my identity off how I look or how I’m perceived. I’ve probably lived more like a white person, but I think of my black ancestry as a vital part of my background, so how can you say it’s easy for me to choose what to consider myself, or that this is an obvious choice? You can say whatever you want about multiracial students in the admissions process, but don’t pretend that the decision is in any way easy.</p>
<p>I understand the stress in the admissions process. I remember going through it myself, and my youngest brother is a current freshman at Northeastern, so I saw it by proxy quite recently. I know how difficult the process can be to navigate, how different the signals can be, and the stress placed on students to do whatever they can do to make themselves more compelling applicants. </p>
<p>However: </p>
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<p>Here’s why I don’t buy this argument: because lying doesn’t play by the rules of the game. Clearbrooke deliberately misrepresented herself on her application, no different than had she lied about extracurricular leadership, for example. ECAs, like diversity, are another thing that we value in the process, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok for applicants to lie about it. </p>
<p>I realize that in this thread it may seem as if I’m attacking a particular applicant. And I don’t wish to do that, or to seem ill-willed or harsh. </p>
<p>But I do believe that what Clearbrooke did was wrong. And I wish to communicate to other future applicants, who may be in her position, why deliberate misrepresentation of the kind she committed is wrong, and to let them know that adcoms consider it wrong.</p>
<p>Additionally, I want to let multiethnic applicants, especially those who may be earnestly uncertain about their identity, know that they have the option of being completely forthright with us (by selecting whatever ethnicities may apply, and elaborating as necessary in essays), and that they will be considered as individuals, not as checkboxes, in our process. </p>
<p>I do want to thank everyone for participating in this thread. Even those with whom I have disagreed have been civil in the discussion. These are important, meaningful conversations to have. And I’m happy when we can have them on CC.</p>