@hebegebe Did I miss something? Has anyone asserted that MIT was reducing standards for boys?
re alliblues et al, here is some relevant literature on gender and/of STEM professions:
https://logicmag.io/05-how-to-kill-your-tech-industry/
https://contexts.org/articles/what-gender-is-science/
The book “Kiss My Math” featured in the second article starts this way:
“The chapters of this book are filled with things like breath mints, popularity, gift wrapping, and spas. By the time you finish reading them, however, you’ll be a whiz at tons of pre-algebra topics…”
I find this highly ironic. The article mentions that “one potential pitfall of this math-is-feminine strategy is that it risks swapping one set of stereotypes for another”, but it is really a heavy reinforcement of all the silly stereotypes, and trying to wiggle in math in between boys and spas is only going to make it worse in my opinion.
@Happytimes2001 as the OP of this thread, my son was not “taking a swing and just hoping to get in” but he was highly qualified. We were lucky that he actually got into an Ivy ED and he withdrew his application to MIT after being deferred. I strongly believe that MIT attracts many highly qualifies students and it is a numbers game. The reason colleges want to increase their recruitment is specifically so they can have more and more students to choose from. The number of applicants surely is critical as it is the pool from which a college chooses from. In MIT’s situation because it is highly sought after and because of its high yield, the number of applicants do very much matter. The disparity between the number of female applicants versus male applicants is very much critical to understand when applying to top schools such as MIT.
@hebegebe you are absolutely right in realizing that kids that you would think are very highly qualified, do not get into schools like MIT. It’s a bit of crapshoot.
It’s useful to look at chart C7. Relative importance of each of the following academic and nonacademic factors in your first-time, first-year, degree-seeking (freshman) admission decisions:
Okay, the bottom line regarding gender in admissions especially for underrepresented majors/streams is that Females do get a very slight boost in the process, but only and ONLY due to there being half as much (on average) apps that are female applying. To keep the gender composition of the incoming class balanced, the ratio of gender based admits has to differ. Choosing individual apps is void in terms of gender decision, but only due to the gender gap in admissions, especially for tech based schools/majors, this is the RESULT. The AdCom only thinks of trying to keep M/F 50/50, and nothing else. What comes out of the process is not correlated to anything else but the additional goal of the adcom to keep the incoming class at a 50/50 gender percent.
Hope this helps.
Of course - I don’t think anyone misunderstood the reasoning!
True, but sometimes new people comin’ on the forum get the diluted sense here; just tryna clarify it once in a while.
@TheGuy1 while it’s true that females get a slight boost in admissions at tech based schools. (They still need to be highly qualified) What you didn’t seem to mention is that Males get a slight boost in the Liberal Arts college admissions process.
@UglyMom Totally agreed. But I thought we were talking about MIT in specific (since the forum’s under that umbrella), so I didnt mention it.
Also, I think by Liberal Arts you mean the more non-STEM-y (non ECON/Business-ish) kind of majors?
For example, Yale is a Lib. Arts college, but its STEM majors are more competitive for males.
SO the distinction in admit rates for reasons specified and discussed before is in the Major opted for UG studies.
Thanks for the mention though.
@FoundDad I wonder where they presume to gain the information about the Character/personal qualities of a student, which they rank as the highest of the factors in admissions.
@alliblues it is so incredibly subjective. I presume that they glean this information about character from the recommendations, essays and activities. Truthfully its an ambiguous filter that is very hard to quantify.
@UglyMom - I don’t think that in this instance it is a “slight” boost. I came across an article which addresses this very issue: 10 Best Colleges Where Being a Woman Gives You an Admissions Edge.
http://money.com/money/4147738/colleges-women-higher-acceptance-rate/
MIT is in second place in the nation behind Harvey Mudd with a difference of 2.2x higher for women.
Overall acceptance rate: 8%
Male rate: 6%
Female rate: 13%
Difference: 2.2x higher for women
Gender on campus: 45% women/55% men
There is also an article by the same magazine that addresses Males:10 Best Colleges Where Being a man Gives You an Admissions Edge
http://money.com/money/4148268/colleges-men-higher-acceptance-rate/
Again, these stats are a result of admissions IMO. The edge is only due to the lesser no. of apps for females there, and the adcoms goal to have a balanced F/M ratio.
The admit difficulty per app is the same as gender is not a factor in admissions.
@TheGuy1 the single biggest factor for MIT is if your parents did not attend a four year college, your chances are much higher at MIT. 20% of the freshman seats are saved for first generation college students. MIT has a lot of boys who are recruited athletes. So if you are a boy who will not play a sport and your parents attended college, that’s the hardest subgroup to get into MIT. Just to put this into perspective. The gender box is a check box but the gender gap is getting smaller. For now even MIT admits a tiny bit more boys than girls. Slightly more than half the seats are given to boys. Percentage wise boys have a lower chance. Geography also plays a small roll in admissions decisions. Since you don’t control any of this really we have to acknowledge it’s not particularly fair.
@Coloradomama very well explained. One thing to note is that the yield for females accepted applicants is lower than the yield is of male accepted applicants. As a result, I presume MIT accepts more female applicants to address the field factor.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=massachusetts+institute&s=all&id=166683#admsns
@Coloradomama How good of an athlete does one have to be to get a bump for getting into MIT. No idea if son will be interested in MIT in a couple of years but he is on the path to at least have a shot and he is a good soccer player. Captain and MVP of his JV team this year…he was actually thinking of stopping soccer - should I tell him it might be worth continuing??
His coach said he thought he could play DIII, maybe DII.
none of this actually matters. it’s a complete non-issue. everyone knows the risks getting in, and if an applicant has “applied sideways” like you’re supposed to, they should be confident enough in themselves to not get their knickers in a twist about a single highly exclusive college. if not, they’re likely obsessed with grades rather than mastery, which is a perfect recipe for burnout and depression (speaking from personal experience here). AO’s /know/ what this looks like on paper, so that applicant is very likely to get deferred/rejected.
lastly, going back to the gender topic, the main issue with some people on this site is that they assume other people are “taking” their spot. is that spot yours in the first place? oh, no? go drink a milkshake and watch the sunrise, maybe.
Congratulations to all who got in. Wish you all the best of luck - well deserved. It seems like not a lot of people generally got in:
https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/open-thread-admitted-2/
The numbers seem to be down in terms of acceptance and slightly for in terms of overall applications (down from 21,706 from last year):
Applications: 21,312
Accepted (EA+R): 1,410 (6.6%)
EA Applicants: 9,600
EA Accepted: 707 (7.4%)
Deferred: 6,182
Regular: 11,712
Deferred + Regular: 17,894
Accepted Deferred + Regular: 703 (3.9%)
Men RD: 355 (2.9%)
Women RD: 348 (6.3%)