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Of the 20 colleges with mean SAT's above 1400, MIT places 12th.
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<p>Right there, you just conceded the point. Of the 20 colleges within that SAT category, MIT is 12th, hence, it is below average (the average is, by definition, between 10th and 11th place). I would further surmise that of the schools with SAT scores greater than 1500 (of which MIT is one), clearly MIT would be shown to be a 'below-average' school in terms of graduation rate. </p>
<p>Furthermore, graduation rate by itself doesn't tell the whole story, because it leaves out those people who don't even apply to MIT, or do apply and get in, but decide not to go, again, because they fear its fearsome reputation for difficulty. While obviously this can't be proven, I would surmise that of the people that MIT loses in terms of cross-admit yield, a signiicant fraction of them who do get lost to other schools are lost because people are afraid to go to MIT and do poorly. </p>
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So MIT takes a group of kids who have a lot going for them in terms of ability and work ethic, but who have a lot against them in the high proportion of low income people, and the high proportion of URM's, and graduates more than 92%. I don't think it has anything to apologize for.
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<p>Nobody is saying that MIT has anything to 'apologize' for. Rather, the issue is that among its peer schools, MIT is, admittedly, an outlier when it comes to the reputation of its difficulty. MIT's peer schools tend to be HYPS. Nobody seriously compares MIT to Washington U or even to Columbia. The issue is that a person who can get into MIT can often times get into at least one of HYPS also. So the issue is then if you are one of these people, what do you do? And the truth is, when students do get lost to other schools, the difficulty of MIT is often times a reason for losing those students. I agree with you that another reason they get lost is from the narrower scope that MIT provides. But that doesn't obviate the point that people get lost from the difficulty of the school.</p>
<p>To give you a case in point - I know several people who got admitted to MIT but chose other schools within HYPS. Every one of them has said to a man that one of the major reasons for choosing against MIT was that they simply thought that MIT was going to be too hard. Breadth of the coursework did not seem to be a serious factor, as all of them ended up majoring in a technical subject. In the one case of the guy I know who ended up turning down MIT for Princeton, at which he majored in CS, this guy basically chose a less prominent CS program. Why did he do that? He has admitted to me and others that, quite frankly, he was scared by the rigor of the CS department at MIT. He didn't want to be put in the situation of having to worry about simply graduating. At a school like Princeton, as long as you do the minimum amount of work, you know you're going to graduate. Maybe not with top grades, but at least you will graduate. No such assurance is available at MIT. </p>
<p>Now, I also agree that other people are actually attracted by the difficulty of MIT. I know several people who chose MIT precisely because of its reputation for difficulty. So MIT's rigor attracts some students while repelling others. But the point is, I think this is a case where the school can have it both ways. Sure, make your program difficult. But then also implement policies to help those students who can't cut it to transfer to some other school. Don't just leave them floundering. </p>
<p>If MIT implemented a policy that indicated that they would help those students who are doing badly to go elsewhere, then that would attract more students who are repelled by the difficulty of the school. The truth is, a lot of people are highly risk averse. Nobody wants to be caught in the trap where they can't graduate from the school they have matriculated at and also can't transfer to some other decent school. </p>
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The inclination to study that much math and science exists only in a very narrow slice of the national, or the elite, college population. Imagine what would have happened if Harvard had proposed to replace its general requirements with those in place at MIT. The social science and humanities departments would be cleared out.
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<p>Yeah, but this gets to an interesting sidepoint. Harvard has core requirements too. It's just that they include a lot of humanities and social science work. Heck, the entire Harvard College core requirement is arguably just as long, if not longer, (in terms of number of courses you must take) than the MIT GIR's.</p>
<p>"Undergraduates must devote almost a quarter of their studies to courses in the following areas of the program: Foreign Cultures, Historical Study, Literature and Arts, Moral Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, Science, and Social Analysis"</p>
<p><a href="http://my.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=core%5B/url%5D">http://my.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=core</a></p>
<p>Hence, just like you say that students who want to study humanities/social sciences don't want to deal with the MIT GIR's, I would argue that people who want to study engineering, natural sciences, or math wouldn't particularly want to deal with the humanities and soc-sci parts of the Harvard core. Yet why is it that the MIT GIR's seem to be driving people away, but the Harvard core doesn't seem to drive anybody away? It would seem to me that both should be occurring. People who want to be studying humanities should want to avoid MIT and its GIR's, but at the same time, people who want to study engineering should want to avoid Harvard and its humanities core requirements. Hence, it should be a wash.</p>
<p>Now, obviously it's not a wash. And one would probably argue that the reason why it's not a wash is because more people are interested in majoring in humanities/soc-science than, say, engineering. But I would argue that perhaps THAT is a dynamic function as well. Specifically, I would argue that the main reason why more people prefer majoring in humanities/soc-sci rather than engineering/natural sci is that, quite frankly, courses in the former tend to give out higher grades for less work, something that has been documented repeatedly by numerous studies. Simply put, humanities/soc science majors tend to be easier. Speaking from my own experience, I know countless people who wanted to major in engineering or a natural science, but found it was too hard, so ended up majoring in a humanities or social science. You rarely, if ever hear, of the reverse. Nobody ever complains that film studies is just too hard, so they'll go major in electrical engineering instead. But I do know several people who tried to major in electrical engineering and got absolutely killed in the classes, and so ended up majoring in (and graduating from) film studies. On a similar note, that's why you rarely see football players at major Division 1A football schools like Cal, Stanford, Michigan, Georgia Tech, Texas, USC, Wisconsin, UCLA, etc. who actually major in engineering or a natural science, despite the fact that all of these schools are strong engineering/natural science schools. At Cal, for instance, the football players tend to cluster in certain majors like "American Studies" or "Peace and Conflict Studies" or "Religious Studies". The truth of the matter is that many of the players in Division 1A don't give a hoot about an education. They're just there because they want to take a shot at making it to the NFL. So they choose some easy major so that they can stay eligible to play while putting in minimal study time. I think anybody who spends any time near a top Division 1-A football team can tell that a lot of players just aren't that interested in an education. </p>
<p>But the point is this. This all ties into the fact that MIT, or, perhaps more accurately, technical subjects in general, are difficult, and that repels some students. Getting back to the original point of pre-med, people who want to go to med-school are rational in wanting to go to a school where they can get high grades for doing little work because they know that grades are paramount in getting into med-school. MIT is not a place that will give you easy grades. </p>
<p>Not to call one of our respected members out, but molliebatmit once conceded on another thread that she probably would not be able to get into any of the top med-schools. She could probably get into a no-name med-school, but not a top one. Yet she got into every one of the top PhD programs in her field. The reason is simple. Her grades aren't super-high. Like it or not, med-schools want to see high grades. Heck, she might have had trouble even making it to the 2nd round of some of the top med-schools. Everybody who knows mollieb knows how amazing she is. But med-schools don't care about that. What they see is that she has relatively low grades for an applicant, and that could be cause for automatic rejection. </p>
<p>Now, I agree that somebody like her probably would not want to go to med-school anyway, because like you said, she has talents that are not congruent with being a doctor. But the point is, the top med-schools wouldn't have even given her the chance anyway.</p>