<p>I was looking at MITs entry in the Barrons guide, and at the end i read about their affirmative action policy. It said: "MIT has an affirmative action policy, meaning that all qualified under represented minority applicants are admitted. (african american, native american, hispanic, etc.)</p>
<p>so...all qualified URMs who apply get in? doesn't that seem like...kind of unfair.
especially considering that >85% of MIT applicants are qualified? (I got this statistic straight from the admission officer at an info session) Wouldn't that mean that if someone were say, black or hispanic, and they had As and Bs and like a 2100 sat score and an interest in science, they'd get in?</p>
<p>and sorry don't flame me for this, I am not a racist...its just pretty unfair to others...especially us ORMs.</p>
<p>Put it this way.
If you are a black woman, you chances....quadruple maybe?</p>
<p>mit does not practice affirmative action (unless you are a minority then you can add 1 to your GPA)</p>
<p>being a minority is one thing that can make you unique. other things can make you unique. life's not fair.</p>
<p>I think that if you look at the results thread from last year and previous years, you'll see that not every qualified URM candidate was admitted to MIT. I think the admissions office does try to admit a large number of qualified URM candidates, but certainly not every URM applicant is admitted.</p>
<p>All of the URM admits we've seen here on CC in past years have been extraordinarily qualified, as is the MIT admit pool in general. I don't think I've seen a 2100, A/B student admitted without something exceptional in his/her resume.</p>
<p>What you read isn't true (and I am really appalled that a guidebook would have that sort of misinformation). MIT practices heavy recruitment of qualified URMs, and takes life circumstances into account among many other factors (and race is part of life circumstances, as this society is not race-blind), but it sure doesn't admit all qualified URMs, nor does it have a URM quota (another thing I see alleged a lot).</p>
<p>After looking into it a little more, I see where this info came from. This was apparently a stated policy in the past (~a decade ago). Policies, circumstances, etc, do change over the years. As Mollie said, if you look through the results threads, you will see that they indicate that this is no longer the case. So does more recent documentation. For instance, this article from 2003 (five years ago instead of 10):</p>
<p>Court</a> Decision Unlikely To Alter MIT Admissions - The Tech</p>
<p>"Because MIT uses race in an individualized way...it is unlikely MIT will need to make changes to its admissions process."</p>
<p>"Karlan suggested that, while there is still room to define “narrowly tailored,” MIT’s admissions strategy is exactly the kind of “non-mechanical” method that the court has now sanctioned."</p>
<p>This appears to contradict the earlier policy of admitting all qualified URMs. Perhaps MIT got enough of a critical mass to move to the more nuanced approach that it has now.</p>