Why is there crapshot in MIT admissions???

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
61

<p>Ramaswami: There is nothing in your arguments to prove that current MIT students are not capable of inventing and innovating. Is it just because the student population is not made of all white or Asian males with perfect SATs and perfect high school GPAs? </p>

<p>Dubai, Tokyo, Bangalore and Shanghai are not rising because American intellect is lagging behind; it is because they have found a way to rise up, in fact ‘fit in’. Of course, they are being aided by the mantra of globalization. We are losing ground because of our politicians, not due to our educational institutions.</p>

62

<p>Eluhan, you are making some wonderful points, I need to digest them, yes, fitting in has always been important in America, that's why Thoreau didn't sell many copies of Walden and had to store the unsold ones in mother's attic.
Innovator, yes, I confess to putting a high premium on intelligence, at least over ECs, gender and racial diversity ,etc. Also, I strongly believe the SAT measures a good bit of intelligence and though it has its flaws it is a good measure along with AP scores etc. My understanding is that MIT has gone overboard in striving for gender and race diversity (like many other top colleges).</p>

<p>I can speak for growth in Bangalore and I can vouch that there it is intellect that counts, not diversity and ECs. My fear is this : what if America's top colleges have in fact lost their way because of the preoccupation with political correctness? It is not a coincidence that so many top college presidents are women, that adcoms are usually women, there is a feminization of the academy, the study of history is no longer top down (study of statesmen ,etc) but the study of what life was like for women, peasants, slaves etc. Not that this is not important but relatively speaking, Napoleon and Metternich had greater impact than a Roman slave or a Celt female.</p>

<p>Harry Lewis's book on Harvard College makes for depressing reading. The academy has lost its way.</p>

63

<p>Yousers, dude your going a bit too old gaurd for my taste.</p>

<p>I understand what your saying about the dangers of the PC movement. Still you have to look past the statistics. It is true many institutions, companies and people either blindly jump on the bandwagon or use it as a false front. </p>

<p>I will say this, I like an agitator and your being very unPC without being disrespectful or unproductive. The opposition is what democracy is about. Being productive in the face of disagreement or lack of foresight is what this country and our scientists are all about.</p>

64

<p>Eluhan, F Scott Fitzgerald once said that the best test of intelligence is the ability to keep two opposing ideas in one's head at the same time and still function. We are necessarily victims of Time in that we are caught in the net of the present and may never be able to extricate ourselves and in fact may never know how pervasively and perniciously our social group (whether in Bangalore or Ohio) has created us.</p>

<p>To counteract my being caught in today I try to transport myself out of today by incessantly reading about centuries past as in reading about the preSocratics or the Middle Ages ,etc. It gives a different perspective and I feel I am not enthralled by the merely contemporary as so many people are.</p>

<p>There is absolutely nothing special or unique about this period. To be in awe of MIT's match concept reminds me of our earlier awe about Thalidomide, DDT, psychoanalysis, Communism (the god that failed, remember Arthur Koestler?), the CIA, the role of intelligence in war (minimal as it turns out), Agent Orange, coronary bypass surgery, lobotomy, antidepressants, asbestos, etc etc.</p>

<p>All enthusiasms are fatal.</p>

65

<p>In my opinion, SAT is not all about intelligence. It is more about the ability of parents to afford expensive coaching and the ability of the student to tackle that kind of testing. One of my peers at work, who is teaching in the evening at a local university, said he is appalled by the fact that his graduate students from India with exemplary undergraduate grades and great GRE scores cannot write a decent summary of the research papers he assigns them. This is not about reading a passage and answering questions within a short time. This is about reading a full length technical paper and writing about it over the course of a week. When I said they may be defiant because English is not their native language, he said his finding is that in general they lack critical thinking. Obviously they are quite intelligent, since they made it to USA. What does it show? Grades are not everything. There is no good formula to measure someone’s ability. Pure numbers by themselves don’t mean anything. </p>

<p>Every student admitted to MIT has basic credentials to be there and succeed there. What is wrong in selecting roughly equal number of students from a talented pool? MIT does not say those who are rejected are not good enough for them. Do we have any statistics to show women who are admitted to MIT fare much lower than men in their final GPA? If that's the case then there is room for concern. I will not consider starting salaries of graduates as an indicator since this is a man's word. Women with same credential as men are still paid far less in general. No doubt there are instances of race or gender being a favorite factor in selection in some cases. Then are all appointments of men to position of power always correct and deserved? </p>

<p>It is not that enthusiasm is fatal, it is wrongly placed enthusiasm and resistance to change that are fatal. Objective living is all about adapting to the situation. If MIT does not have a feedback mechanism to assess its admission policy, then it spells danger to the institution. Do we know whether they have one or not?</p>

66

<p>Call me a dreamer, god knows I've been, but to counteract my being caught in today I remove myself into the ramifications of tomorrow.</p>

<p>Think of the world we are building. Specifically think of the impact of high technology and what is presumable of a century from now on the individual human experience and on the nations.</p>

<p>Now ask, what must we do to make that good.</p>

<p>Whatever the correct answer it must include experimentation, failure and of course insight.</p>

67

<p>Whatever the correct answer it must include experimentation, failure and of course insight ...</p>

<p>I would add- the ability to recognize mistakes in a timely manner and the capacity to negate or atleast contain the damage.</p>

68

<p>Ramaswami, The problem remains that setting up any university aimed at educating the one in a century genius is a task destined to fail, and it is presumptuous to try. Its a much smarter play to set up a university to educate the conventionally extremely bright, and accept as a cost of that, that you may not serve the one in a century genius all that well. I can live with the tradeoffs. That being said, I have worked in a number of collaborative teams, and solitude is definitely part of the work. You often develop ideas on your own and then subject them to the initial peer review of your team. They can expound upon your work, possibly show you applications you have missed, or shoot it down, if necessary. There is no conflict between working for significant periods alone and being part of an academic team.</p>

69

<p>The New Leader says
[quote]
People just do chances to see where they are among people. They probably want comments from experienced people. They want to know whether, for example, their scores are below the norm, or whether the ECs are not substantial enough.

[/quote]
The problem is that all of this is at best useless. The comments in chances threads are usually ill-informed, as most of the informed people don't bother to comment (as it is all about the match). So if I put up a "chance me" thread, I'm either get the ego boost of "Wow, you are a great candidate" (which is pleasant but not particularly helpful), or the slam of "you suck, you only got a 790 on the math, heck you NEED an 800", which is unpleasant, factually wrong and again, unhelpful.</p>

<p>As to ECs, the advice on these boards is frequently wrong. It's all about quality over quantity, which rarely comes through in the chances lists.</p>

<p>You want the raw numbers, MIT publishes them. For the class that just entered in 2007, MIT received 12,445 applications with an admit rate of 12% and a yield of 69%. 84% of the admitted class had an SAT I verbal score above 650, 97% had a math score above 650. 40% had a verbal score above 750. 66% had a math score above 750. Nonetheless MIT admitted just 21% of those applicants who had a verbal score above 750, and just 17% of those applicants with a math score above 750. MIT also admitted 3% of those applicants whose verbal score was below 550.</p>

<p>Do these numbers help? Maybe peripherally. If you were applying with scores of 780V, 780M, then you probably knew before you looked at the MIT statistics, that from an academic perspective you had perfectly fine scores, but they were not enough to guarantee admission. After careful reflection on the statistics, you now know that you have perfectly fine scores, which are not enough to guarantee admission. I just don't see the point.</p>

<p>Besides, if you find that your scores are "below the norm", so what. When it comes to your application, your life experiences, and essays, then we are actually dealing with a sample size of 1, which makes it hard to draw meaningful conclusions. Remember that MIT admitted 3% of those applicants whose verbal score was below 550. That 3% is not a single spectacular outlying exception. It is a select group of outlying exceptions, each one wonderful in their own way (or they are unlikely to have gotten in).</p>

<p>I should note that these are based, as with most other schools in the US, on the profile of the admitted class, which is its own object lesson in how to lie with statistics. Ever wonder why the (fictitious) Lower Slobovia State College has such high average SATs? Its because they publish a profile of their ADMITTED Class, and Lower Slobovia State admitted every Merit Scholar in the state. Precisely none of them chose to accept that offer of admission, but boy does it inflate the average stats. MIT with its 69% yield, and extremely competitive pool is much less affected by this than many, but it too reports on the admitted class. If you want much more intelligent stats, look for the profile of the ENROLLED class, which is a subtle but critical distinction.</p>

<p>OK, Rant Ends, Sorry.</p>

70

<p>

Agreed -- but I wasn't the one to bring up the idea of a loner being misanthropic. I don't think it's particularly out-of-the-box to label Crick as disagreeable, whether he has loner tendencies or not. If you don't want "loner" to be equated with "misanthrope", pick a better set of scientists as examples.</p>

<p>

I don't think anybody's "in awe" of MIT's match concept. I do know that there are plenty of very smart people with whom I'd never want to be stuck in college for four years, and I think that's the idea behind emphasizing the match -- optimizing the happiness of the student body as a whole, as it were.</p>

<p>

No, actually the stats show that women graduate from MIT with higher GPAs than men. (Women graduate at a higher rate, too.)</p>

71

<p>Mikalye, I tend to agree with you. I was making a case for the value of solitude in creativity especially in our society where we are all always connected. Even Rilke who had to have his solitude came out of it and enjoyed relationships as did Thoreau and in science Pauling, Newton, etc etc.</p>

<p>The jury is out on the women in science business. It will take a century to know. Graduation rates, publication rates, etc are not enough, they can be manipulated. For whatever reason, no great female chess players, Judith Polgar is far (I emphasize far) below the male grandmasters. Few great women writers and no epic poetry. Few great female scientists. Let us have rash of Curies and I will change my mind.</p>

<p>innovator, of course, the SAT is about smarts. Good correlation with the g factor. There is quite a bit of psychometric evidence. I do not have the energy to go over that topic. Of course it correlates with wealth because so does intelligence. Correlation does not imply cause and effect and you seem to have fallen into the trap of elementary stats by asserting that you pay for coaching (you didn't quite say that but implied) or give access to learning due to wealth and presto high SAT. </p>

<p>Re Indians writing in English so poorly: what is your point? Your friend assessing their analytical ability because of their poor English would be akin to the Indians' assessing your analytical ability based on how well you write in Hindi or Tamil. </p>

<p>Compared toe to toe, the American students in the top colleges, the Ivies, for example, would be better in the sense of wider knowledge, range of thinking and abilities in leadership, making connections etc etc since the selection in India even in the top institutes is based entirely on test scores. That too test scores in math and science. They are creating lab rats.</p>

<p>I think the Asian colleges need to select more like the Ivies and MIT, Brown etc and the US ones need to select more like the Asians. But I may be mistaken in this and I am open to the mistake which is this: the top colleges here are not sacrificing high scores, for example, high SAT scores for the mere sake of adding gender and race diversity etc. Among equal high scorers it does make sense to go for those who have played sports, for example. Playing a sport would be a screening tool for energy, lack of depression, ability to get on with others if this is a team sport, etc etc.</p>

72

<p>Ok ramaswami, I think the girls around here are too smart to waste time kicking your @!!. You have good points about them, but I percieve they are based on a lack of information (by my great powers of mind of course [that was sarcasm])... For the most part women do not have the egotistical drive that men do, and surely they do not know the battle of mind that can be. So it is a trade off, but I will say this, no group of humans is that much different in intellectual capacity than any other. That leads me to my second point.</p>

<p>The Indians select based on test scores because they are just beginining to compete in sci/tech majors. The numbers of their academics who can recognize their fledeling peers by essay or interview is so sparse as to be negligable (someone chime in if you know better of India than me). As well, the number of such peers to be recognised must be difficult to work with. This is a common problem. </p>

<p>My point is intellect is less a matter of genetics (certainly not chromosomes) than it is environment and opportunity. The vast majority of the world is only just beginning to compete in these great endeavers, if yet at all. Any one group not having had the opportunity and certainly not having the environment to achieve intellectually will not be able to. But in a general way this is your point ramaswami, isn't it?</p>

<p>What the institutions of this country are trying to do (usually) is not to give an asthetic appearance but to give the opportunity and the environment to individuals who have not necessarily had (but have certainly earned) the most conducive environment and opportunity. Women in this country are performing so well becuase their generations have been right there side by side with the atypical intellectuals and geniuses of ages past. However, in many other segments of the population the power of the intellect is only just beginning to awaken or perhaps is still in that just woke up zombie like state. Intellect and genius are certainly more than one man's vision, as valuable as solitude and independance are, genius and intellect rely on environment and opportunity. These are implicit of a much greater picture beyond the 'lone scientist' theory.</p>

73

<p>I take issue with your comments about women. I agree with you that there are less women numbered among the most influential people in history than there are men, but it is my opinion that this is due to unequal opportunity. If you look at the women that had the opportunity, a large percentage were remarkably successful.
Take, for example, English monarchs. In the period before the monarchy became essentially powerless (the last 100 years or so) there were 4 women that ruled independently (Mary II ruled with William of Orange). Of these, fifty percent are considered some of the greatest rulers in English history (Elizabeth I, who established England as the equal of Spain, France, etc. and played a part in the start of English exploration of the New World, and Victoria, who ruled the British empire at its height and was the longest ruling monarch in English history). You cannot say that about the male rulers of England. So, in my opinion, the issue was lack of opportunity, not lack of innate intelligence.
Also, if males get higher SAT scores than females, why is my score higher than that of any male at my school? Are all the boys at my school just unusually stupid?
I would like you to please note that this is my opinion; I am not claiming it as gospel. I don't want to be antagonistic, and I won't call myself an expert on any of this because I am only a high school student. However, I feel that I have to voice my opinion on what comes across (even if you don't intend it to) as open sexism.</p>

74

<p>See,</p>

<p>At least she didn't kick your @!!, Dude.</p>

<p>Oh and toffee, their not unusually stupid just unusually distracted ;P (and probably will be the rest of their lives...)</p>

75

<p>toffee, you are arguing from small sample sizes, English monarchs and your school. There are at least, I repeat at least, probably more than 2 reasons, 2 reasons why women have not excelled. One, lack of opportunity and environment. The other: biology. By that I do not mean just lack of intelligence, I mean drive, aggressiveness, etc etc. There are significant biological differences based on hormones, for example, sex differences in mood disorders, very well established. So, be open to sex differences in achievement also, the point that Larry Summers made.</p>

<p>That brings me to culture. Summers gets disinvited to a California university, exactly like Jensen when he proposed race differences in intelligence. If one cannot raise controversial but legitimate topics of inquiry in universities, where can they be raised? </p>

<p>I will admit to sexism and even racism. Those are private thoughts. But I will never act on them, in other words, racial or sex discrimination is wrong, legally and ethically but I will harbor in my mind the possibility that certain races or sexes excel in certain aptitudes. I will not be silenced. For much less Giordono Bruno and Servetus were burned at the stake, today one is shouted down or disinvited.</p>

<p>Going back to your point about the males in your school, you are suggesting that you know the scores of every male. How so? Please submit the scores and prove it!</p>

<p>Eluhan, you are correct, environment and opportunity is almost everything plus genes, you must have the hardwiring. Warren Bufffett and Gates, had they been born in Mongolia or N. Korea would not have amounted to much. You are partially correct in saying there are no large differences between groups in the sense of national or ethnic/race (small but significant differences exist, significant in that certain cultures emphasize certain skills which may have higher loading on g factor as measured in cognitive societies like Euro-American) but wrong in extending this to sex differences, if you so extend it , because there are sex differences in learning.</p>

76

<p>Dude, I pointed it out but you just stepped into the hornet's nest...</p>

<p>If this thread is still alive in 24 hours I may have some more pointing out to do.</p>

<p>I will say this, you've never had your heart broken have you?</p>

77

<p>Do you think narrow-minded arrogant snob is in the gene, or mostly a product of one’s environment?</p>

78

<p>Eluhan, change of subject: the rest of the world thinks Americans don't debate, argue, etc. They proclaim. They are opinionated without the ability to think based on data and knowledge. And when you challenge their opinions they feel hurt. They claim you are abusing them, being disrespectful. American kids score lowest on all content tests but highest on self-esteem.</p>

<p>If SAT punctures my self-esteem, I will think it means nothing. Grades won't puncture self-esteem anymore since there is rampant grade inflation. From the chances posts, kids are volunteering, playing a hundred sports, taking all sorts of classes, winning meaningless awards...</p>

<p>What a superficial society we have become!!! Go on bash me, yes, I have had my heart broken, numerous times, and it is always a good thing.</p>

<p>"Those who learn must suffer, and even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget,
falls drop by drop upon the heart, until there comes wisdom by the awful grace of god". Aeschylus in Agamemnon</p>

79

<p>fwm99, are you perhaps calling me a narrow minded arrogant slob. If so, save the name calling, so American and debate the data.</p>

80

<p>I don't know you well enough.
If I am the one, do you think it's in my gene?</p>