[277] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Affirmative action
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Tibbetts)
Sat Apr 28 11:51:16 2001
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 11:50:48 -0400
From: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
To: Morgoth <morgoth@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Victoria K Anderson <vkanders@MIT.EDU>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <20010428112042.E12372@multics.mit.edu>
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In-Reply-To: <200104280806.EAA05558@m12-182-20.mit.edu>; from morgoth@MIT.EDU on Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 04:06:11AM -0400
On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 04:06:11AM -0400, Morgoth wrote:
> If such a large fraction of the applicants are academically qualified
> to handle MIT, maybe it's a sign that the workload here should be
> increased... ?
The problem with this is the belief that there is much of a gradient
across the applicants who are qualified enough that admittance is by
other factors than educational performance. The applicant pool is
largely self-selected (much more so than Harvard). I think that the
applicants in this range, where they differ, differ within the margin
of error of the measurement techniques (ie, SATs, High School grades,
etc). Thus for our purposes they are more or less equally qualified.
Raising the bar wouldn't really improve things, it would just exclude
students who suffered from anomalous high school experiences (for
example, I was 6th in a class of 162, but would have been 1st had I
graduated a year earlier or later from the same school. Just a lot of
good students my year).
That said, I have often thought that it would be cool if MIT were a
bit more academically challenging in certain areas. There are a couple
of problems with this:
- Some fields (such as course 15) don't lend themselves to such
"improvement". We already do it better than everyone else, its just
still easier than course 8.
- MIT hurts. Currently MIT abuses it students pretty hard. In my
opinion, much of this abuse is unnecessary. Fixing this is hard
though, because differentiating between good and bad abuse is hard.
But before MIT goes and cranks up the difficulty/pace they might
want to try and cut back on the mental trauma. Not that I would
object.
- Reduced academic exploration. I can take classes in course 18 even
though I am a dumb course 6 students. I get C's, but it works out
(as long as I don't think to hard about GPA). In an "improved" MIT
I would not be able to do this. Same for taking 8.033 (something
I am considering) or other areas. Junior/Senior (and now Sophomore)
pass/fail only goes so far.
One solution to all of these problems would be to be a smaller school.
Caltech already has this locked up though. And personally I came to
MIT because it was larger.
Frankly, if MIT is too easy take more classes. Its a remarkably good
way to challenge yourself. And if you are too smart for that, then go
get a UROP inventing cold fusion and then come back and bitch about
the lack of challenge in your life.
tibbetts
