[346] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Big Rant: Political correctness, Aff. Action
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anne Hunter)
Mon Apr 30 17:53:52 2001
From: Anne Hunter <anneh@eecs.mit.edu>
To: mit-talk@mit.edu
In-reply-to: <200104300529.BAA13489@all-night-tool.mit.edu> (message from
Thomas G Cadwell on Mon, 30 Apr 2001 01:29:02 -0400)
Reply-to: anneh@eecs.mit.edu
Message-Id: <E14uLbc-00033J-00@altoids.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 17:53:20 -0400
What leads any of you to believe that MIT accepts *any* underqualified
students? I believe it's been said just in the last few days on this
list that ~10K students apply, 85% of whom are well-qualified for MIT,
and that MIT accepts ~16%. I'll concede that it's possible that some
sort of screwup might happen once in a great while, perhaps where
someone misrepresents him or herself, or there's an input or computer
error so that a higher gpa or SAT scores are attributed to an
applicant.
I've read freshman applications for the Admissions office quite a few
times in the past, and we were *never* instructed to raise our
assessment of the student if the candidate was a woman or
under-represented minority. There were many times when I wrote
"there's nothing of distinction or excellence here" without regard to
the applicant's gender or ethnicity. The first year I did it I kept a
list of my ~100 applicants and how qualified I thought they were. I
checked once the lists were out and none of the ones I thought were
less than top students had been admitted, even if they were female
or underrepresented minorities.
So please tell me, just exactly where do you get this idea from? I am
led to fear that racism or misogyny might be involved, which makes me
very sad. I can imagine that MIT might indeed prefer such students if
they needed to in order to get good numbers. But this is MIT, and we
probably get applications from a substantial percentage of the top
women and minorities. We get this sample, in part because admissions
and other parts of MIT do lots of outreach, but in large part because
we're MIT.
I've been at MIT for 27 years, and I can tell you that the students
who don't do well here are those who have personal problems that
prevent them from performing to their ability. I've only seen a
couple of students whom I believe really didn't have the ability to
succeed here. Instead the ones who do poorly have family, emotional,
or other problems that just get in the way.
It sounds like this belief is part of the culture here, which is not good
at all.
Anne
