[438] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: big rant thing ;P
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anne Hunter)
Tue May 1 17:05:02 2001
From: Anne Hunter <anneh@eecs.mit.edu>
To: adstrom@mit.edu
CC: tcadwell@mit.edu, mit-talk@mit.edu, spa-discuss@mit.edu, adstrom@mit.edu
In-reply-to: <200105010158.VAA12847@w20-575-82.mit.edu> (message from Aisha D
Stroman on Mon, 30 Apr 2001 21:58:46 -0400)
Reply-to: anneh@eecs.mit.edu
Message-Id: <E14uhIx-0003vW-00@altoids.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 17:03:31 -0400
There is indeed a matrix, but it doesn't work as you describe.
In order to "shape" the class, they don't take quite all of the students
from the top, and then they take smaller and smaller percentages of
them as they go down. If I were czar of MIT I'd draw a diagonal line
and take everybody from the high side and nobody from the low side.
We'd only have to talk about the people on the borders. But admissions
professionals all agree that you can't do it that way, that the class
has to be "shaped".
There's one category of students who I think may have to be more
qualified than everybody else: international applicants. They're
quota'd down to 7 - 8% of the class, mostly for financial reasons, I
think. Supposedly they're almost all on massive financial aid, and
they aren't eligible for the U.S. government-guaranteed loans that
other MIT students can get, so MIT has to lend them money from its own
funds. They're still admitted individually without regard to their
financial status, but as a whole they're discriminated against, as
their numbers are limited by a quota. I don't know how many
international students would be admitted if admissions was
citizenship-blind, but I bet it would be a lot more. So couldn't you
think of it as US citizens/permanent residents being quota'd at 92?
Anne
