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> Really changed my perspectives on how much racial affirmative action actually impacts Asian Americans like me. Do you think that you have a right to an MIT e

> Really changed my perspectives on how much racial affirmative action actually impacts Asian Americans like me. Do you think that you have a right to an MIT education based solely on merit or intelligence? That's not how prestigious universities have accepted students for like 100 years. Prestigious universities typically want, in part, a diverse student body, represented by both sexes and multiple races and cultures. Let's grant for the sake of argument that Asians are just smarter than everyone else. The consequence of this is that all the best universities would be 100% Asian if they accepted students based purely on aptitude. But the goal of prestigious universities is not to be such a pure meritocracy that this would ever be the case. Not for Asians, nor any other race or culture. I made it into MIT, but at the time I was at something of a disadvantage demographically. I was a White male in 1980 from an economically advantaged city and area of the country. If I'd been female, or non-White (and maybe non-Asian), or from an underrepresented part of the country, my chances of getting into MIT would have been much greater. I knew this when I applied and planned my backup applications accordingly. As for SAT scores, at least when I applied, MIT claimed that SAT scores were way down on the list of what they considered to be most important for successful applicants. (Though I'm sure that SAT scores were not ignored.) I had an SAT score of 1500, which at the time was very high. I.e., it's equivalent to an IQ of 155 or so. (According to the people who do such correlations.) I also had, litterally, straight A's in high school. Not a single B in four years. I had a perfect score on my Chemistry achievement test. And yet I was not accepted via "Early Action". Just how high does your IQ have to be to get in via Early Action? Well, there is no answer to that question, because that's just one of many things that MIT is considering when they admit students.

akhilcacharya 7y ago
> Do you think that you have a right to an MIT education based solely on merit or intelligence? I feel like you're taking the opposite of what my opinion on this issue is. I think the issue those AA lawsuit plaintiffs have is silly and entitled! (I should clarify the applicant was white in this case - sailing isn't a terribly diverse sport by my understanding). I actually agree with you, but I am actually becoming convinced nobody has a right to an MIT/Harvard/etc education. If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit, lower than even my mediocre SAT (also a 1500/1600). I'd rather take the power back instead of whining about not getting into Harvard and hiring lawyers because you only got into Duke (another school I got rejected from!)
- nessus42 7y ago
  > If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit As I mentioned, when I applied to MIT, MIT said that they didn't really weigh SAT scores all that heavily. MIT has graduate departments that don't even require GRE scores at all. (Or at least that was the case at times in the past if it isn't now.) I once read an interview with the head of Harvard admissions where he said that it's a misconception that Harvard's ideal student is someone who is well-rounded. He said that Harvard would much prefer to admit someone who has done something truly remarkable, even if they are lacking in other respects. I don't know about this MIT sailing guy. I attended MIT and I never met anyone who had been admitted due to athletics, but Googling reveals that MIT claims they consider athletics along with everything else. For all that's been said here, this sailing guy might have been truly remarkable at sailing, and an excellent student in other respects. MIT may have wanted a good student to help lead their sailing team, and what is wrong with that? If this guy wasn't a good student, there's no way that he'd end up graduating. It's not as if you can major in basket weaving at MIT.
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. I'm not really impressed by the elite staying elite at the expense of everyone else. Like I said somewhere else, I also think a lot of people would graduate from MIT if they were admitted. A 75th percentile student at my undergrad (someone the admissions committee would definitely consider consider "inherently inferior") would probably get a 3.5/5 at MIT and graduate. That's my bet at least.
    - nessus42 7y ago
      > Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. You're talking about a single student admitted at a school that has an active sailing program and then making a huge extrapolation from it about MIT catering to the "elite at the expense of everyone else". Also, the sailing program at MIT is tiny little sailboats. The kind that any middle-class person can rent for reasonable rates if they live near a big enough body of water. E.g., the Charles River. We're not talking about yachts for the rich here. MIT doesn't exist to maximize fairness. It exists to perpetuate itself and to provide a beneficial experience to its students. (Which includes having a diverse student body.) Since it has a sailing program, having a good sailing program is good for MIT's students. I don't know what school you went to, but MIT is actually quite challenging, and, unlike Harvard, has resisted grade inflation. MIT does do a lot to help students graduate, however. E.g., you can easily change majors if the one you originally chose is not suited to you. And you can come back 20 years later and finish, should you not graduate on time. But I'll give you one example of how MIT compares to the typical school: I had a visiting Psycholinguistics professor from some big university in Arizona. (I don't remember which one.) It was the easiest class at MIT I ever took. I mean, really, really easy. The professor was impressed by us MIT students, however, because, according to her, she could make the class much more difficult than she would usually teach it, and we could still keep up. So, at least from this one data point, it seems that psychology and linguistics majors at a typical college would not be able to handle MIT.

akhilcacharya 7y ago

> Do you think that you have a right to an MIT education based solely on merit or intelligence? I feel like you're taking the opposite of what my opinion on this issue is. I think the issue those AA lawsuit plaintiffs have is silly and entitled! (I should clarify the applicant was white in this case - sailing isn't a terribly diverse sport by my understanding). I actually agree with you, but I am actually becoming convinced nobody has a right to an MIT/Harvard/etc education. If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit, lower than even my mediocre SAT (also a 1500/1600). I'd rather take the power back instead of whining about not getting into Harvard and hiring lawyers because you only got into Duke (another school I got rejected from!)

nessus42 7y ago
> If it wasn't clear, 2100 is shockingly low for a HYPSM admit As I mentioned, when I applied to MIT, MIT said that they didn't really weigh SAT scores all that heavily. MIT has graduate departments that don't even require GRE scores at all. (Or at least that was the case at times in the past if it isn't now.) I once read an interview with the head of Harvard admissions where he said that it's a misconception that Harvard's ideal student is someone who is well-rounded. He said that Harvard would much prefer to admit someone who has done something truly remarkable, even if they are lacking in other respects. I don't know about this MIT sailing guy. I attended MIT and I never met anyone who had been admitted due to athletics, but Googling reveals that MIT claims they consider athletics along with everything else. For all that's been said here, this sailing guy might have been truly remarkable at sailing, and an excellent student in other respects. MIT may have wanted a good student to help lead their sailing team, and what is wrong with that? If this guy wasn't a good student, there's no way that he'd end up graduating. It's not as if you can major in basket weaving at MIT.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. I'm not really impressed by the elite staying elite at the expense of everyone else. Like I said somewhere else, I also think a lot of people would graduate from MIT if they were admitted. A 75th percentile student at my undergrad (someone the admissions committee would definitely consider consider "inherently inferior") would probably get a 3.5/5 at MIT and graduate. That's my bet at least.
  - nessus42 7y ago
    > Sailing is by nature a hobby of the already affluent. You're talking about a single student admitted at a school that has an active sailing program and then making a huge extrapolation from it about MIT catering to the "elite at the expense of everyone else". Also, the sailing program at MIT is tiny little sailboats. The kind that any middle-class person can rent for reasonable rates if they live near a big enough body of water. E.g., the Charles River. We're not talking about yachts for the rich here. MIT doesn't exist to maximize fairness. It exists to perpetuate itself and to provide a beneficial experience to its students. (Which includes having a diverse student body.) Since it has a sailing program, having a good sailing program is good for MIT's students. I don't know what school you went to, but MIT is actually quite challenging, and, unlike Harvard, has resisted grade inflation. MIT does do a lot to help students graduate, however. E.g., you can easily change majors if the one you originally chose is not suited to you. And you can come back 20 years later and finish, should you not graduate on time. But I'll give you one example of how MIT compares to the typical school: I had a visiting Psycholinguistics professor from some big university in Arizona. (I don't remember which one.) It was the easiest class at MIT I ever took. I mean, really, really easy. The professor was impressed by us MIT students, however, because, according to her, she could make the class much more difficult than she would usually teach it, and we could still keep up. So, at least from this one data point, it seems that psychology and linguistics majors at a typical college would not be able to handle MIT.