[1412] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Wither MIT's AA? [re: Chronicle article]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jacob W Faber)
Tue Jun 24 12:06:19 2003
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 09:21:19 -0400
From: Jacob W Faber <j_faber@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
This is not how MIT admissions are done at all. Marilee Jones and Lorelle
Espinosa presented the process to the Committee on Campus Race Relations on
February 11, 2003. The following are the important parts of MIT admissions:
- Each and every application is read by a human being. There is no automatic
SAT or GPA cutoff done by a computer.
- The selection of an applicant is subjective, and done by committee.
- Each application is given a Personal Rating (PR) and Numeric Index (NI). NI
is a weighted averagve of academic scores. PR is an average of scores given by
each member of a committee. During this scoring, any committee member has the
option to reject an application. Applicants are then placed on a graph by
NIxPR.
- The remaining applications are then reviewed again, where any committee
member can reject them, but only the entire committee can accept.
- Not all the top PR and/or NI students are accepted. Not all mediocre PR
and/or NI students are rejected. Again, each is read by human beings (Faculty
and Admissions Admins).
Notes on Affirmative Action: Points are not directly given based on race,
gender, ethnicity, geography, etc. as in the U. Mich. case. The places where
AA comes in to play are as following:
1)recruitment or applicants
2)if a minority candidate is rejected in the first review of applications
(where 60% of all applications are denied), the application is reviewed by
Lorelle Espinosa, who works for Admissions.
Related note on legacy: Points are not given for legacy either, however all
rejected legacies are reviewed by Marilee Jones
I doubt that MIT's current admissions practices are in any danger whatsoever
from the court's decision.
-j
Quoting Jimmy C Wu <jimmbswu@alum.mit.edu>:
> You can see the opinions at:
> http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02slipopinion.html
>
> I have summarized the opinions below and discussed the implication of this
> set of decisions for MIT's affirmative action program.
>
> The Court upheld the compelling interest in diversity, as defined by Justice
> Powell in the Bakke case, by
> 5-4 in the law school case, and struck down the point-based system of the
> undergrad by 6-3. In the law school opinion, it also set out a sun-set
> provision of 25 years for current affirmative action program.
>
> In the law school case, the Court ruled in favor of the school because,
> first, its program has a clear justification in its definition, referencing
> the compelling interest in diversity, and 2ndly, it routinely takes in some
> non-minority applicants who are less "qualified" than the minority students
> it accepted, evidencing the "narrowly tailored" criterium Powell set. The
> Court also made the case that law schools, producing leaders of tomorrow,
> needs to keep its doors visibly open to all groups of American ppl. The
> Court currently does not see any need for affirmative action programs 25
> years from now.
>
> In the undergraduate case, the Court rejected UM's contention that its size
> precludes a narrowly-tailored AA program, "The fact that the implementation
> of a program capable of providing individualized consideration might present
> administrative challenges does not render constitutional an otherwise
> problematic system." The blanket 20-pt bonus is too broad and does not
> afford the individual scrutiny the law school AA program provides.
>
> Viewed in this light, we can conclude that the current MIT undergrad AA
> program would fail the "narrowly tailored" criterium. The MIT undergrad
> program, as when I was a student from 1997-2002 and as I understood it,
> divided the applicant pool into 3 groups: 1. academic superstars, 2.
> qualified, and 3. not-qualified. Group 1 gets admitted. All of the females
> and minority in group 2 also gets admitted. Then, the non-minority
> applicants in group 2 are placed in a merit list and admitted until they
> fill up the class. Under this admission system, we have the MIT anomaly
> that Asian females make up the 2nd biggest group on campus, right behind
> white males. This system is too broad and does not provide the strict
> scrutiny a narrowly tailored program requires. Hopefully Marilee Jones
> agrees with this interpretation and ends this AA program before someone
> brings a case.
>
> For further details on strict scrutiny and "narrowly tailored", please refer
> to the opinions linked above.
>
> So that was that,
>
> Jimmy Wu
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation on the use of the mailing lists mit-talk, all-talk,
mit-news, housing-talk, and the mit-talk Zephyr class is available at:
http://web.mit.edu/institvte/talk/
