[1443] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: A new ballgame at MIT
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wally)
Mon Sep 15 20:00:03 2003
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 19:31:42 -0400
From: Wally <wally@SUB-ZERO.MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.2.20030915184009.020a1558@hesiod>
> >If a person is good at rowing boats but can't hack it at MIT, they
> >won't be let in. It already works that way.
>
> I think you might be surprised how much sway the athletics head coaches
> have in admissions--as in, surprised that it's non-zero. I've heard of
> coaches who make phone calls on behalf of freshmen they want for their
> team, and they wouldn't do it if it didn't work. That kind of "under the
> table" influence is extremely sensitive to political winds--meaning that
> if the athletic dept. goes on a highly publicized crusade, admissions
> officials are sure to cue in and allow coaches an even more influential
> role in admissions.
The athletics dept has limited input into the admissions process. And I
get the sense that the admissions dept would resist any coach silly enough
to suggest that s/he knows who/what is best for MIT. Some students seem to
have an amount of political motivation behind their admission, but I think
that's a tiny percentage. Elsewhere it's a much much larger percentage.
(See below your comment about Princeton - a good example of the school MIT
will simply never become, because the intellectual culture here just could
never forgive a school that contained so many legacy-admit-wankerss.)
Honestly, the lack of definition about whose input matters frustrates the
hell out of me. I'm friends with a couple of admissions counselors, and
they talk about the importance of admitting the people who really belong
here. And I believe them. But the trends you (to my mind correctly)
identify stem from a combination of two things: (1) High schoolers come
from a completely different information environment today than they did
ten years ago. (2) The kind of lab-geek-in-basement aesthetic so 'prized'
here is dying out in American culture, in that the lab geeks are coming
*out* of the basement.
Neither of which trends makes any difference re: sports.
> >The admissions dept. doesn't go after the 'well-rounded', they go after
> >the interesting students.
>
> It's pretty much common knowledge that MIT is going after well-rounded
> students. Plenty of admissions department quotes have supported this,
> without mentioning anything about students being "interesting".
You should sit in on one of the admissions dept's prospective student info
sessions. (Caveat emptor: not all the speakers are equally competent.)
They're not great entertainment, but they make the point, to greater or
lesser degrees, that self-motivation and independent intelligence (genuine
nonconformity) are still the Big MIT Traits. The admissions dept likes
well-roundedness to the extent that it protects students from
high-velocity burnout and obsessive behaviour, I think, but I don't get
the impression that they're actually going after any of the UA-poseur
types we so universally despise. They simply won't admit an entire class
of student council presidents, because the things most important in the
admissions process have nothing to do with running committees. If there is
an increasing likelihood that MIT students will have done a bunch of
activities in high school, it's probably due (in part) to a kind of
redistribution of geekiness. Geeks are probably more likely to take part
in school activities now than when we arrived. In other words: a deserving
MIT student is now more likely to be socially savvy, but the reverse is
not really the case: socially savvy students aren't more likely to be cut
out for MIT than non-savvy basement-lab-monkeys.
Huh, maybe that's a completely false statement. But wouldn't it explain
some portion of MIT's changing demographics? It would explain something of
the sense of entitlement that Marilee Jones' (weird) article about
'millennials' talked about: students come here more convinced than ever
that there should be institutional support for their interests, because
it's more likely than ever at the high school level. (Not true in poor
areas, but it never has been, has it?) The admissions dept doesn't let in
students because of those opportunities, rather irrespective of them.
Think of it as a recentering of the applicant pool. (Consider: there is
clearly some effort to reach gender parity in admissions, but it's almost
a moot point, because gender parity in the applicant pool, ability-wise,
already changes the shape of the incoming class.)
> >I wouldn't worry too much about the changing demographics of MIT: I get
> >the sense they're largely a consequence of changing high schoolers. The
> >educational mission of MIT hasn't actually changed, has it?
>
> The point about changing a high school demographic is tough to quantify.
> it's 50/50 whether Marilee Jones, when she talked about the "changing
> young person" a couple years ago, was the savior of MIT's future, or
> just an administrator who wished she were at Princeton.
Somewhere inbetween. I think she wants a less socially inept MIT, but I
don't think she at all wants Princeton.
> As to your last rant: just because MIT still has plenty of relics from
> the past, doesn't mean they're not exactly that. This place is changing.
The last rant was meant mainly ironically, but point taken. Still, I
wouldn't call Steer Roast a relic of the past. You're just bitter 'cos MIT
thinks your frat is totally goddamn stupid and doesn't care whether you
survive!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ah ahahaha.
W.
ps. They think the same about mine, don't worry.
pps. And all the others, come to think of it.
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