[1655] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: [Mit-talk] merit, diversity, hahvahd, mit, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Jonas)
Mon Oct 24 16:40:08 2005
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:34:46 -0400
From: Eric Jonas <jonas@mit.edu>
To: Jessica H Lowell <jessiehl@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20051024160732.5g3jf2usmcg0s0sw@webmail.mit.edu>
cc: mit-talk@mit.edu
Errors-To: mit-talk-bounces@mit.edu
Jessie,
> First of all, you are making an erroneous assumption. You assume that
> Admissions is trying to make MIT more like an Ivy, and trying to get more
> "all-American" kids. I have a job in Admissions, and I hang out with the
> people in Admissions and discuss MIT with them once or twice a week, and I
> can tell you that you're wrong.
Could you elaborate on this? Admissions seems to have a pretty strong
say in the sort of student who ends up at MIT. Who sets their policies?
Have they changed in recent years?
> that the reason for the increase in course 15 students is simply that
> course 15 students are in demand right now? Same reason course 7 and
> course 9 are growing.
Do you have any data to back this up? It's a nice hypothesis, but as a
former course 9 undergrad and now grad who has talked to many course 9
undergrads over the years, may feel the increase in course 9 is because
more students choose MIT with the intention of going to med school, and
9 is an easy major to do if that's the case.
> say, the engineering departments (gee, what a surprise). But a course
> 15 grad has taken classes in linear algebra (18.06), probabilistic
> systems analysis (6.041), and computer science or programming (6.001
> or 1.00). Plus the GIRs. And that's what they're _required_ to take.
> One thing I've always loved about
Given that, course 15 has far more rigorous quantitative requirements
than course 7 and 9. So perhaps he was unfairly using 15 as an example,
but there is still the impression that MIT graduates are less
quantitative than they used to be...
...Eric Jonas
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