Black college admissions falling from 13% to 5% at M.I.T
- Thread starter Loose
- Start date
You really want the majority of black kids skip college and work low wage jobs?
In my era, it was extremely holistic - SATs, grades, recommendations, essays, interviews, extracurriculars, awards, personal stories, everything. Race helped but it wasn't the only kind of affirmation action - they were also targeting women, they were targeting people from less represented states (you had a better shot if you were from Wyoming than if you were from New York), they were targeting people who came from particular sub-cultures and hobbies that they didn't have represented.
All that said, SAT and GPA still ruled. If they saw an application with a 4.0 GPA and a 1600 SAT and knew nothing else at all, that student is almost certainly getting in (but not 100% guarantee). 3.9 GPA and 1500 SAT, then they have a pretty good shot still but maybe it's 50-50, you better still have some impressive awards or competitions or took a shyt ton of high-level courses or impress with your essay, otherwise there's a chance you'll be on the outside looking in. 3.7 GPA and a 1400 SAT, then you better be competing in national science fairs or be one of the best divers in your state or be the only Black kid from Jackson with your numbers applying to their freshman class that year or SOMETHING that elevates you above people with better basic stats. And if you have a 3.3 and a 1300 SAT, then you're only getting in with an Act of God.
That's like asking why Native Americans don't set up their own financial institutions the way the Jewish folk have. There is an EXTREME disparity of resources that they're starting out with to get to that point.
People try and talk like Asians are just 6% of the American population, but that's a misguided way of thinking about it. Asians are 60% of the world's population, and for the nationalities that we're talking about when we talk MIT (primarily China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India), only the cream of the crop is even ending up in the USA. That's not just those with the most financial resources, but those with the best education, the best connections, the most entrepreneurial, the deepest drive. Cherry-pick the most elite 0.5% of a group that's 4 billion strong, then of course they're going to have the financial, educational, and social resources to produce elite "college material" on a regular basis. But the global population of African-Americans is 100x smaller than the global population of Asians, plus even on a per-capita basis the resources aren't remotely even at any level. Thinking a similar approach would work is statistical naivety.
"Continuous SAT and after-school programs" can only do so much. The Asian kids putting up huge numbers aren't just doing SAT/after-school programs, they also had highly-educated parents who had time to constantly drill the right stuff into them from an early age (or keep them around people who would). They also had social connections where they were constantly surrounded by doctors/engineers/lawyers/businesspeople who had all been through it before. They also attended schools where their classmates had done the same. They also (in many cases) had personal consultants that they've paid anywhere from $10k to $100k to fine-tune away their weaknesses and maximize their strengths. And even with all that, the VAST majority of those Asian kids going through that stuff don't end up as MIT material - it's still just the cream of the crop of even them who are doing it. 250,000 Asian-American kids graduating every year, another few million overseas Asian graduates out there every year trying to get into American colleges, and only 500 of both groups combined are going to end up at MIT.
Loved this breakdown.
gldnone913
Integrity and Consistency
Did Black applicants drop or did it stay the same?
Why aren't the Cambodians doing it?
Why aren't the Laotians doing it?
Why aren't the Thais doing it?
Why aren't the Nepalese doing it?
A ton gets missed when we reduce the whole thing down to "Asians". There are plenty of Asian communities who aren't successful in that same way, and genetically they're virtually identical to the "successful" groups. It's a particular subset of Asian-American nationalities that are thriving in these situations, and they are the ones who have both a large pool of talent back in their home countries and an immigration process that selects for "the best" to make it here. If the average Indian farm laborer was flooding into the USA like Venezuelans do, we wouldn't talk about Indian kids like they were achievement gods, we'd be talking about how much their students were dragging down our rural schools. You have to pay attention to the selection biases.
gldnone913
Integrity and Consistency
This is nonsense lol.
MIT is a brilliant place to go if you plan to go into research in any of the hard sciences, it's not at all seen as just an engineering or undergrad-focused school, and Caltech is a wonderful place to graduate from if you want an engineering job straight out of college. Caltech and MIT are FAR more similar to each other than either one is to Stanford. If we're talking about undergrad (which is what this article was about), the Stanford undergrad programs are a joke compared to what Caltech/MIT will put you through.
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There is literally a gene studied in 2017 that indicates better Mathematical ability and reasoning though. Ironically, it's common among the Chinese people specifically.
A Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Genetic Variants Associated with Mathematics Ability - PubMed
Mathematics ability is a complex cognitive trait with polygenic heritability. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) has been an effective approach to investigate genetic components underlying mathematic ability. Although previous studies reported several candidate genetic variants, none of them...pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
How Genes Influence Your Math Ability
What is Maths Ability? Maths or mathematical ability can be defined as the mental ability needed to acquire knowledge or skill in mathematics, which includes measurement, properties, and relationships of quantities and sets, using numbers and symbols. To put it simply, it is the ability to perform mwww.linkedin.com
You're making one small study do an AWFUL lot of work.
That study only looked at a single subpopulation, it only showed evidence of correlation (not causation), the correlation between the gene and math ability has only been shown in Chinese children not adults, and I don't believe the results have been replicated by any third party yet even though the original study was 7 years ago. And it's not "ironic" that the gene is a Chinese one because it's a Chinese study that only looked at about 1,000 Chinese children, of course any gene they identified would have to be one that is common among the Chinese, otherwise their results wouldn't have been statistically significant.
People have been studying gene associations for decades now, and there has been extremely minimal progress in linking any genes with mental ability at all, and absolutely zero research showing that any particular genes have had any impact on cross-racial achievement differences.
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Rick Fox at UNC
All Star
Yes. Most prospective students would do as well if not better attending their local state school over MIT or Stanford.
If you have the grades and connections to get into an Ivy, especially, HYP, it is every bit worth the price tag and effort associated with attending (connections).
Otherwise, a lot of folks are paying for a license plate holder that says Stanford or MIT on it. Hold it over your co-workers head I guess.
Can receive an excellent undergraduate engineering education from a state school. Can get the same Google, AWS, Apple, IBM gig by attending a state school.
University of Washington, University of Arizona, Georgia Tech, UC Santa Cruz. You'll be fine. In fact, start at a CC and transfer.
Some can even dropout of high-school and be fine (not recommended). I know a guy who dropped out and would attend Stanford meetings. Afterwards, grad students would come up to him like, "who are you, where did you go to school?" He at Google now. No formal education.
Now if we are talking law and finance, prestige (ivies) matters. But that ain't MIT or Stanford.
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This is an awful take even considering how bad your track record is.
1) Did you say that MIT is not worth the cost, not knowing that MIT is as cheap or cheaper than a state school for the vast majority of Black students? If your family makes under $140,000, tuition is absolutely free. If your family makes under $75,000, you don't pay a single cent for tuition, room and board, books, fees, or anything. 86% of MIT seniors graduate with zero college debt and the remaining 14% average about $15,000 in loans each.
Meanwhile, the median MIT graduate with a B.S. is going to make $126k his first year....which I'm sure just any state school will match on a regular basis.
2) Did you say that Harvard connections are priceless while MIT connections are worthless, not even knowing that MIT admittance also gives you admittance into Harvard courses and MIT students can take up to half of their yearly courseload at Harvard, for free? Not to mention the Harvard students who are cross-enrolled into their MIT courses. MIT students not only have access to MIT connections, they can also cultivate Harvard connections to a significant degree.
3) Not to mention that your claim about the worthlessness of an elite STEM education is utter idiocy for STEM fields outside of computer programming, which you've made clear is the only field you know anything about, and even for that field isn't actually true. Besides the incredible level of education offered at MIT and the work ethic they help you to develop, just having the degree in hand opens doors virtually everywhere and will get you in a good position literally right out of the gate. Whereas someone who chooses another route will have to independently fight and perform to impress themselves upon employers and work their way up.
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bourgeoisie tall freak
Superstar
yep. one time i asked my MIT Phd brother if he needed money, his words were no "they take good care of us". I never heard that from any student anywhere lol
Belize King
I got concepts of a plan.
Oh yeah, PhD's at MIT generally don't even have to pay their tuition and are given a stipend around $3,000-4,000/month on top of that. Plus they subsidize a lot of shyt for you, so in the minimal free time you get between coursework and classes and research, you're living a life more like the rich kids who are going to school with you than the guy on the street making $45k. The classmates I knew who were getting their PhD's weren't looking at tuition costs at all, they were comparing their offer sheets.
Mission249
All Star
Great point. The law of large numbers.
If these institutions were actually "meritocratic" then they'd likely be 100% Chinese. But encroaching on whites in "their" country would get this whole thing shut down quick.
And that encroachment would lead to the whole concept of a "meritocracy" being reexamined because nobody actually believes these simple, gamed metrics solely produce the future leaders, contributors and innovators of society. But nobody wants to rock that boat too much.