{"id":140252,"date":"2024-01-10T00:10:48","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T05:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/?p=140252"},"modified":"2024-01-10T00:10:48","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T05:10:48","slug":"group-preps-to-sue-mit-alleges-it-rejects-male-applicants-for-less-qualified-female-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/group-preps-to-sue-mit-alleges-it-rejects-male-applicants-for-less-qualified-female-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Group preps to sue MIT, alleges it rejects male applicants for less-qualified female ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018We will challenge what we perceive to be sex discrimination in the admissions policy at MIT,\u2019 spokesman says<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni are working to prepare a lawsuit against the prestigious school that accuses its leaders of unlawfully rejecting male applicants for less-qualified female ones to advance gender parity.<\/p>\n

The alumni have formed a nonprofit called FairAdmissions@MIT and currently seek male plaintiffs rejected by MIT despite \u201ctop SAT\/ACT scores, great grades, strong recommendations, and substantial extra-curricular activities,\u201d the group\u2019s website states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about a return to meritocracy,\u201d said a member of the group who asked to remain anonymous for fear of possible retaliation against him for organizing the litigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire political center of the institution has shifted so far left, and this is directly correlated,\u201d he said. \u201cThe point is to treat applicants as individuals, not as members of an identity group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reached for comment Tuesday, MIT spokesperson Kimberly Allen told The College Fix<\/em> via email that \u201cMIT\u2019s goal is to admit and enroll the best students from around the world, and we firmly believe that our admissions and financial aid practices comply with all laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

FairAdmissions@MIT attorneys plan to follow the same blueprint carved out by Students for Fair Admissions in its ultimately successful case against Harvard University that proved its administrators unlawfully discriminated on the basis of race, said the MIT group\u2019s spokesman Mark Perry.*<\/p>\n

Federal law forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, and although there are some exemptions, such as all-female schools, \u201caccording to the lawyers, they can make a case this violates Title IX,\u201d Perry told The College Fix<\/em> in a telephone interview Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Perry, an economist and scholar, is well-known for successfully challenging<\/a> hundreds of Title VI and Title IX violations at universities nationwide.<\/p>\n

A news release published this week from FairAdmissions@MIT argues two-plus decades\u2019 worth of admissions data show \u201cfemale undergraduate applicants to MIT are admitted at twice the rate as male applicants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though year after year twice as many males apply as females, every entering MIT class ends up artificially gender balanced,\u201d it states. \u201c…MIT appears to treat applicants differently based on sex, illegally discriminating against men to achieve contrived gender parity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research conducted by FairAdmissions@MIT found most engineering and tech universities have a male-to-female ratio that more accurately reflects applications by gender, with the Rochester Institute of Technology, Illinois Tech and Georgia Tech all maintaining enrollments of 61 to 66 percent male.<\/p>\n

“We advocate that MIT\u2019s admissions policy should be sex-blind and based on individual merit, accepting the objectively best applicants rather than assembling a pool of good-enough applicants and then social engineering an entering class such that it collectively conforms to the ideological, political, social, and personal preferences of MIT\u2019s admissions officers,” the group’s website states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

MIT\u2019s admissions office is staffed primarily by women, MIT\u2019s website shows<\/a>, and a\u00a02011 post<\/a> about the institute\u2019s admissions policy acknowledges MIT takes a \u201cholistic\u201d approach to the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cPut another way: we are not looking for the thousand students who aced the math SAT. Or the thousand students who won some biology award. Or \u2013 for that matter \u2013 the thousand students who come from poor, underrepresented backgrounds that make our hearts bleed,\u201d it states. \u201cWe are looking for the best mix of all these students who will together<\/em> constitute a terrific class. And in assembling this class we consider many, many, many factors holistically<\/em> in our process.\u201d [Italics in the original].<\/p>\n

The member of FairAdmissions@MIT who spoke to The College Fix<\/em> said MIT\u2019s admissions office \u201chas long put out the story that the female applicant pool is consistently twice as good as the male applicant pool, which explains why the female acceptance rate is double.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYet they have never released SAT scores by gender to back this claim up,\u201d he said. \u201cWe challenge MIT to publish a histogram of de-identified, gender-coded SAT data comparing accepted and rejected applicants to see how the male and female curves compare. If they are not willing to publish this data, we will seek it during discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor’s note:<\/strong> Mark Perry is a paid consultant for The College Fix on an unrelated topic.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

MORE: Citing campus antisemitism, popular Jewish computer scientist resigns from MIT<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

IMAGE: Paper Cat \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n

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