Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) Exhibits for Asian Focus Areas

Last update: 12/7/2018

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Website 

M.I.T. Exhibit 1. Asian and White Graduates by IPEDS Degree Areas 
The chart in this exhibit shows the number of Asian and White graduates for programs in each degree area.

• For each degree area, blue bars show White graduates; light blue bars show Asian graduates

Key points:

• The light blue Asian bars for 7 of M.I.T.'s 16 IPEDS areas do not appear because there were only a few Asian graduates in those areas. The exact number of graduates are displayed in the table in the next exhibit.

M.I.T. Exhibit 2. Asian Focus Areas Identified by Overall Asian-to-White Ratio

Key points:

• As in the previous chart, no bars appear for seven of the 16 categories because there were so few Asian graduates in those areas that the A2W ratios were zero or close to zero
• Of M.I.T's 5 Asian Focus Areas, MathematicsStatistics is the strongest, followed by Economics and Architecture. But the table in the next exhibit will show that Economics and Architecture produced small numbers of Asian and White graduates

M.I.T. Exhibit 3A. Graduates -- All Races
Readers should note that the "NAN" entries in the Asian-to-White ratio column (A2W) for EnglishLanguageLiterature and CommunicationJournalism appear because the number of Asian and White graduates in both areas was zero, yielding 0/0 entries, which are not numbers, hence the "NAN" for "not a number" ... :-)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graduates, Class of 2016

DegreeAreas	All	White	Asian	Hispanic	Black	A2W
VisualPerformingArts	2	2	0	0	0	0.00
SocialSciencesWithoutEconPoli	1	1	0	0	0	0.00
PoliticalScience	1	1	0	0	0	0.00
LiberalArtsSciencesGeneralStudies	6	2	0	1	2	0.00
ForeignLanguagesLiteraturesLinguistics	2	2	0	0	0	0.00
BusinessManagementMarketing	18	9	2	3	2	0.22
PhysicalSciences	86	34	11	15	5	0.32
Engineering	468	194	87	86	32	0.45
MultiInterdisciplinaryStudies	40	19	11	2	0	0.58
AFA-BiologicalBiomedicalSciences	89	34	29	8	7	0.85
AFA-ComputerInformationSciences	295	95	102	35	13	1.07
AFA-Architecture	14	4	5	2	0	1.25
AFA-Economics	12	3	4	1	1	1.33
AFA-MathematicsStatistics	72	19	26	9	0	1.37
EnglishLanguageLiterature	2	0	0	1	1	NaN
CommunicationJournalism	3	0	0	1	1	NaN
...SumClassOf2016...	1111	419	277	164	64	0.66
...PercentClassOf2016...	100	38	25	15	6	0.66
...SumAsianFocusAreas...	482	155	166	55	21	1.07
...PercentAsianFocus...	43	37	60	34	33	1.62

Key points:

• As per the bottom line of the table, 60 percent of the Asian American graduates obtained degrees from programs within M.I.T's 5 Asian Focus Areas. By contrast, only 37 percent of the White graduates obtained degrees in those areas.
• The bottom line of the table shows that only 34% of M.I.T's Hispanic American graduates obtained degrees within Asian Focus Areas
• Similarly, the bottom line shows that only 33% of Black Americans obtained degrees within Asian Focus Areas
• ComputerInformationSciences, the strongest Asian Focus Area, produced the largest number of Asian graduates, by far, of all of M.I.T.'s 16 degree areas.
• Engineering, the area that produce the largest number of graduates, by far, was not an Asian Focus Group because its A2W ratio, 0.45, though a bit larger than Harvard's defining 0.42 ratio, was well below M.I.T.'s overall 0.62 Asian-to-White ratio. 
• Engineering also produced the largest number of Hispanic (86) and Black (32) graduates
• Whereas Asian Focus Areas at Harvard and most other institutions were more STEM oriented than other degree areas, this was not a defining feature at M.I.T. 
• The number of graduates in M.I.T.'s Class of 2019 was about the same as the number of graduates in Harvard's Class of 2019 in Harvard's Asian Focus Areas, 1,111 and 936 respectively.

M.I.T. Exhibit 3B. Graduates -- Other Components 

Abbreviated column headings have the following meanings:

• The "Others" category includes AmericanIndians/AlaskaNatives and NativeHawaiians/Other Pacific Islanders
• "TwoOrMore" = multiracial students 
• "Unknown" = students who did not specify any racial group
• "NonResAlien" = non-resident aliens, i.e., foreign students

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graduates, Class of 2016

DegreeAreas	All	Others	TwoOrMore	Unknown	NonResAlien
VisualPerformingArts	2	0	0	0	0
SocialSciencesWithoutEconPoli	1	0	0	0	0
PoliticalScience	1	0	0	0	0
LiberalArtsSciencesGeneralStudies	6	0	1	0	0
ForeignLanguagesLiteraturesLinguistics	2	0	0	0	0
BusinessManagementMarketing	18	0	0	0	2
PhysicalSciences	86	0	2	1	18
Engineering	468	0	22	8	39
MultiInterdisciplinaryStudies	40	0	4	1	3
AFA-BiologicalBiomedicalSciences	89	0	4	3	4
AFA-ComputerInformationSciences	295	0	17	5	28
AFA-Architecture	14	NA	NA	NA	NA
AFA-Economics	12	0	0	0	3
AFA-MathematicsStatistics	72	0	2	2	14
EnglishLanguageLiterature	2	0	0	0	0
CommunicationJournalism	3	NA	1	NA	0
...SumClassOf2016...	1111	0	53	20	114
...PercentClassOf2016...	100	0	5	2	10
...SumAsianFocusAreas...	482	NA	NA	NA	NA
...PercentAsianFocus...	43	NA	NA	NA	NA

Key points:

• The last three columns will provide inputs for the analysis of the advocates' challenge to Harvard's admissions in the final section of the Findings.