There's several Jewish ethnicities. The largest are Ashkenazi (Euro; 90% of American Jewry) and Mizrahi (MENA; majority of Israeli Jewry). Judaism is a religion, so people who aren't ethnically Jewish can convert, but it's also an ethnic identity, so Jews who drop Judaism or convert to another religion (like nearly all famous 19th century Ashkenazim) are still Jewish.
If MIT rejected applicants with better profiles because of the URM checkbox, in some sense they didn't deserve to get in.
I'm technically 1/4 Hispanic, but not at all Hispanic in any real sense. I forgot to check the box when applying to top schools. My odds would've had a large boost just for claiming an identity that's had no relevance to any area of my life. I'd call that "undeserved."
> if MIT rejected applicants with better profiles because of the URM checkbox, in some sense they didn't deserve to get in
"better" is subjective and imo anyone who goes on to succeed at the school is as good as the next person; there are lots of other equally arbitrary decisions that go into college admissions
Elite university admissions is zero sum. Harvard doesn't add a seat for race blind admissions for every seat given to affirmative action admits. Making it easier for group A to gain admission makes it harder for group B to gain admission.
"Well, if we follow the meritocratic ideology that everyone has the same opportunities available to them, it would be a natural conclusion" - no, there's always endogenous interactions. Protected class identity isn't randomized.
"There is nothing that inherently causes a specific skin color or gender to have the ability to capitalize on an opportunity." The word "inherently" is doing all the work here by making acknowledgement of endogeneity look bigoted. But whether any of the thousands of factors that produce an outcome are "inherent," whatever that means, is irrelevant. You should always expect endogenous interactions if you haven't used a methodology that prevents it, like randomized blind experiments, difference in difference, instrumental variables, etc.
