Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the bigger question is whether we should have exclusive schools like MIT. Screening for college admissions made sense a century ago, when 5% of people went to college. Today, not so much. From an undergrad class perspective, the difference between MIT and a better state school is mostly the brand stamp and the admissions department. Why do we want to stamp people with a stamp like "MIT"?
If you want to be brutally honest, because other people in industry have the stamp of "MIT". There will just be natural bias when hearing that a prospective candidate attended your alma mata where you know (in your own personal experience) that the school runs you through the ringer. Nothing more relatable than saying "Hey is Professor Bob still teaching Astro 401? his tests were brutal " and instantly understanding…
And reading between the lines, it sounds like MIT has another "lost class" or two. A few years after I was admitted to MIT, the Director of Admissions retired and was replaced by a professional in the field. And being a professional he followed the faculty's official findings on how to select applicants and all of a sudden MIT was getting calls from schools asking why their best students were no longer getting accepted while the next tier suddenly were. And rather quickly the physics faculty led a revolt because way too many of their students were having too much difficulty with the above above minimum core requirements.
I got to casually know one of these students, she was very nice and of course smart, but boy did she struggle with the required math based core curricula of her major unlike her female peers from my years and thereabouts.