@TopTier: People (especially young adults) change. Plus, if you take the very highest scorers, my guess is that the vast majority of them will be able and willing to contribute in other ways as well.
In any case, the system I propose already is implemented at some schools (only the percentages are different).
@foobar1: Absolutely right; I’m always quite surprised with the relatively large number of 2400 SAT, 4.0 GPA, valedictorians that are annually denied by Duke. Most of all, it reinforces my belief that I am REALLY glad I was admitted decades ago, since I would be an “immediate reject” in 2015.
I’m opposed to “leadership” in the sense that most HS students try to demonstrate it. Getting elected president of a club is nothing more than a charisma/popularity contest; it doesn’t demonstrate you can actually DO anything, or get other people together to do anything. What, for example, does the captain of the varsity football team do to “lead” above and beyond what the coaches are already doing?
Real leadership is the ability to get people to contribute their efforts in a productive way to something that you simply cannot do by yourself. Roger Waters making The Wall, Terry Gilliam making Brazil, Bert Rutan making SpaceShip One, LBJ getting the Civil Rights Act passed - that’s real leadership, and it’s just not the size of project HS students can reasonably lead on.
Yet schools are asking our children what clubs they started, what leadership positions they held in them. “I was President of the Spanish Club.” So? What special qualities about your character is that supposed to convey to an admissions officer?
I think exploring your interests, and putting a lot of time and effort into developing yourself, is incredibly important - and if someone is doing that as a teen, great, and if they haven’t much of it yet by the time they graduate, THAT’S OKAY. What the * do we expect of teens anyway? They are not adults who simply have more recent birthdays, we should not hold them to such standards.
I am afraid that the above is a misconception and one that is akin to believing that the holistic admission is a process that is meant to overlook weaknesses in applications. Well, at least in the world of selective schools that are the primary object of CC discussions. What we have is a world of institutions that make their choices almost exclusively on the raw numbers of sanitized GPA and test scores. Total XXX points and you are in. Holistic at such schools is a proxy to add a sprinkle a students with compelling stories. Real outliers.
At the most selective schools, the holistic process seeks to identify competitive students who also bring a number of ANGULAR attributes that separate them from the pack of equally qualified applicants. It is NOT a reversal to the BWRK of yesterday as those have failed miserably in the past decades. Lake Wobegon has dried up in terms of highly selective schools.
Nope, it ain’t about getting high GPA/low test scores or low GPA/2350SAT students in. And neither is it about getting well-rounded kids in who do a lot things well but … little really, really remarkably well.
Safe and except that the usual definition of a well-rounded student is one that is just a bit short of the top on his class, scores above average on tests scores, and collects a number of the usual (and boring) ECs a la Key club. In so many words, a reasonably smart kid who did what is expected from him but did not excel at anything in particular. Those end up being the casualties in a system that rejects 17 to 19 out of 20 applicants. And in many cases, they end up grabbing a seat at a school that accepts them based on their above average scores.
What schools want are students that are bright, have great ECS, and offer great reasons to be accepted. Reasons that go well beyond the basic list of GPA, scores, and regular ECs that are mostly HS appendages.
@PurpleTitan (in #40): I entirely agree. My problem with #34 was you did not provide ANY caveats or common sense limitations. Therefore, every 2400 SAT, 4.0 GPA, valedictorian – regardless of an inordinate unwillingness/inability to interface with faculty and classmates (or, for that matter, criminal/anti-social behavior) – would necessarily be admitted. While we both understand this is extraordinarily rare, no one should be an “automatic admit” and quantitative credentials alone do not provide a comprehensive basis for acceptance.
Holistic is great for schools that, after all, should be the ones who decide who is admitted to their institutions. Are applicants or the public owed more transparency? Guarantees that illegal discrimination is not taking place?
Do people really believe that these policies are put in place to help applicants?
You don’t really mean “meritocratic.” Rather, you mean “stats-based.” As xiggi points out above, the most selective schools use holistic admissions to identify students with desirable merits other than (or really, in addition to) high grades and scores. The musical prodigy, or the creator of a business, for example. I would note, for another example, that an athletic recruit is being chosen because of merit.
Of course, holistic admissions is also used to fill other institutional needs of the university, like various kinds of diversity, or to give benefits to donors or alumni, etc. These are not necessarily based on merit, but they can be. For example, a college that is looking for socioeconomic diversity might reasonably believe that a poor person with very good grades and scores has demonstrated more personal merit than a rich person with modestly higher scores.
Re #45, got cut off during edit.
What I really mean to ask is, why are we owed more transparency? Is it just the discrimination issue or do applicants really think they are owed a formula for admittance or an explanation for rejection?
YZamyatin, I think a lot of people believe that there is a secret mathematical formula that, if revealed, would explain exactly why one candidate was admitted and another was rejected. Personally, I don’t think there is such a formula. I think there are definite admits and definite rejects, and that for the rest, the admissions people sit around saying things like, “His grades aren’t the top, but I like the fact that he plays bluegrass banjo. Also, he’s from Idaho, and we don’t have anybody from there yet.”
@YZamyatin: discrimination and stereotyping certainly can be an issue (especially the subconscious kind).
@Hunt: yes, you can try to be meritocratic without using objective criteria, but the problem with more squishy criteria that rely on judgement calls is that subconscious biases can come in to play.
A 1550 is a 1550. A pianist who feeds the poor and writes heart-felt essays is not the same as a pianist who feeds the poor and writes heart-felt essays.
Before orchestras used blind auditions, there was a persistent bias against female players. The judges weren’t trying to be biased and they certainly didn’t know that they were biased. But they were.
And look, you can say that relying purely on objective criteria isn’t the right approach either, but I think people should be aware that there are benefits and drawbacks to either method (and I’m speaking as someone who fared pretty well within the holistic framework).
Hunt is, as usual, right on the money!
There isn’t a precise mathematical formula but there are “rubrics” to grade applicants
along academic and non-academic dimensions.
See Don Betterton’s (former Princeton admissions official) presentation
to the Princeton public schools:
http://phs.princetonk12.org/guidance/Forms/Betterton%20College%20Planning.pdf
These rubrics might be well known on CC or if you hire a college consultant
but probably not to the general public.
Do people really believe that these policies are put in place to help applicants?
No, they are to help the colleges build the class they want. That’s no mystery and, sorry, but it’s no freaking hurdle to a savvy kid. What people miss, I think, is that with tens of thousands of qualified apps, (can you imagine days of reading solid 4.0?,) just being tops in your hs or your stats isn’t enough to distinguish you.
*At the most selective schools, the holistic process seeks to identify competitive students who also bring a number of ANGULAR attributes that separate them from the pack of equally qualified applicants. *
Unfortunately, not even angular. Many, many top stats/rigor kids never stretch in other ways. Sometimes what distinguishes one from another is ordinary stretching.
And there is nothing wrong with an Asian kid playing violin. C’mon.
There are quite a few schools that have always used the holistic approach. This is nothing new. It is a time consuming and expensive way of selecting a freshman class and some colleges will never go this route.
If I’d seen that PDF @foobar1 posted early in my college decision process I’d never have bothered applying to HYPS because I’d have known for sure I wasn’t getting in. (I’d generously give myself a 7 on academics and 6 on non academics which is in the green) Hopefully I can spread this to underclassmen so they don’t overshoot and aren’t disappointed like the majority of my HS class ED/EA’ers were
“The war on introverts continues: now extended to education.”
I’m an introvert. I have two introvert kids at top 20 schools. I don’t think there is a war on introverts. There is such a thing as quiet, thoughtful leadership - leadership is not just pres-of-student-council and big-man-on-campus.
Not all elites use what Betterton was based on. It’s not as fixed as he suggests and common patterns in apps are always evolving. Eg, what he notes as achievement and talent aren’t really so black/white. I think that many hs kids think quantitatively (I’ve got 500 hours of service, I took 12 AP.) They miss that what matters is what the choices represent about you and what the impact of your efforts is (on others and you, the applicant.)
Best thing to spread to fellow students is about getting to know how these colleges envision themselves what they really offer, and “what we look for.” And to stretch, spend less time worrying that some useful efforts are going to look like “padding.” And to forget "passion"and go for balance.
Btw, all the Common App schools agree to use holistic though it can differ, depending on the colleges’self images. See, now we’re back to knowing your targets well. Not assuming.
What I see happening with some of the local kids is that a number of kids don’t want to work with the established clubs. Instead they want to start new ones, so that they can claim leadership positions and that they “started a club” for purposes of college admissions. This turns the whole leadership thing into a farce.
There is unquestionably a bias against quiet kids. Look at this thread alone where someone commented that there will be charismatic kids performing in video applications but they won’t be able to write and someone else responded, would you rather have a group of students who can write novels but are zombies in the classroom? Zombies? Because a kid is quiet? That seems a bit unfair. I’d personally rather teach the quiet kid who doesn’t speak recklessly over the kid who speaks without filter or forethought. We talk about “robots” and kids who “don’t contribute” and never really consider that there are many ways of contributing to a class. Even at the high school level, there’s this continuing drumbeat of requiring participation in class–as much as 20% of a grade can be based on raising your hand and speaking up-regardless of the quality of the participation.
Sure, true leadership is thoughtful leadership and it can indeed be done behind the scenes. It’s the kid who quietly mediates between stronger personalities, without becoming ruffled or adding to unnecessary drama, it’s the kid who takes charge of group projects to make sure all the pieces are done and submitted, it’s the kid who volunteers to support the drama production or the team event. As much as I think that that sort of leadership is valuable and should be valued, I am not at all sure that the admissions officer reading the file appreciates it.