Data10: "I believe thibault is more talking about stats that are highly likely to result in rejection, rather than automatically being admitted based on just stats. "
Correct. The key here is TRANSPARENCY. If the de facto threshold is actually a 1550 SAT score for unhooked middle- and upper-middle class applicants, then be honest about it and just say so. And if the AI for football players is 180 or 190, then say so. If it’s 220 for fencers or squash players, then say so. And so on, for each of the other cohorts.
An excellent example of how this ought to be done comes from our military, which publishes, and strictly adheres to, minimum-SAT thresholds when it comes to awarding ROTC scholarships to high school seniors.
Beyond that initial SAT screen (plus the results of a physical aptitude test scored using very standardized criteria), the ROTC high school scholarship awards process becomes subjective. It’s heavily dependent on the results of an exhaustive, formal interview that assesses leadership potential, motivation to serve, management ability, bearing and poise, and other factors that the military considers directly relevant to one’s likelihood of finishing, and succeeding in, a demanding 4-year pre-officer training program.
But even that second stage of the military’s scholarship decision process is obligated-- by law and by military policy-- to follow very strict guidelines and to use detailed scoring rubrics that, while not publicized actively by the military, are nonetheless available in the public domain, hence are TRANSPARENT.
In other words, the military’s scholarship award process is “holistic,” just like the elite college admission process. Unlike the elite colleges, the military’s scholarship-officer candidate selection process is extremely transparent. If you fail to win a ROTC scholarship, you know why, and if you want to win one, you know exactly what is required by way of preparation.
The result is much greater trust and confidence in the process and in the military generally. For the elite colleges, we’re heading in the opposite direction. Graduates of those institutions will likely find their achievements and talent called into question, as in the common snarky online response by Ivy leaguers when they wish to insult a fellow student on a discussion thread: “Legacy, athlete, or URM?”
If the elite colleges would just follow our own military’s example and make their admissions criteria & admissions decision process transparent to the applicants, a host of evils would be extinguished.