Because in this country you aren’t expected to figure out what you want to major in at 18. </p>
<p>That said, if I recall correctly, Cornell does have faculty on the admissions committee. One went to bat (according to the story in The Gatekeepers) for a girl who admitted on her application to having been suspended for sampling a hash brownie. No one else on the committee was willing to give her a chance, eventually she was offered a January admission.</p>
<p>Both my kids used their essays to show that they had sharp academic minds. My oldest talked about all the stuff he’d taught himself to do with computers to the point where he worked at regular freelance rates for a computer firm as a junior in high school. He had a letter from a chem professor saying he was able to write a program for him that none of his grad students knew how to do. My younger son talked about archiving with our neighborhood association papers and what he learned from using primary sources. He showed himself really thinking like a historian. You don’t have to write about how you learned from losing the big game.</p>
<p>I think you missed my point. The point is that when you’re selecting people for whatever position, you want the people who are most likely to succeed, and these people won’t necessarily have the best stats or whatever - and this includes college admissions and athletics.</p>
<p>I’m sorry you feel that way. I wrote that the rapid succession of posts is hard to follow. I thought I addressed several items of your system. Again, perhaps I was not too clear when I rejected the notion that perspiration is NOT what adcoms SHOULD look for and that marking off a list of to-do academic chores is NOT what is expected.</p>
<p>3togo,
Sorry if I am being dense here, but don’t most AdComms use indexes in an attempt to rank candidates? I have heard of the
“AI” (academic index), and understood that EC’s and recs and essay are also used to rank applicants. Maybe not at Cornell??</p>
<p>epiphany,
Sorry to sound or be rude. I was just surprised at the tangent you went on. And I do agree that our educational system, private schools included, is in SERIOUS trouble. But not everyone seems to care, so maybe it has to get even worse (hope not) for there to be a revamp.</p>
<p>IP,
I respect that it must feel very nebulous to apply to colleges here. Because it is, to varying degrees, depending on the school. The huge increase in qualified and super-qualifed applicants for a small number of seats at the top schools has brought on the scrutiny. Many great kids do not get in to the “great” LOL schools. The AdComms are making very tough choices, somewhat subjectively, with the (oh so American) freedom to set up a system to judge and select that they develop.
OP started this thread to ask whether Asians are being unfairly judged/treated as a racially combined group. There is much debate here on how to actually measure such a discrepancy. Clearly, holistic admissions is NOT purely quantitative, and while it does not reveal why one particular candidate lost a space to another at the table, it is actually pretty transparent about how the decisions might seem unfair. It could allow favoritism, as well as out of the box decisions about candidates. I have a bit of your cynicism and Canuck’s about the unintentional unintentional walk being a hidden “goal” of such a system- it does allow for a lot of shoulder shrugging, whether that is really needed or not…</p>
<p>It is very helpful for someone to make the case you do. At this point, have faith that your message is being heard and understood and respected, for what it is. Whether or not it will cause people to change their minds immediately or admit there are wrong-doings or misunderstandings or misguided methods is unrealistic. Things take time. As does the melting in the USA. You are a part of that important process.</p>
<p>This entire statement intimates that people should “change their minds immediately or admit there are wrong-doings or misunderstandings or misguided methods.” This relies on the assumption that the gatekeepers of the “system” are doing “something wrong” and are following misguided “methods.” </p>
<p>What about the “claimants” changing … their minds by realizing they have so far failed to present any meaningful evidence as all their claims are nothing but a hodgepodge of anecdotes, and that the proposed “changes” are at the antipodes of what admission at highly selective is AND should be. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, it would be most helpful for someone to make a case. Too bad that is has not happened, and this despite thousands of posts.</p>
<p>I like this point of view. It reminded me of what my D told me about her Harvard interview (about 1 hour long, conducted by an Asian woman, fwiw). The interviewer disclosed that H suggested she evaluate her interviewee by concluding how she would feel about sharing a train car with him/her on a cross-country trip (or something to that effect). </p>
<p>I can imagine that many applicants who look stellar on paper might be relegated to lower in the pile after that interview. On the other hand, I’ve also heard the line, “The interview won’t hurt you but it can help you.” I don’t believe it, though.</p>
<p>3togo, I went through your examples. Thing is, AdComs are already doing this, choosing some candidates over another. So, they don’t have to do anything extra. They just have to write the criteria down for everyone to see, and follow it going forward.</p>
<p>mathmom - From what I understood, Caltech uses one of the broadest admissions process where they say it is reviewed by as many as 11 people.</p>
<p>They use a committee that includes adcoms, students, and faculty members who sit together reviewing the applications and discussing them. There are some blogs by juniors/seniors out there that talk about how much time they had to spend reviewing the applications.</p>
<p>If true, this is horrendous. Harvard I would think is a diverse place. Hence, it will have all kinds of people, and some will be totally different in personality and interests than some others. Now, imagine what happens if prospective student from one group of personality/interest ends up interviewed by someone from another group, and the rideshare example is in force?</p>
<p>I would have thought that Harvard was better than that. Either that, or Harvard is so homogeneous that everyone has the same personality/interests.</p>
<p>With all due respect xiggi, the case has been made many times, and well. However, I do not believe that you will ever accept the case, however made. Also, I believe that you will keep repeating (but without justification) that the current system is just right, and people should just trust the AdComs.</p>
<p>I truly believe that you are quite biased here. Which is your prerogative. However, it is not true that the case has not been made (it has, and well), or the current system is just right (reasonable people can disagree on that), or AdComs are completely without bias (no human beings are).</p>
<p>What you didn’t explain at all is why perspiration is NOT what adcoms SHOULD look for. You did state your preference, which, frankly, to me is useless. I am looking for whys, not whats.</p>
<p>My point is not about stats, it’s about objectivity. When choosing people that are most likely to succeed, one is forecasting. Forecasting, as the saying goes, is always tricky business, especially if it concerns the future. Hence, the best one can do is use some kind of objective criteria that has worked in the past. Using gut feel is the worst way for forecasting. That leads to tech and housing bubbles.</p>
<p>But is that the goal? How many Asians want to be college professors?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Comparing post WWII treatment of Jews to current treatment of Asians is a nice trick, but really unfair. Let’s compare the pre WWII treatment of Jews to the current treatment of Asians instead.</p>
<p>IP,
Your athletics analogy only works to a point. There is no purely objective way to determine who is the “top,” and thus most “deserving” high school athlete in any sport. Even in objective timed sports like swimming and running, holistic elements come into play when it comes to college recruiting.</p>
<p>If a coach doesn’t need another backstroker or 800-meter runner, he will not recruit anyone in that event, even the high school national champ. Sometimes the national champ actually has slower career times than other swimmers or runners, but the race was slow at champs for whatever reason, including because athletes were hurt or jet lagged, etc. Athletes coming from certain high school programs may be reputed to be “burnt out” by the time they get to college, so coaches may look askance at them, or the opposite is true: the coach knows that athletes from that program can usually be developed into better performers. Also, a coach may not want a particular athlete on his team because he did not like him at the recruiting weekend, or he heard the recruit had a terrible attitude, or his grades were not as good as the fourth-fastest athlete who was also Val. Also, the coach might take the Asian athlete over other faster athletes, because (horrors) he has no Asians on his team and the Adcoms want more Asians at that particular college.</p>
<p>Using athletics as an example of pure “merit” admissions doesn’t work because even in sports, coaches look for qualities other than pure speed or past performance that, like admissions criteria, cannot always be quantified.</p>
<p>For someone who attended two Ivy League colleges, you certainly have a narrow view of Ivy League graduates. You seem to be implying that if you were an H interviewer, you would be interested only in people who are just like you. Also that every other interviewer must be exactly like you. How else would you conclude that all admits would end up having the same personalities/interests (homogenous)?</p>
<p>I have been involved in recruiting for couple of decades now, at two different places. The first followed the model that you state above, and the selection was typically very subjective. The second also brings in people for interviews, but uses a completely objective criteria for interviews, lets the interviewees know what the criteria is, and then actually coaches them on the interview. They basically make the rules clear and help candidates bring out their best self to the interview instead of being mystified and doing guesswork.</p>
<p>Both are THE #1 players in their space in the world. But guess which one has a better quality of people?</p>
<p>No, that’s not what I am saying. I am saying that when I was in school, I saw a bunch of people who would be miserable if locked in a train ride with each other for hours, but who were both ideal students in class. So the train ride test seemed bogus to me. That only works if everyone is like everyone else. But then I didn’t go to Harvard, so I thought perhaps everyone is indeed alike at Harvard, so they can afford to have this test.</p>
<p>I agree with you here xiggi. I said this before and caused some heartburn. But I don’t see a whole lot of movement here.</p>
<p>Why do I continue to post? I’m as guilty of being a knucklehead as the next person.</p>
<p>
I have no doubt I’ll get corrected on any of the following if I’m wrong. </p>
<p>Although they may share a common view of exactly what is happening in the admission’s system, or what has been proven, at least from what I’ve read fab and IP have very disparate immediate (and possibly overall) motivations and goals (IMO).</p>
<p>Fab seems like he is against any and all preferences merely from a position of principle and wants all racial preferences removed. I think IP may share this view on principle, but from a practical point of view he seems primarily concerned with carving out a space in elite admissions where his kid and like kids can aim at detailed objective admissions targets at the top universities. As such, IP’s plan would concede 15-25% of spots for URMs as long as he has clear coordinates for the remaining spots. I doubt it’ll happen and I couldn’t repeat the details, but overall I think that’s what he wants.</p>
<p>I don’t think I could claim IP has not been transparent and honest. I wouldn’t want to have to find the post, but I’m certain he basically came right out and said he doesn’t really care much about the quality of education at these places. He values the credential. Much like the scarecrow from OZ, he just wants access to a diploma from one of a select few wizards.</p>
<p>Have you read Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball about the Orakland A’s? Where other teams went the way of selecting based on subjective criteria of the scouts, Oakland A used pure statistics to pick the players, without even seeing them in action sometimes. Of course, they were super successful as we all know.</p>