<p>I don’t think an inability to talk to a handyman is an elite college thing. Courtesy is taught by the family, if at all.</p>
<p>The article’s not that impressive. After all, Ken Lay was graduated from the University of Missouri. At some point, the argument becomes, “everyone I don’t like is bad, therefore elite and snobby!”</p>
<p>I found a blog post by Harry Lewis, a former Dean of Harvard College reposted at a Harvard.edu address. I am not a fan of Harvard, but I think it makes a good argument that they aren’t looking for some sort of a stiff, hidebound “elite.” (I added quotation marks to set off the section Dean Lewis quoted.)</p>
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In 1960, when he stepped down as Dean of Admissions, W. J. Bender wrote a report on Harvard admissions policy and why, to paraphrase Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard should not have one. What he said then would be politically incorrect today in some of its specific language. The exclusive use of the masculine is because Radcliffe admissions was entirely separate, with its own dean and committee and very different philosophy. The numerical standards Bender mentions are seriously dated. And yet the perspective he describes has remained wise for the intervening 52 years. The ghost of Bender over Harvard admissions helps explain Lin–and why he was “just” a great basketball player at Harvard, not a great Asian basketball player. It has resulted in Harvard having a lot “weird,” wonderful students who go on to do great things with their lives.(“)Perhaps, in other words, we will actually be the best college and make the optimum use of our resources if we are reasonably relaxed about it, if we show a little more humility and humanity and catholicity in our search for talent, if we recognize the fundamental human and social importance of other factors than A-getting ability and high academic ambitions, and don’t use the faculty exclusively to reproduce themselves. By all means let’s have a lot of brilliant students, the first-class academic minds which have always been one of the hallmarks of Harvard. And in the getting of these, let’s look particularly for the truly original and independent and imaginative minds, even if they are found in candidates with SAT scores of 550 and a rank in the middle of their school classes. but let’s have some other students to help hold the place together, students who are intelligent and curious and interested enough to profit from Harvard, who are intelligent without necessarily being “intellectuals” but whose distinction is primarily other–goodness or loyalty or every or perceptivity or a passionate concern of some sort.
In other words, my prejudice is for a Harvard College with a certain range and mixture and diversity in its student body–a college with some snobs and some Scandinavian farm boys who skate beautifully and some bright Bronx pre-meds, with some students who care passionately if unwisely (but who knows) about editing the Crimson or beating Yale, or who have an ambition to run a business and make a million, or to get elected to public office, a college in which not all the students have looked on school just as preparation for college, college as preparation for graduate school and graduate school as preparation for they know not what.(”)
[“Weird</a>” Harvard Students :: Bits and Pieces :: Berkman Planet Test Hub :: TagTeam](<a href=“http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hub_feeds/27/feed_items/284]"Weird ”>http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hub_feeds/27/feed_items/284 )</p>