"The Dec. 27 front-page article ‘How U-Md. sifts through 30,000-plus applications’ raised bothersome issues about college admission procedures, such as the ‘26 factors’ considered by this university. Presumably most other universities have similar factors. Most of the factors under consideration are nothing more than empirical hypotheses, which beg for testing. For example, years ago after a detailed discussion of admission procedures with the admissions director of a leading Ivy League university, I asked the following question: ‘You have listed a variety of (presumably) predictive criteria. . . . What do these actually predict?’ He seemed bemused, but when he finally figured out the question, his answer was that SAT scores predicted first-year grades — nothing else.
I’d like to see a little science injected into the process." …
Opinion.