I know. I find the whole thing rather depressing. And why do we need to know about the travails of the .001% anyway. It isn’t as if we aren’t aware of the fact that they are willing deploy untold dollars to get junior into the Ivy of his choice.
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Wow! I didn’t expect to see such anti-intellectual (and uninformed) stereotypes spelled out quite so clearly as that.
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So back to whether state schools should have some transparent auto admit or threshold.-- GA has an auto admit to UGA and/or GT for vals and sals of SACS accredited schools with 50+ students who also meet certain other criteria
https://admission.gatech.edu/first-year/gtscholars
the additional criteria should help increase the likelihood that a student has the chops to handle the academic demand, since the schools across the state vary greatly in quality, and students may come with very varying levels of preparedness. The goal is not just to get admitted to s=the school, but to stay in and successfully complete their undergraduate degree. Keep in mind too that some students will be dependent on their HOPE or Zell miller scholarships to afford to stay in school, and will have to maintain a certain GPA to keep their funding.
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Exactly. But that guy knows how to milk the free publicity. Just not sure how many of his potential clients read the NY Post 
Yeah… I’m still scratching my head on this one… and the comment received quite a bit of support…
Another thing I can’t get my head around is why many/most posters seem okay with holding public institutions to some standard re: how they do admissions, but not privates?
Non-profit privates still do get their tax exemptions on their endowment returns? And last time I checked UCB only gets like 14% of their budget from the state, versus 50% 30 years ago.
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in an ideal world I would like all schools to be transparent, but I am willing to acknowledge a greater obligation to do so on the part of any public institution
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There’s a lot of opportunity in this country if you work hard, have some intellect and can socialize at least a little.
And if you are great at any one of the above, you don’t even have to be good at the others to do better financially than 90% of Americans.
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Sure, I get it. Perhaps my comment is not worded correctly. I was curious why versus criticizing.
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Let me add that I am not all in on this. I think some A students with high test scores can also be innovative. Some “ outside the box” students never bring their creativity to any type of fruition. I would argue there is probably a reason grades and test scores alone are not the best predictors of success or even aptitude.
Actually, physical attractiveness ( and height for men) is quite positively correlated with success. We could just have a beauty pageant for admissions.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/want-to-be-ceo-stand-tall-1402328117
(I recall back in the day, certain highly regarded schools asked for - but did not require - photos along with your app?)
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I guess if they start including that on the common data set for college admissions, we would agree on the absurdity 
thankfully, right now, it’s irrelevant.
Should elite private colleges start requiring photos again? What could possibly go wrong?
Brown video.
I remember when they used to have swimming tests, but that was for graduation, not admission. And many required posture photos too!
I remember that! My college applications back in the day had a spot where you were supposed to staple a photo. I didn’t like that, so I took face cards from an old playing card deck and stapled one to each application. I was a rebellious teen 
(Got in to all the schools too!)
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I’ve only read partway through (can’t keep up) but I think I have some different types of points. Two things are very important, affordability and the right academic level.
Affordability: If you have a modest budget, there are just two types of affordable schools at completely different academic levels:
Either extremely selective well-endowed meet-full-need schools - less than 30 private unis, less than 20 LACs, and just 2 OOS flagships (UVa, UNCCH),
or else mediocre local public uni (living at home) and academically similar or lower options.
For a high academic achiever on a budget, they have to shoot for these super-reachy elite schools, and they are forced to apply to a whole bunch to have a chance. It’s not that they are chasing prestige, or aiming unrealistically high. Instead it’s simply that that is the only option for a good academic match at an affordable price. If they fail to get into those, then the only alternative is mediocre local public uni. There is no academic middle ground, as that whole level is financially inaccessible.
Right academic level: Students of all ages, K-12 and college, at all levels of current achievement and ability, are best served by classes that meet their level. It is no use having classes that are way to high or low, or fast or slow, or deep or shallow. Getting the right academic match is the number one factor in optimizing educational outcomes. But the college admissions process does not result in a good academic match, since there are so many non-academic factors. Maybe 99.99th percentile students can get into MIT or CalTech on purely academic grounds, but a 99.9th percentile student won’t make that purely academic cut (though they could handle those schools), and generally at elite schools, they’ll often lose out to 98th and 97th (and maybe much lower) percentile students who tick the holistic boxes, can pay a lot more, and/or meet other “priorities”. By the way, these percentiles seem close, but there’s a difference; 97th percentile is 2 SD above average, but there are students 3, 4, or 5 SD above average, so there are significant differences.
Off course, these mostly private institutions can do what they want to some extent. But it means that very high academic achievers on a budget, who could academically fit at these elite colleges, and could afford them due to generous finaid, will often miss out. Then they are left with mediocre local public uni because all the between levels are unaffordable.
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All excellent points.
A head scratcher for me as well. I guess the many immigrant founders and CEOs of some of our most successful companies, who were educated in robot-factory universities that admit based on stats and tests alone, didn’t get the memo.
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Unfortunately, I feel like some people are intentionally misinterpreting my statement. Some have taken my statement to mean that any measurable and objective metrics, such as test scores and grades, are inversely correlated to being an imaginative. That’s not what I said at all. The proposal I was responding to was that admissions for STEM students should be based solely on the outcome of just one narrow, subject-specific test.
There’s a reason schools do not do that. Not even the ones that are international and admit on stats alone that keep being referred to here. Those schools admit on stats - plural. Meaning, by definition, a student has to do well in many different areas simultaneously- multi-subject tests and grades.
It’s not “anti-intellectual” to say that basing admissions decisions on one singular test is a bad idea. Anybody who reads my post and thinks I was saying “smart people “or “good testers” shouldn’t get in to schools is intentionally misunderstanding my post.
Do I stand by my statement that if thousands of people took an exam exclusively on one subject, those who do the very best on that one subject might not be the best well-rounded intellectuals? Yes.
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