I’m sorry but that article is really unhelpful and just perpetuates the stereotype of top academic students as being unpersonable boring drones.
straight-A students master cramming information and regurgitating it on exams
Getting straight A’s requires conformity
They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up
If your goal is to graduate without a blemish on your transcript, you end up taking easier classes and staying within your comfort zone
Straight-A students also miss out socially. More time studying in the library means less time to start lifelong friendships, join new clubs or volunteer
My older son will be graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Physics this year, has a 4.0 average from an academically selective university, and has just received admission two 2 top graduate programs in his field. Sounds like the kind of student this author’s talking about doesn’t it? Except that:
doing well in Math and Physics requires more than just “cramming information and regurgitation”, it takes strong analytical and problem solving skills
his supposed “taking easier classes and staying with your comfort zone” included courses in History and Classics in addition to more advanced Physics and Math classes, supplemented by independent reading in a wide range of subjects
he’s done an extended external paid industry internship where he had to work collaboratively as part of a team in addition to working as a research assistant in several academic labs on campus
his senior year thesis advisor was so impressed with his work that he invited him to continue to expand upon it and write it up as a paper to be submitted to a professional journal for publication
far from spending his time exclusively “studying in the library” and “missing out socially”, being an accomplished musician, he’s been a very active participant in various staged musical productions both on and off campus, including taking on leadership roles. He’s also been involved in other clubs and activities during his time at school.
he has numerous close friends
Being a top academic student in a demanding discipline certainly has not stifled his creativity or academic and personal social growth. Added to all that, we’re Canadian and he attends university here, a system that predominantly practices grades-based admissions. Despite the fact that his assessment for suitability for admission was strictly based on grades, he’s been a enriching contributor to his university’s community, and it didn’t come at the expense of academic excellence. There is no reason why you can’t have both.
Yup. For some of the biosciences programs, places like Yale, Harvard, MIT, the UCs, Cornell, WashU, Mich, JHU, Stanford, Duke, etc. have dropped the GRE requirement.
The trouble is, there is no other good metric either. Admissions committees look at the totality of the application materials and make a decision based on (*some people aren’t gonna like this*) holistic review.
And, sigh, that also isn’t great at predicting success (nor can we agree on how best measure “success”). This, as you can imagine, vexes STEM profs to no end and there are continual lively debates on how best to do things.
Back in the day, I not only had to take the GRE for grad school, but the Miller analogies!! Anyone remember those? They were actually fun!
As for undergrad admissions, as much as some here don’t seem to like it, it’s well known that many schools, especially top schools, could fill their classes with vals and sals with top test scores and GPAs. Many of those kids are likely to be interesting, creative, engaging leaders, but some may be (… anyone remember this “lovely” descriptor by the resume fabricated, former MIT admissions director Marilee Jones from years ago) “textureless math grinds”. Lovely term.
But that said, there are those kids who are innately bright, creative, motivated self-starters, intellectually curious, with an internal drive to explore interesting things, initiate programs, engage with others, motivate and stimulate others, lead and organize events for the sheer joy of doing so, etc, and there are those who moreso work/study hard and test to the test. Both may have similar GPAs and standardized scores, but they may be very different people. And if a school, particularly a private college wants to look more broadly at these kids to craft their class, well… as long as it’s not blatantly discriminatory (and we have seen the lawsuits), they apparently have leeway to do that.
If they simply wanted students to demonstrate their subject knowledge, they might not have done away with achievement tests.
That’s why I noted that I was not “all in” on the premise of that argument. I don’t think test scores should be the sole or even primary factor for admissions. Nor do I think highly academic students are necessarily drones lacking creativity. Many kids have the whole package. Test scores alone won’t show that.
I think the article misses the mark when it brings up notable figures like MLK. Most students - regardless of the school they attend, their gpa and their level of creativity - aren’t going to be groundbreakers in that way. For every Mark Zuckerberg or JFK, Harvard graduates thousands of students whose names we will never know. Most college graduates, including Ivy+ grads, go on to have regular lives, not notable ones. And that’s ok.
What I disagree with (on this thread, not with you) is that the admissions process is broken because schools, Ivys or public flagship, are not admitting the most deserving students. And that “deserving” should be measured solely by a test.
However, the math and science general education requirements for English / literature majors are often rather low level (e.g. PHYSICS FOR POETS | Department of Physics at Columbia), unless at schools like MIT.
I don’t think any school claims they are taking the “most deserving” students, since they are not. They are merely choosing among those highly qualified who will benefit from their program.
I hate the word “deserving” because I don’t think it is descriptive of the actual process. The schools select among many highly qualified students and, unfortunately, lack sufficient seats for all who would be a great fit. That’s it. Admissions at Ivy+ schools heavily favor hooked applicants - there are actually relatively few seats available once you’ve filled out the athletic rosters, satisfied major donors and met other institutional priorities (a kid from every state, good FGLI representation etc).
This is exactly right. The world of student applicants is not binary. There are plenty of kids who are 4.0/1500+ stats who have high EQ’s, have varied interests and are truly empathetic/community minded. There are other kids who grind and grub for grades and if they participate in any activity, it is purely to burnish their resume. And there are kids all along this continuum.
Is the current holistic system perfect, no. I think certain data points are either being ignored or given too much weight because of social engineering outcomes or certain non-academic institutional priorities that have made their way into the selection process, but that is an opinion over which reasonable people can differ. I do think diversity in thought, backgrounds, talents and experience enriches everyone’s learning experience. This is necessarily going to make the process more opaque to outsiders, but not necessarily less consistent or fair. As outsiders, we have no way of seeing how decisions are made, but given what I believe are fairly high levels of cross admits (or strikeouts), that suggests that decisions are not random across different institutions.
I understood what you were trying to say though I think your wording was not as diplomatic as it could have been, and it could be perceived as condescending so I understand why it rankled readers who chose to read it that way. On the other hand, on CC, I consistently read a really condescending dismissal of non-quantitative fields as non-rigorous and unimportant. The end-all and be-all of intellect gets touted as high scores on quantitative exams as if folks who do not have the very highest scores on those exams are unlikely to contribute much to society. In other words, I have seen a couple of the same posters who accused you of making a sweeping generalization (which you clearly did not mean to do) write similar sweeping generalizations of whole categories of academic pursuits (non-quantitative) and categories of people (those who do not score highly on quantitative exams).
To me, the reality has a lot more nuance than any generalization leaves room for. Anyone who has taught high school students is probably aware that unimaginative, intellectually incurious, self-centered, obnoxious, narrow-minded students exist at all levels of academic achievement.* There are students who do poorly on standardized tests, can’t collaborate with others effectively, are unable to think creatively about how to solve problems, and contribute nothing to their classroom dynamic beyond their individual performance. There also some individuals who do well on standardized tests yet can’t collaborate with others effectively, are unable to think creatively about how to solve problems, and contribute nothing to their classroom dynamics beyond their individual performance on narrow measures. I would think that admitting solely on standardized test scores would make it difficult to distinguish those students from students with similar scores but are terrific collaborators and contributors to the classroom. I don’t begrudge any college that is trying to find a way to identify this last group–that is the students who are an appropriate academic fit and also have demonstrated that they that will contribute positively to their classrooms in particular, their labs and research centers, their campus culture as a whole, and the college’s overall mission in general–and I imagine that the other parts of an application help.
That said, I wonder if a large part of the problem are that the standardized tests as they are currently designed. I don’t find it impossible to imagine that tests could do a better job at identifying traits like creativity, collaboration, and academic preparation. A little aside, but remember reading The Mysterious Benedict Society with my children. Did anyone else read that book with their kids? It is a fantasy so I am not claiming it reflects reality, but if I recall, the book opens with the main characters taking a ridiculous exam meant to identify the gifts and strengths of those very talented but quite different from each other children. It was also meant to weed out unimaginative thinkers. The main characters all solved the same problems in very different ways. Together they ended up making a great team who then went on to save the world over a trilogy of something, I think .
Ok that is a silly example, but I do think there could be ways of identifying talents beyond someone’s math SAT score (or ERBW score for that matter). And I do think based on my own experience in a STEM field, like Blossom’s son, I found that the strongest contributors to some of the projects that I’ve worked on, were not always the tippy-top in GPA (and for all that I know, they were not always the tippy-top in their performance on traditional exams).
I think the same argument could be made about standardized tests in non-STEM fields. My kids have not attended schools that teach the AP curriculum, but D24 is planning to take the AP Lit exam this spring as many students at her school do take AP exams (and most score 4s and 5s despite not having taken designated AP courses). So I took a look at the exam the other day along with the composition one. They are fine given they have to be completed in about 3 hours, but I don’t think either is a particularly good exam or a strong performance on it could really predict which students are talented writers let alone likely to become top notch scholars. And while I would think there is some rough connection between scoring well and being “college ready,” I don’t even think that a poor performance on the AP Lit exam would necessarily predict which students (two years later when they declare a college major) are likely to excel in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. It is one data point that is probably moderately useful in identifying students’ current skill level. But if anyone suggested that either of those exams alone should be used to decide who to admit to English or Literature majors, I would strongly disagree.
*ETA: And of course, perhaps more importantly, there are many absolutely wonderful joyous and curious learners at all levels of academic achievement.
I will for sure admit to that - it was a bit ham handed. I posted in reaction to the idea that STEM kids in particular should be measured by one test. Having a high stats STEM kid who is also good at a lot of “soft” stuff made me take it a bit personally. Never a good place from which to post nuanced analysis.
Is it the admissions process that is broken or just the US News and World Reports ranking that makes everyone want the same thing? We have the highly rejective schools that have far to many applicants, and we have schools that are struggling to fill their class and might need to shutdown.
How do we spread the students more and still get everyone the right education and college experience? PSU tries to prop-up its satellite campuses and do 2 years at a satellite campus and 2 at main campus. If you look at the PSU admissions thread it is filled with people asking how they can work the system to get their 2+2 changed to 4 years at main campus. That doesn’t seem to be the way to go, it doesn’t seem like many of these students will choose PSU is that is the only choice. I have seen some LAC offer 3+2 programs for an engineering degree option. It wasn’t a good option for us but I guess some people are choosing that.
In our college search we had a hard time finding “target” schools for my DS (1550, (3.95-4.03 UW depending on how you compute it, 10AP)). We found extreme reach schools, and admit by the number in-state schools (at least for these stats). I guess we are lucky that the in-state schools were safe enough with these stats? Other smart and not quite so high stats students are getting rejected from these state options. OOS public university admissions are brutal for the “desirable” state schools. And many of these students don’t have a good in-state option. I don’t know the answer, but we didn’t follow the old school 3 safeties, 3 targets and 3 reaches advice. 1 rolling (yes), 1 in-state “safety” (yes), 1 OOS extreme reach (no), 1 private extreme reach (?). Waiting on the last decision, but really happy with the rolling decision school option at this point. Still feels like settling to me but I know that is the US News’ fault and can’t let them win. He has so many varied interests it might even be the best place for him even if he gets in to the reach - and the price is right. Or maybe it is social media’s fault :-)…
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