Did not know it was a show! My son belted a bucket around his waist for a little bit after reading these. 
As a parent of S24 in Georgia, this is somewhat misleading, IMO. Yes, auto-admit for Val/Sal is fantastic. But as you mention Hope/Zell not only drives performance once in school, it has also drastically changed the landscape for admissions to UGA/GT. With more students applying in-state thanks to these scholarship programs, the guarantee of admission to these schools is almost non-existent even for top 10% of the class, and more so in well-educated regions such as the Atlanta metro. S24 was accepted EA but feels heās āworked too hardā to go to UGA, even though it is clearly the best value for the cost. At the same time, friends and classmates were deferred admission likely based solely on class rank because the entire class cannot be comprised of āsmart kids from Atlanta.ā So even this system is imperfect.
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I hope college admissions never becomes a smart contest.
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Would you support a more transparent weighted process? 50% grades/scores; 30% ECs; 20% adversity, other?
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I might, but would it get audited?
Would that be a problem? If conducted properly, audit accountability should be fine. A desire to avoid any outside review is a rather poor reason for any college admission system, and rather proves that indeed AOs have something to hide.
I am encouraging and not discouraging an audit - although maybe not realistic.
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Tell that to US News who has slowly taken admissions competitiveness out of college rankings. Families are dumfounded how they got admitted to Ohio State and not U Miami.
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Iām not a fan of their current ranking factors, but I donāt think acceptance rate should be reintroduced into rankings.
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good thing i love NJ.
what would you do so the rankings would be more inline with admissions standards? I have lots of ideas. Leaving them out entirely confuses most peopleā¦ including 1/2 the crowd on CC IMO.
Lottery 
Thatās the ticket 
Everyone has equal opportunity to become our next great physicist 
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Why?
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That appears to be a uniquely American viewpoint not shared by the majority in the rest of the world.
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too much pressure on the criteria behind smart.
That doesnāt make that viewpoint wrong. And even in the US one can choose to only apply to rack and stack schools if thatās what they prefer.
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I think there is more pressure in gaming the system of ECs and IEC.
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America is less test oriented, but Europe and Asia are coming around. Richard Branson has interesting thoughts on the subject.
Itās hard to capture admission standards as a quantifiable factor that can be used in rankings. Acceptance rates are not always an appropriate proxy (they are for the most elite schools, but not necessarily as you go much further down).
Anyway, not the topic of this thread. So Iāll leave it at that.
Because the American K-12 system has too many issues to properly implement such a system within a system of Universities/Colleges which exist to educate the American population.
Because there are many dimensions of āsmartā which may or may not be properly accounted for in any test or set of tests.
Because that does not align with how these schools see themselves and their mission.
These are American universities; it would make sense for their systems to align to the American viewpoint, accounting for American strengths and weaknesses. There are plenty of other universities available for people who desire a different system.
The American system seems to work given the huge overweighting of American schools in any ranking of the worlds top 100.
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I have never thought that international students were attracted to American schools due to the schools themselves, but rather because they are in America. If and when the United States is no longer the worldās foremost superpower, I expect international students will want to go to the new superpower for school, whatever the style of this superpowerās schools happens to be.
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