Lakeside in Seattle Chances

ruinedlegend
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 15:22:20 +0000

@angelshreave I tried to reflect on what my “anxiety” is about and where it comes from. At least some of it I think is related to the fact there are so many really excellent kids out there. There is no practical way to tell them apart. As a result, our children are subject to a significant degree of randomness: the AO’s have to make a difference based on tiny, often partial, bits of information. But the reality is, even that a kid did something truly “standing out”, like acing an interview, or having a lot of service hours, might not be a good indicator of their future growth, or performance at school. Nobel laureate in Economics Kahneman pointed out the ineffectiveness of even day long interviews from a statistics pov. And in the situation that he studied, there were not a large pool of equally qualified candidates as what we have now.

The thoughts that (I don’t know your situation) our children are entered for a lottery because of the high level of competition is not really more appeasing. But I plan to sleep on it now. //Whew.