“Is getting influential alumni the main point of holistic admissions?”
Nope. Agree on the “rich academic and social environment.” But my point was more that “influential” isn’t always a hierarchical concept, the best known names, the big power folks, etc. It can be in the small ways people bring others together, inspire. The music teacher, not just the star. The mentor at work, not only the CEO.
Because holistic isn’t “top down,” it does allow a U to, so to say, hand pick. This does tie in with earlier talk of MIT wanting a group likely to (at least once in a while) climb out of their own little boxes, their own narrow interests.
It doesn’t preclude kids from any U going on to do this (that’s not even a point worth debating.)
Technically, all the Common App colleges agree to use holistic- of course, there can be a light thumb at some schools. But mathmom had mentioned Harvard- and it, and its sisters, with the volume of apps from high stats/high performing kids, can use holistic to form that rich, diverse, interesting and activated community.
“But my point was more that “influential” isn’t always a hierarchical concept, the best known names, the big power folks, etc. It can be in the small ways people bring others together, inspire. The music teacher, not just the star. The mentor at work, not only the CEO.”
I think this is a great point, nicely said, but I’m also not sure a lot of people on CC actually think this way.
@tk21769 : Did you miss that the original question in this thread was why MIT didn’t get more applications from prospective humanities and social science majors? Or the post by @MITChris to the effect that the MIT admissions staff admits plenty of people they think are prospective humanities and social science majors, most of whom wind up choosing to become engineers?
Also, there are a lot more than 50 colleges using holistic admissions, even if some of them weight stats heavily or admit a portion of their students based only on stats. Among LACs alone, eyeballing the USNWR list, I get into the 60s before I see any colleges I think may essentially be admitting all qualified applicants, and even then there are clearly selective colleges using holistic admissions up past 100. (Reed is #98.) On the national university list, there are selective colleges well into the 100s, too, and below the 70s they are all clearly selective, even if in-state applicants with great stats get admitted automatically. Neither of those lists even includes Deep Springs, which has the most holistic admissions process of all. My rough guess is that there are 200-300 institutions where holistic admissions is an important part of their identity. That’s still a small number relative to the total collegiate universe, but it represents a lot of ambitious students, not to mention 99.99% of what anyone on CC cares about.
Ummm, not really. For example, CSUs use non-holistic admissions. Texas public universities use non-holistic admissions for most of their frosh classes.
Perhaps you meant to write “very highly selective” rather than “selective”. In that limited realm of colleges, the plethora of applicants showing top-end academic credentials means that trying to come up with a non-holistic means of ranking or selecting them for admission considering numerous subjectively graded characteristics (e.g. essays and extracurriculars) would be more difficult than using holistic admission reading. But most selective colleges are not so selective that this is an issue, and can do their admissions ranking or selection mainly on academic credentials, which vary enough among applicants to be distinguishable.
There’s no need to be so pedantic and literal. Everyone on this thread knew darn well that JHS’ statement about holistic admissions being universal meant among more selective / elite colleges. No one was really thinking about CSU. Honest.
You find CSU’s" selective," other than based on the volume of apps received or the difficulty of getting admitted to certain majors? There was a thread trying to distinguish between volume competition and an expectation of higher standards.
I love how people just can’t help themselves – a thread that started out talking about MIT (and other highly selective colleges) just can’t help but bring itself around to some lower-level, unknown California universities that no one has heard of outside the state. Because California. I guess.
“Selective” in that they do not admit anyone who applies (like open admission community colleges do) but have some admission standards that must be met.
It is not about California. Examples of similar selective (i.e. not open admission) colleges that do not use holistic admission exist in many other states. The CSUs were only an example to show that holistic admission is not universal among selective colleges.
Again, this is where you go very pedantic and literal, because it was crystal clear to everyone else on the thread that JHS was referring to more selective / elite colleges, not just any college that has criteria above “has a pulse.”
Since we’re kind of literal-land here, let’s try again.
“Holistic admissions is essentially universal among the most selective / elite colleges.” Better? Now can we talk about the substance of that statement?
I would have counted CSUs (which are pretty far down the food chain, except maybe for Cal Poly SLO, if that’s included in “CSU”) as accepting everyone qualified who applied, i.e., not really selective. They weren’t in my 200-300. Texas, on the other hand, although it accepts a large portion of its students based on an automatic formula, sure as heck uses holistic admission to select the rest from a very competitive applicant pool. I definitely put Texas in my “selective/holistic admissions” column.
As I said – I’m not talking about all of the US higher education system. But I think we are talking about a much larger slice of it than 50 “elite” colleges.
But only for the last quarter of admits at UT Austin. Also, do the other Texas public universities use holistic or non-holistic selection for their non-automatic admissions?
Yes, I did miss that post by MITChris. How many is “plenty of people”, though? Maybe the premise of Purple Titan’s original post was all wrong? I’d be surprised if that were the case, but I doubt any good numbers are available to tell us exactly how many MIT applicants intend to major in humanities and social sciences. I bet it’s much less than half, anyway.
As for the number of colleges we want to count as “holistic”, I’m inclined to agree with ucbalumnus that beyond some rather small number of very selective colleges (ok, maybe more than 50), even the remaining “selective” colleges are not so selective that they can’t admit mainly on academic credentials. Very few colleges get pools of applicants so consistently strong on the numbers that admission for nearly everyone can come down to an extracurricular crap shoot involving how many other oboe players applied that year.
Of the few that do get in to those colleges, I have a hard time thinking of them as lemmings. Prestige must be a big factor but I suspect most of them put a lot of effort into the application process and are making principled choices for the kind of college that suits their interests and needs. It seems reasonable to me that most humanities and social science majors would not prefer a college environment where 75% of students are STEM majors (regardless of how good the linguistics, PS, or econ departments may be).
“I suspect most of them put a lot of effort into the application process and are making principled choices for the kind of college that suits their interests and needs.”
You think? I’m not so sure. They’re nice kids, but too many give it only superficial thought. Most can’t answer a Why Us and any time spent on CC shows the common thinking about the essays/writing or starting a club. Etc.
Too many probably think as you may, about the EC crapshoot, which undercuts their approach. It takes some savvy. I like to think MIT applicants are special, giving some good thought. But what we don’t see in admissions stats or blurbs is the large number of kids who don’t and get rejected NOT based on crapshoot as much as their own hand.
“But only for the last quarter of admits at UT Austin. Also, do the other Texas public universities use holistic or non-holistic selection for their non-automatic admissions?”
What difference does it make? We are trying to talk about a larger, conceptual issue here. Whether specific Texas public u’s are holistic or not is irrelevant. Please stop dragging us down into the swamp.
I think as a rule of thumb, the more applicants-per-spot a college has, the more it can look at holistic factors, because those schools have an embarrassment of riches among their applicants stat-wise.
However, what factors other than gpa/scores they value varies a lot by institution, even within similar levels of selectivity.
^^^ I’m talking about the ones who actually get into the Ivies and other elite schools, who might have chosen MIT instead. How many of them care about rubbing shoulders with the next Yo Yo Ma or Peter Sellars? I think those kids are likely to have a rational, fairly informed preference for Harvard over MIT. Or they at least have enough self-knowledge to understand what they like talking about at lunch (which is usually not computer code).
I think some good folks here are taking it much further than I intended. It is simply my working hypothesis based on my personal experience over time. YMMV. In fact, I would be most surprised if you do not each have a different reality.
To keep this “system” functioning at max efficiency, I channel current events through this prism to see if it still make sense. More important than that, I also use it to make predictions on future events. If it fails to do the job, then it is high time for me to go back and modify/change the model.
This is not metaphysics; I leave that to philosophers.
@lookingforward The study of history is important because it tells me why we are where we are. Ditto for “ancient” literature. Shakespearean plays, I find, are fascinating studies of human nature. Events change, but we human beings seem not.
@PurpleTitan Do you really believe the top ten percent of population can understand the stuff in the American Journal of Mathematics? Murray is a graduate of Harvard with a PHD from MIT. I think he is at least two standard deviations above the norm.
@blossom I actually do not disagree with anything you said. Salary expectation, lifestyle choice, personality type, aptitude, serendipity etc. all play a role in how we end up where we are. I do think, however, the system can be made more efficient, and mis-match can be reduced.
@Canuckguy, if they put in the work and have the motivation to do so, yes.
Take anyone with top 10% intelligence. Tell them that they have 2 decades where they have to worry about nothing but study math (they and their family will be supported). They will have all the best teaching resources available. If, by the end, they can understand the proofs in that journal, they will become a billionaire. If they can’t, their family would be killed (use other motivators if you like). How many do you think would fail?