<p>Curious: If this thread isn’t about your problems with Harvard’s admissions practices, I don’t know what it IS about. </p>
<p>I start with the premise that there are a set of qualification criteria (which may vary somewhat from institution to institution, and which may be set at different levels depending on the institution) that take into account a number of different factors on a sliding scale, and that reflect the institution’s values. I also start with the premise that, for any particular institution, those criteria are narrow enough to exclude a meaningful percentage of applicants, but broad enough to include more applicants than the institution is prepared to accept. That’s certainly true for highly selective, elite-type institutions. I assume that the criteria are applied in good faith in a collective process that is transparent internally, if not externally, and that if that weren’t happening the unhappiness and dissent would become visible to the public fairly quickly. Therefore, I conclude that, except for cases of successful fraud on the part of applicants, or isolated exercises of personal privilege that are unusual enough for the system to tolerate without dissent, all of the students actually admitted will come from a subset of applicants that are qualified by the institution’s criteria. I can’t imagine why any admissions department would systematically depart from that – it’s tough enough to select a class from among qualified applicants, why would anyone waste time on unqualified applicants?</p>
<p>(In my one experience of doing something like this, ultimately we concluded that all of the marginal candidates were unqualified. But we wanted to fill the slots, so we chose two out of the five least unqualified candidates. It took hours and exhausted everyone in the room. But I don’t think Harvard has that problem. And it was fairly easy to obtain consensus among a large, diverse decision-making group as to who the qualified candidates were, even though only a few of our criteria were quantifiable at all.)</p>
<p>You, on the other hand, seem to start with the premise that there is some sort of nefarious conspiracy to define qualification at a level so low as to be meaningless, or to disregard qualification in favor of some set of unspecified preferences. Moreover, you seem to think that conspiracy extends across a fairly large number of independent, competing institutions, as it would have to to explain the fact that somehow they wind up with pools of admitted students that are remarkably similar and include substantial overlaps. So you are petulantly insisting on either an admission that there is no meaningful qualification standard anywhere, or a definition of the standard that would expose each institution’s systematic violation of it.</p>
<p>I have seen a lot of institutions operating in my life. None of them have acted they way you seem to think they all act, at least not for very long.</p>
<p>But this thread is about one thing, the use of the word “qualified” in the defense of admissions practices. It has touched on a number of other things but that is the reason I started it.</p>
<p>I am alleging no conspiracy. Where did you get that idea? It takes no conspiracy theory to explain the fact that a large number of colleges grant legacy preferences for example, the explanation is money. On this thread I am not arguing about the rigthness or wrongness of various admissions policies although I do have opinions on thsoe subjects and despite what you think we are entitled to hold and express those opinions and to seek legislation or bring court cases to change them. The universities do not have a right to make these rules without pulblic oversight and I would think it would be clear by now that those methods can, should, and have affected the policies of universities and colleges.</p>
<p>On this thread I am objecting to the language used to defend those practices.</p>
<p>Curious, are you a parent or a student? Your grasp on reality seems tenuous if you think that you are going to get anywhere with lawsuits or legislation to change private universities’ current admissions practices, or get much support from anyone for the proposition that private universities do not have a right to make these rules without public oversight.</p>
<p>Let me be perfectly clear, as far as this thread is concerned, I am not objecting to particular behavior but to the use of the term “qualified” to describe candidates who have been admitted despite being demonstrably less “qualified” than many students who are rejected. There is a form of verbal slight of hand going on here, that I simply wanted to call attention to. The defenders of this language seem to take one of two approaches either, like you, they define the term to mean whatever ad coms choose it to mean when they choose to use it (ie “admitted”), or they define is as the ability to graduate (which is in my view a very low standard).</p>
<p>Nothing that you have said contradicts any of that.</p>
<ol>
<li> You haven’t been paying attention at all to anything anyone other than you says. I have been careful to make clear that I believe “qualified”, as adcoms and everyone else uses it, is meaningfully different both from “admitted” and from “ability to graduate”. Your issue is that you don’t believe them when they say the “admitted” students come from the “qualified” pool, or that “qualified” means anything. But that position is counter-intuitive, in the absence of some rational explanation why that might be so, or evidence that it might be happening, and you haven’t provided anything like that sort of explanation or evidence.</li>
</ol>
<p>I have even said, in general terms, what my personal standard would be for “qualified”. You haven’t. I don’t know what specific standards the institutions use, but I believe they are not far off mine.</p>
<p>You are calling people liars. On what basis?</p>
<ol>
<li> Private universities, as it happens do have a legal right to discriminate against blacks and jews, although not if they want to take advantage of federal financial support or tax-free nonprofit/charitable organization status. Neither relevant statute is enforceable by private lawsuit. If you believe private universities are discriminating against blacks and jews in an actionable manner, that’s fine, but I don’t think you are going to get too far with your claim.</li>
</ol>
Amen to that. To paraphrase Don McLean, “he is not listening; he does not know how…” I’ve given up on the “perhaps he’ll listen now.”</p>
<p>It is so tempting to try to find a way to be heard by the OP on this thread. We are all hearing each other; explicating our views, modifying our thoughts at times in response to others’ contributions. The OP … not so much.</p>
<p>I quess we have established that, without abandoning federal financial aid and research funding, private universities are subject to federal anti- discrimination laws. By the way, Ted Kennedy, of all people, has proposed legislation restricting the use of legacy preferences. </p>
<p>Admissions questions, even at “private” institutions, are public policy issues, if you think you can deny that I think I will have to stop responding to your posts, because it is a waste of time.</p>
<p>I responded to your post #6. Just becasue you don’t like my responses does not mean I don’t respond. And I hate to tell you this many of your posts don’t rise to the level that a response in required. What kind of response do you expect to the Don McLean quote?</p>
<p>I don’t expect a response to every one of my posts.</p>
<p>I do appreciate a poster, in particular an OP, who shows that s/he is listening to and considering the points of view of others. Who, when s/he does respond, actually answers questions as they were framed. Who, when s/he does respond, does so in some way other than thrust-and-parry avoidance of thoughts which fail to fit with an agenda.</p>
<p>Curious, it’s clearly not worth having a conversation.</p>
<p>You are the very king of circularity. Your principle “Any proposition that is incapable of being proved true or false is meaningless” is valid only if “meaning” is defined as “true or false”. Truth and falsity, in an objective sense, are a very important source of meaning, but not the exclusive source. Two propositions that are not capable of being proved true or false, but which nonetheless have meaning, are “God exists” and “I love you”.</p>
<p>None of that has anything to do with this discussion however. No one has proposed a standard of qualification that is incapable of being proved true or false.</p>
<p>Why don’t you just be honest about your issue?: You believe that among “qualified” applicants, some are “more qualified” than others. You think that some “more qualified” applicants are rejected while “less qualified” applicants are accepted. (I agree with you, and so, probably, does everyone, even if we might not agree on which people we were talking about.) That apparently bothers you a lot. Me, not so much, because I believe the “qualification” standard is high enough to be meaningful. It also seems to bother you that some of the selection criteria are nonpublic and nontransparent. Me, not so much. But nonpublic and nontransparent doesn’t mean incapable of being proved true or false. We had that discussion yesterday.</p>
<p>JHS, I think curious is asserting that the term “qualified” is meaningless because Harvard claims a very high percentage of candidates are “qualified,” like 70-90%. (I don’t remember exactly.) And then people use a different definition of qualified in their arguments. For example, in the debate about legacies, people will say, “Well, they are academically ‘qualified’. Harvard said so.” Generally, when people are making arguments, they aren’t using “qualified” in the sense of being in the top 90% of applicants. But that is what Harvard meant when they were using the word.</p>
<p>Generally when folks use the ‘qualified’ defense they say that all admitted students are “qualified”. Or at least that has been my perception. If they actually said that 90% or 70% were “qualified” I’d be inclined to back off on this argument but that is not my perception.</p>