“H won’t swoon over an Olympian or political winner - or Intel winner- if they don’t match in other ways. Why assume the only thing that got someone in was a contest? You’ve got to question correlation vs causation.”
It’s correlation and they shouldn’t mess up the other parts of the app, I agree, but they don’t have to match in many other ways. This is not like valedictorians where you have tens of thousands, you have just handful of these. Also they already have experience that these award winners fit well, maybe contribute immediately to a professor’s research.
“No matter how many posters encourage”
I now, encouragement rather than discouragement and judging, surprising on cc.