<p>LOL, I check back here after a week or so, and it’s the same-old same-old.</p>
<p>Y’all really need to read Crazy U. It’s an eye-opener.</p>
<p>The problem I see in this and similar CC threads–and in Real Life, too, among several of my acquaintance–is that many of us never examine our assumptions. There are much larger issues involved here–issues involving philosophy of education–but so many of us just buy the hype and never question, never examine the assumptions we’ve been spoon-fed. Myself included. That’s why Crazy U has been so enlightening for me.</p>
<p>One amazing thing I learned from Crazy U is that the obsession with ECs–a preoccupation that’s supposedly so progressive and “holistic”–actually has its roots in racist eugenics and antisemitism. When American colleges first started using supposedly objective, “meritocratic” admissions criteria such as (early) standardized tests, they found that The Wrong People (i.e., Jews) were scoring well and qualifying for admission. Well, 1920s-vintage Harvard and Yale (et al.) couldn’t have that, now, could they? So they started expanding their selection criteria to include highly subjective means whereby they could screen out The Wrong People. They required personal interviews; they started emphasizing ECs, including sports like rowing and tennis; and so on. That way, they could ensure that their entering classes would still be dominated by The Right People: WASP, blue-blooded, privileged, with easy access to the Right Sports and the most impressive ECs.</p>
<p>Such blatant bigotry has largely (although not entirely) vanished from college admissions. But it lingers, IMHO, in another form, in the merit-scholarship processes employed by UNC and certain other schools. Today, it’s not Jews or Irish or Slavs who are being excluded. It’s rural kids, poorer kids, and home-schooled kids–kids who do not have the same opportunities to rack up hundreds of “service hours” and “leadership” what-the-heck that kids in Wake or Mecklenburg’s plusher schools enjoy.</p>
<p>As Andrew Ferguson observes in Crazy U, the term “holistic” translates as “completely subjective.” Like the racist eugenics that originally spawned the ECs craze, “holistic” has to go.</p>
<p>So much is so wrong about the college-app process today. But, if we never examine our assumptions, how can we begin to see, much less address, the problems?</p>