So Much Love, So Few Spots

Verbal
Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:45:01 +0000

Ignoring the pretentiousness of using sics on an internet posting, I think you still aren’t seeing the difference between “range of acceptability” and “random placement among the nation’s top 40 universities.”

I applied to eleven different universities, the majority of which have a number of common traits. I of course would prefer some over others, but on the whole I know myself well enough to know that I will be able to be successful and happy at any of them. However, looking at a much larger list of universities, I am not sure I can make that claim.

There are certain traits about universities that can not be changed by assigning students randomly. NYU will never have a real campus, and it will never have a residential college atmosphere. Rice will always be in Texas, and Vanderbilt always in Tennessee. Caltech and MIT will always have facilities and professors trained to be inclined towards certain disciplines. Wisconsin will always have 28,000 undergraduates, and and Reed will always have 1,400. This isn’t even mentioning the financial aid unfairness that would result from random placement.

I realize your proposal was more of a thought experiment than anything, but I think the impracticalities of it make it difficult to use even in that light.