@kea2020 Yep, BNHA is pretty standout from recent shounen. I love how it turns a lot of hackneyed shounen hero tropes around and applies them to the villains. Makes it really interesting.
@shikinami thats what makes it so interesting of a show, seeing so many boring tropes be revived and brought back to life
@boogy2020 They say they don’t maintain quotas of any kind, yet they also include applicants from most of the 50 states. If there is truly no quota of any kind, one would expect less geographic diversity.
I think having informal quotas is a good thing-- don’t get me wrong. TASP seems to pride itself in diversity and works best with diversity. Though there probably aren’t explicit quotas, being from, say, Arkansas might weight your application significantly more than an applicant from California. That weighting results in certain proportions of the TASP populus which is significantly closer to what TASP’s ideal membership pool is, I’m guessing. Maybe the big states will have 2-3 people per TASP session, sure, but it wouldn’t be close to representative of the percentages of applicants from their geographic areas.
This is just conjecture, but it’s based on how almost every elite university’s system operates. The only way most of the fifty states can be represented equally is if each state had similar numbers of applicants-- and that’s probably only achievable if each state had a similar population. Which is demonstrably false.
Again-- in this case, I think that system is good. Diversity is great, so there should be measures taken to ensure it exists.
If any former TASPer or TASP officer reads this and knows this is completely incorrect, please let me know. I’d love to be educated on this.
Btw, the info on the geographic diversity was taken from this article: http://www.thenewjournalatyale.com/2007/04/paradise-lost/
TASP makes a concerted – and successful – effort towards bringing in a diverse group of highly intelligent and interesting students. I would take them at their word about not having any quotas. Admission also not determined by stats (i.e., that don’t strive to admit “the most qualified on paper.”) They try to admit highly intelligent, thoughtful people that will help to create and contribute to a community of scholars truly interested in the life of the mind.
Admissions comes down to your essays and your interviews.
By “the most qualified on paper” I meant the most qualified regardless of factors like location. Without factoring in location into the application, I’d expect a majority of accepted applicants to be from the super high population states rather than just a plurality as it seems to be currently.
I don’t think there are hard quotas i.e. “there must be 2 New Mexicans per TASP!”; but the mere act of creating a concerted effort at diversity necessitates that factors like location are taken into account, factors that might be external to the essays and interviews themselves.
I think “quotas” might be too harsh a term, even if I qualified it with “informal.” Maybe what I mean is I suspect consideration is given to factors beyond the application itself which might serve to adjust the ratios of accepted applicants-- factors like location, race, income level, etc.
But your argument does make sense. From the outside, TASP does appear to be making a concerted effort at diversity. But the mere making of that effort implies an influence beyond the application itself; otherwise, there’d be no need for that effort to be made in the first place.
Edit:
I’m open to the argument that external factors shape experience. Being from disparate locations might affect one’s mindset and add “interestingness” which can’t be accounted for in individuals from one location. I’m not sure if this would shift the percentages as drastically as they appear to be shifted, but I have no data on that, so I won’t speculate.
@kea2020 @skinikinami @TheMadScientistX i’ll think about watching bleach then. Shonen is my favorite anime genre, and I love Gintama (which I know has some Bleach, Fairy Tail, and Naruto parodies) and sports animes. I like BNHA too
i hope that decisions come within 48 hours…
@memeqween101 have you watched HxH?
@memeqween101 Gintama is one of my favorite shounen! That show never gets old.
@memeqween101 The amount of parody episodes Gintama does is ridiculous. It even parodies itself, which is crazy. The series’ author, Hideaki Sorachi, is just a crazy man, lol.
@kingtape That is a great analysis, and just so you know, I was never trying to be rude or anything. I just remembered what their page said. Now I am really curious to how they select applicants from different states.
Personally. I do not think that they would require a certain number of people accepted from different states, but I do think they would take into account different opportunities and educational experience based on location.
@kingtape no, but the “newer” version is on my to-watch list
what music and books did you guys list in the short essay?
@5toryt3ll3r in the interview, do the interviewers ask about what you listed for film,music art,literature, etc?
@cherryglazerrr For music, I listed some Japanese Rock bands. For books, I listed some normal books.
@cherryglazerrr
i put down the sympathizer (multifaceted and considerate narrative of the Vietnam War, narrates from a Vietnamese double-agent’s perspective), the Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories compiled by Jay Rubin and Haruki Murakami, mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and the alchemist by paulo coelho for books.
i also put down my favorite youtubers/channels: cath in college, China Uncensored, Button Poetry (spoken word poetry—Sarah Kay is my favorite), and COLORS.
i think i also wrote about my favorite works of modern art (infinity mirrors, everything and anything by roni horn, etc).
curious as to what everyone else put!
@cherryglazerrr Looking back at my application would bring me too much anxiety, lol, but from what I remember:
Music: Hyperballad by Björk, Falling Down by Oasis, The Seasons Die One After Another by amazarashi, La vie en rose by Édith Piaf
Books: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, East of Eden by John Steinbeck
For films, I put down Akira and Perfect Blue.
@TheMadScientistX please recommend me so J-rock bands, I’ve wanted to get into it for the longest time because most anime openings are J-rock, but I don’t know where to start (I basically only know the Oral Cigarettes and Bradio)