What should colleges do to manage the increase in apps?

ucbalumnus
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 21:29:46 +0000

MWolf:

PS. MIT and Caltech can afford to be more egalitarian, since
A. alumni donations make up a lot less of their funding (research contracts FTW!)
B. engineers think differently.

More accurately, they (especially Caltech) need to emphasize academic strength more in admission, since top end ordinary high school stats are much less of an assurance of being able to handle the academic rigor there than at most other universities (including highly selective ones).

However, egalitarianism can only go so far when the opportunities to develop and display academic strength while in K-12 are not distributed in an egalitarian way.