If talent is randomly distributed at birth, China should have 4 top students for every 1 in the US.
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This is still part of the Top X or bust mentality though. If interested, people should apply to these schools and other more safe options as well. Even if it was straight formula you are not necessarily assured of getting in to certain places.
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And weāre back to holistic. Can you compare the top Physics Olympiad winner to a kid who taught herself two ancient languages, is passionate about studying archaeology, spent the summer cataloguing pottery fragments at a local museum, and is a volunteer chess tutor at the local Boys/Girls club but who got a B in sophomore math? The ārack and stackā crowd wants the one with the verifiable ātopā stats. But what to do with all those professors in the humanities when all an adcom is doing is admitting the physicists and the comp sci kids and the math kids?
The discussion of why itās better overseas ignores the reality that in most countries there is no such thing as Landmark College, or even the VAST pool of colleges like Pace, Hofstra, LIU, Stonehill, Johnson and Wales, etc. Their systems are designed to knock out kids with learning issues, late bloomers, etc-- which to me is FAR more elitist than our own system. You donāt have the grades/scores to be admitted to our top tier (which in some countries is the ONLY tier) or next one down U? Then trade school for you.
Would we ever accept a return to the system where college is only for the highest scorers?
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Itās not about Harvard and Stanford. Itās about UCB, UCLA, UCSD - our flagships here in California who are becoming increasingly āholisticā (such a nice and empty-sounding euphemism) and are now test blind. So, again, everybodyās reality is different and it is simplistic to attribute peopleās concerns to keeping up with the Joneses.
BTW, the process worked very well for my S21 so nothing personal but I have many friends who were upset with last year admission cycle in-state
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Excellent points.
I think that for the most part we really WANT a system where there is a school for everyone and schools donāt ārack and stack,ā but then we suspect that employers/society will ārack and stackā later ā and our kids will suffer if they didnāt get into the ārightā school.
Maybe people would feel better if the med schools and law firms and investment banks and FAANG companies ā and, well, everybody ā would publicly commit to a holistic āschool-blindā review of job applicants?
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The UC system is test blind, not test optionalā¦which some prefer because it takes the guess work out of making the send or not send decision.
The UC system still does have guaranteed admission to the top 9% of students, although that means Merced for most. And the UCs are slowly decreasing the number of OOS students too, just as my state flagship UIUC, seems to forever be increasing the numbers of OOS/international students.
This gets back to blossomās point about state flagships being unattainable and/or unaffordable for so many, and that is a problem which demands some attention.
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Where did it go wrong: āholistic admissionsā, throwing away real grades and giving 50% of kids an A, thinking that SATās donāt matter but an essay written in the kids voice thatās sincere does, federal financial aid loans that burden kids for years, giving kids credit for things they have no control over ( URM, legacy and so many more). Thinking that diversity rests in a personās inherited characteristics rather than their character and thinking. The list just goes on and one, with some becoming āwinnersā in the charade and others not being able to jump that high even if they are statistically better on paper. Itās all become a big joke.
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I donāt think itās about holistic vs test scores. No one advocated a system solely based test scores. Oxbridgeās way of college admissions, for example, is far from relying solely on test scores. The question weāre discussing here is how much weights we should give to non-academic factors in college admissions. Academic factors are also not limited to test scores.
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In the U.K., thereās no trade-off. There are X seats for a given major and the academics who teach that major determine who they will admit for those spots. You apply for what you want to study and donāt get to change major later on.
The US is different in that thereās a much higher amount of flexibility in choice of majors. But in practice many of the most competitive majors like CS or engineering have a limited number of seats and you have to decide in advance to apply for them. Thatās especially true for those subjects with a defined four year course progression. Indeed thereās often angst about non direct admit programs and whether you should take the risk of not getting into your preferred major later on.
So would it really be so difficult to move to a direct admit only model for the most competitive majors? Then there would be no need to compare an engineering applicant with a history applicant. We have that already for some selective programs, eg EECS at Berkeley.
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This is not the mission of liberal arts colleges, and many of the highly rejective major research universities still consider their undergrad curriculum to be liberal arts based.
Flexibility in delaying a selection of major until one finally has the chance to study what they want (canāt do much of that in HS) and/or having the ability to change majors through the midway point of college are highly desirable college characteristics for some students.
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Yes, but thatās why itās important for our universities to remain world class so they can attract talents from all over the world, as UK has done.
Oxford asks tough questions in interviews for humanities and STEM and social sciences. I think this decreases the disparity between fields in terms of how competency/passion/whatever is assessed (it isnāt standardized tests vs national competitions vs extracurriculars depending on the field in questionā¦). Not saying itās better or worse or even suitable for the USA, but for what they need to evaluate, it gives them what they need in a way that is more uniform across their academic offerings.
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Totally agree that both, if exceptional in their respective domains, would deserve places at the same (top) university. So, perhaps for a classicist, use Oxfordās Classics Admission Test (or equivalent) to determine academic potential. Note also that the physics whiz could also be a volunteer chess tutor, etc.
Not suggesting itās better but perhaps certain US colleges might find a different approach from abroad instructive (even if it requires adaptation). To think thereās never anything to be learned from abroad is, well,ā¦
As you probably know, there are new-ish universities in the UK (University of Westminster, University of West London, London Metropolitan University, to name a few) that have different missions and lower/different standards of admission. But weāre not talking about such institutions in this discussion.
I used to think the same but things have changed. For example, in the UK, if you didnāt decide to go to medical school at age 18, thereās now an accelerated path to do so after you get your bachelor degree. Consideration of ācontextual informationā also signals change and greater acknowledgement of inequality in society.
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Sorry to hear that. The marketing is relentless.
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All due respect- if your D got a conditional offer at Oxford, she is most definitely not an appropriate candidate for Pace or Landmark College. So Iām not sure what point you are trying to make. There is your D- more power to her, who is clearly an academic star, with or without her learning challenges. And then there are the kids with a B- GPA who want a college education, can score in the 500ās on the SAT with extra time. Those kids also exist in Europe (even in the UK) and they are NOT the āconditional offerā population by any stretch of the imagination.
You are describing kids who were on track for A-levels and O-levels (already identified as university āmaterialā) with the accelerated path system, contextual information, etc. What about the kids who never got near the university trackā¦ but who in the US would have a shot at getting a college education?
Thatās who Iām talking about.
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Why do people care what criteria they use?
Because there is a relationship between elite university admission policies and outcomes. While what school one goes to is not determinitive, there is a strong correlation (and probably some causation) b/w college attended and future opportunities.
Why arenāt we all more worked up about the middle class being priced out of their own state flagship universities? Some of us are concerned about college prices. Being concerned about issue A is not mutually exclusive with being concerned about issue B.
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Well, thereās Open University and there are also Foundation programs that help those who might be less academically prepared to adjust/transition to university.
But this thread is not about such students and I never implied that the Oxbridge approach should apply to all colleges.
I have to ask: does your reference to a āpracticeā mean that you were treating or otherwise providing guidance or in some way helping these people?
No matter the process of admission, people who do not get in with be upset with the results. And in highly competitive schools it will be the vast majority of people do are not admitted. Change the process and its a different group of people who are upset.
Layer on top of that the idea that you have to go to a Top X school to be successful and you have a recipe for disaster (at least for some people). No matter how you define X. The notion (which many on this site and in this thread have) that X+2, 5, 10, 20 or 50 equates to failure isnāt true in my experience (or that of many other posters on this site).
You arenāt changing the first issue. If anything, more colleges are going holistic and test optional (or test not even accepted) is becoming more the norm. Unless you do something in terms of your view on the second issue, you likely will not be happy with the results. And the more narrowly you define success, the less likely you (or your kid) is likely to find it.
Going overseas is always an option for some. Arguing the US should be more like other countries isnt likely to happen. Particularly not just because you want it do be so.
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Data have shown this to be only true for disadvantaged/low-income students. If you have data that show otherwise, Iām sure many would love to see it!
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