Why do they need an admission committee ?

Applying to College
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<p>The subject is a bit provocative but I am really wondering why they need a committee ?
I have gathered from many threads not only on this forum but on other selective college forums the following:

  • For every admitted student, there is at least one if note more applicants who could be a perfect fit for the college and for the specific class
  • If the colleges had to redo the whole admission process for the same pool of applicants, they could come up with a totally different class. This class would however satisfy all the criteria required for shaping the class in terms of excellence, diversity, leadership etc. and be representative of the philosophy of the college.
    This comes from the fact that selective colleges get an enormous number of applications, most of which are from extremely competitive students.
    So it seems that there is quite a bit of randomness in the selection process. I was wondering if a computer program, given the various selection criteria including the targeted shape of the class could not do the job ?
    I do not know why, but I would feel less hurt in such a process than knowing that a team of humans deliberately decided that I was not good enough for them.</p>
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<p>Hahahaha! So who would decide the input parameters of your super-computer?</p>

<p>When you search for a spouse or your future children do, is this the kind of method you’d think is optimal? How about choosing senior care for your parents? Or choosing a surgeon for an upcoming drastic surgery? How about just buying a car or a home?</p>

<p>As for rejection and feeling “not good enough for them”, another poster, jonri, wrote the following on this thread on the parent’s forum</p>

<p>What to do when child gets rejected?</p>

<p>"I think it helps to know that it’s all about building a class. I’ve used this analogy hundreds of times, but applying to college is like trying out for a high school musical. It’s all about the cast. No director picks the 20 most talented musicians/actors/singers who audition and starts rehearsals. Instead, they cast for specific roles. They need so many girls and so many guys. A girl with a soprano voice is going to be competing with lots of talented kids for a lead. The boy who sings bass will have less competition. If the play is “Guys and Dolls” and he’s a bit plump and can play Nicely Nicely (who sings "Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat), he’s probably not going to be competing against more than a couple of people for the role–and may not have any competition. (And, if you are the girl applying for a spot at a co-ed LAC, you’re in a position not unlike the sopranos auditioning who see less talented guys get better roles.)</p>

<p>Some kids will get picked because the director has worked with them before–and knows they can do the job. Some will get picked because they “fit.” If all the boys in the chorus line are short, a director may not pick the tallest girl–even though she’s a better dancer than the shorter girl who is chosen.</p>

<p>The point is that NO top college claims that it chooses the best students among the applicants or the most deserving applicants. Instead, they fill roles. So, if Stacy or Kevin gets in and you don’t, it doesn’t mean that Dream U though that they were more deserving–it just means they could play a different role than you can. The role might be an athlete, an URM, a girl who wants to major in engineering, a legacy, a kid from a less advantaged background, or something you’ll never figure out.</p>

<p>I think that knowing how the system works–that it really isn’t about judging the relative worth of two different applicants–helps kids deal with the rejections. If you’re a white or Asian middle class kid with two college-educated parents who comes from an affluent suburb of a major American city, reality is that the “admit” rate for the role you are competing for is probably roughly half of the published overall rate. You’re the soprano trying for the lead."</p>

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<p>By far, the best explaination of how the selection process works!</p>

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<p>@T26 some people do rely on a computer to find a wife :wink: and the divorce rate is very low for arranged marriages. But this is not our topic.
I think that writing a program to select so many URM, tall boys, small girls able to speak pygmy language etc. out of a large pool should be quite easy and is even easier if one does not pretend to select the best candidates as stated in your post.
The purpose of this thread is really to just point the randomness of the process.
Still, I wonder…</p>

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<p>A computer can’t read essays and teacher recs and understand the nuances of language well enough to tell something about who the applicants are aside from their objective stats. That’s what the adcoms are there for.</p>

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<p>how does a computer determine passion and focus in EC’s? how does a computer read and judge essays? how does a computer discern “damnation with faint praise” in LORs from sincere LORs? much of the college application process is so subjective that it cannot be performed by computer.</p>

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<p>“This [different] class would however satisfy all the criteria required for shaping the class in terms of excellence, diversity, leadership etc. and be representative of the philosophy of the college.”</p>

<p>"a team of humans deliberately decided that I was not good enough for them</p>

<p>You just contradicted yourself; you were good enough, you just weren’t picked.</p>

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<p>There is already software being developed to grade AP essays with a scanner. Yep, reading hand writing and looking for particular passages, words, etc. </p>

<p>This reminds me of the thread (I forget which school , and I’m too lazy to look) where an applicant was (gasp for effect) PHONED to set up his alumni interview. From the look of the answers, most of the responders agreed that this was … very unusual and NOT optimum. They were willing to interview, yet the actuality of picking up a phone and being surprised that an unknown human was on the other end and they might have to think without preparation, form sentences, take notes, etc…was just a bit too much for them. </p>

<p>I ended up in an argument with my D about it last night. How worried I am about this generation and their decrease in communication skills. Technology can take over a LOT of tasks, but is FAR behind many of the uses in which it is currently employed. And I thank goodness that I’ll hopefully be gone before we try to recreate and/or read emotions…electronically. I dread that world, and feel horrid for anyone who has to live in it.</p>

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<p>hahaha: Doesn’t it also strike you the enormous amounts of posts here on CC where the answer that is just screaming the poster in the face is “Call the college and ask”?</p>

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<p>I’m not so quick to dismiss the OP’s hypothesis. It would be interesting to test it by developing a computer model that put the pieces together–would the resulting class be any better or worse that one put together by the current subjective method? Does all that attention (if it really exists) to factors like essays really result in anything demonstrable?</p>

<p>And another question: to what extent are selective schools using computer models already to keep track of things like male/female ratios, number of legacies, athletes, etc.? Is all this really being done by hand?</p>

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<p>@R124687: People do use emoticons already ;-)</p>

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<p>Teacher recommendations and character profiles will always be critical in weeding out the cheaters, liars, morally corrupt, and other applicants who may look good on paper statisically, but lack integrity.</p>

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<p>It’s not randomness. It is subjectivity. Which looks like randomness to outside observers, since they cannot see any objective reason (i.e. stats differences) to account for why one was chosen over another. Randomness would be choosing one over another for no reason at all. There was a reason; it’s just that we are not privy to it.</p>

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<p>I read this very interesting [Article</a> in the New Yorker]( <a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge]Article”>Getting In | The New Yorker) , which explains how the so-called holistic admission process was invented to bar Jewish applicants from taking too many slots at Ivy schools. This new approach precisely introduced subjective criteria, which are home to any form of arbitrary. Once the goals are set (so many URM, so many Jews, so many tall Asians etc.) then of course a better essay or better teacher rec or more impressive ECs can be used as the discriminating factors among people competing in the same category but these are maybe not the primary factors for admission. Besides there is no such thing as an absolute “better essay”. So, why not let a computer choose?</p>

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<p>Nobody claims to have consistent criteria that will rank all essays from best to worst, true. Why does this mean that essays should just not matter at all?</p>

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<p>People know what they’re getting into when they apply to colleges with acceptance rates of <20%, they need to stop expecting acceptance.</p>

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<p>“So it seems that there is quite a bit of randomness in the selection process. I was wondering if a computer program, given the various selection criteria including the targeted shape of the class could not do the job ?”</p>

<p>Why do you think this isn’t already happening? This year’s version is called “AdCom 2010” and is deployed at all schools. It is busy churning out accepts and rejects. They are embedded in a human-like soft exterior form. College are allowed to make multiple copies of the program and stuff each copy in a different human-like form. They even give them names such as Bob and JoAnn.</p>

<p>Why do you think colleges strongly encourage you to submit online apps?</p>

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<p>Interesting that this has been moved to the Yale thread with its 50/50 rate for women and men although admitted women have higher scores than admitted men etc.</p>

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<p>You just answered your own question.</p>

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<p>One person deciding your fate.</p>

<p>Two people deciding your fate.</p>

<p>Admissions committee deciding your fate.</p>

<p>Computer deciding your fate.</p>

<p>And you seriously wouldn’t pick Admissions Committee?</p>