http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/04/who-got-in-to-the-country-s-top-colleges.htmlWho Got Into the Country’s Top Colleges?
The Daily Beast
by Steve Cohen
Apr 4, 2012 4:01 PM EDT
It’s that time of year again. The fat (and thin) envelopes have begun to land, as high-school seniors’ fates take shape. So just how insanely competitive were this year’s college admissions?
According to many colleges’ self-reported statistics for the class of 2016: the results aren’t encouraging for most ambitious seniors, and they’re especially dismal for “unhooked white girls.”
That’s the euphemism for smart girls with really good grades and solid SAT scores, but who lack some special “hook” or positioning—for example, being a star athlete, concert pianist or first generation to go to college. They experienced a particularly tough time getting into most of the nation’s most competitive colleges. But they may enjoy a bit of peace of mind knowing everyone else did as well.
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I think intelligence and academic achievement are not getting as much weight in college admissions as they should. In many other countries the process is less opaque. This article was discussed in the NYT "Give a Girl a ‘Hook,’ Get Her Into College"
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/give-a-girl-a-hook-get-her-into-college/ .
The number of places at the most prestigious schools has not kept up with the number of qualified applicants as the U.S. population increases, and maybe it cannot, since prestige is largely depends on selectivity and scarcity value, in the absence of data on how much college students learn. I hope that alternative ways of educating and certifying people such as EdX and Coursera catch on quickly.
