Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Elite Colleges Admissions Merit Based?

You can define it: "Within 3% of the number of cutoff points."

Please don't polititroll, thanks.

Its pretty clear that you did not read the article. I also think at least one other commenter did not as well.

I think you just looked at the url and my cut and drew your conclusions.

The author takes great pains to marshall the data and then draw conclusions and THEN propose a change to the process. He cites a lot of books and articles along the way mostly from so-called "Liberal" sources and pulls a page from a "Liberal" to propose the solution.

This is a great piece of induction, analysis, and synthesis.

I will synopsize this article.

Its very clear from the article that most of the academically superior students of both sexes are passed over for kids at least a standard deviation down the scale. The author begins with analyzing the admission of Asian and Jewish students relative to the general population and contrasts this with the NMSF composition. For example, just 1000 of the NMSF students were Jewish yet 3000 got into the top 3 Ivies. That means that 2000 of the non-Jewish NMSF were denied. A comparison to Caltech to NMSF shows that Caltech admits solely on merit and the relative numbers by race from Caltech deviate by several orders of magnitude from the Ivies relative numbers.

Its also clear that most admissions officers lack the high caliber academic credentials that the average student applying possesses. Thus they are unable to develop a clear, objective strategy, and then apply it to the kids they see. The result is a very skewed process that allows too many unqualified kids and greatly reduces the number of very superior students. The author cites books by the same admissions folks and statisticians.

The author then asks what is the solution. The author looks at several alternatives then discards each because each would then leave out kids with many talents other than just academics and notes that many kids will do well above a certain threshold. EO Wilson is a notable example. The author comes up with a two-tier system. First tier is to admit 10-20% solely on merit. Ie rank kids solely by academic merit and take the top x%. The remaining seats are filled by lottery from the list of kids who meet the threshold.

Think what this means. NMSF is the 99.5 percentile. 1000 kids at 99.5 means there are 200,000 students in that group and if you pull 2000 from that group that means you pull from the 98th percentile. There are huge differences between the 99.5 percentile and the 98th in terms of performance at the highest levels. Its a huge disparity.

The lottery for the 90% addresses all the other "imbalance" issues. Below the top cutoff for the top 10%, the rest of the applications that meet the threshold requirements go into a lottery pool. I think you could also give each Dean 10 slots to put anyone they find in as well just like you give the sports coaches. This would allow the clear exceptions to the rule to get in, ie kids who are Classics superstars or musicians or STEM savants.

Come to think of it, the Military uses this same system to fill jobs. Usually your class top grads are given their choice, the top x % get offered fighters, and then everyone is leveled after that.

And my point is that this is a feature of the system as it is currently exists, not a bug.

They are not necessarily trying to get the academically superior students; they are trying to get the type of students they want to get.

WAT? How do you get from there to here? It is not possible to make a logical conclusion from the previous two statements.


A comparison of Caltech to Harvard fails on soooo many levels:

- Harvard is a liberal arts school, which generally appeals to Jews.
- Caltech is a technical school, which generally appeals to Asians.
- Significantly higher concentrations of Jews live near Harvard.
- Significantly higher concentrations of Asians live near Caltech.

The author fails still when he compares schools within the same geographical region, because he credits the different makeup of MIT to them being better able to objectively evaluate prospective students, rather than stating the obvious: it's MIT. Maybe the fact that both of these schools (Caltech and MIT) have "Technology" in their full names would have been a clue.

Then again, there's no reason to expect a high level of scholarship from The American Conservative, and any illusions a reader may have had along those lines are dashed the minute they see made-up statistics based on "names that sound Jewey."

I think its a function of the administrators running the academic side of things rather than the Deans and the professors. The latter should develop the admissions policies and then do the admissions selection oversight with the admissions department handling the clerical tasks. The football coach does not let admissions select his team. Neither should the Deans.

I think the Deans will act at most schools on this issue and others.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-000-feed-outcry-over-college-costs.html

"I don't see why a mild preference in favor of either sex to achieve "gender balance" should be disallowed."

It isn't a 'mild preference' any more. If they admitted women vs. men strictly on GPA and test scores, with the exception of STEM schools, the top 100 ranked colleges in US News rankings would skew something like 70% female/30% male. Boys are being given a huge break in admissions these days. So anyone who wants to get rid of "preferences" and go with strictly score- & GPA- based admissions needs to accept that as an outcome. As soon as you say, well... that isn't so great, we should give boys a break, then you have to ask why any other underrepresented group should not also get some breaks as well. You can't have it both ways.

I don't love the donation admit, either. But gotta say that enough money to build a new library or a new science facility that thousands of students will benefit from over the years is worth something to the school AND the student body. The number of those types of admits are ridiculously small, too.

At most colleges, alumni kids who truly aren't qualified get a "courtesy waitlist". One of my kids, who would have been the 8th family member over four generations to go to a top ranked university got one of those. And honestly, they were right to do so (not admit her). If an alumni kid gets in, it is because they met the qualifications to be seriously considered, then got an edge because of their alumni status. Most colleges no longer let the kid in if they don't stack up to the rest of the admission pool.

"For example, just 1000 of the NMSF students were Jewish yet 3000 got into the top 3 Ivies. That means that 2000 of the non-Jewish NMSF were denied."

Is there an assumption here that all NMSFs apply to a top Ivy? My D is NMSF this year, and is not applying to any top Ivys (or MIT or Caltech). And she is not the only one... of the four NMSFs at her high school, I think only one is applying to ANY ivys. One is applying ED to Reed, one is going to Michigan Tech on a scholarship, and D is hoping for a U of Chicago admit. There is one boy who MIGHT apply to an Ivy, but I actually suspect that Carleton is his top choice. So that is, um... 0 to 25% of the NMSF pool at our high school applying to a top Ivy.