4 ms·

> Why can SAT/ACT and perhaps school GPA be the sole criteria? And for sports, affirmative action,.. just have separate additional seats. scholastic aptitude i

> Why can SAT/ACT and perhaps school GPA be the sole criteria? And for sports, affirmative action,.. just have separate additional seats. scholastic aptitude is a very important part of admissions criteria, but it's not the only thing colleges care about. for example, they also care about things like extracurriculars because these indicate that a student is more likely to participate in campus organizations. you personally might not care about orgs and sports teams (I certainly didn't) but some of the students they want to attract do. there needs to be a critical mass of sports and orgs people to make these things viable.

crispyambulance 8y ago
Yes, this is right. For one thing, it simply isn't possible to have truly "objective" criteria for admissions. If it were only based on standardized test scores, the bulk of the students that got in to the most elite schools would be ones who went to elite private high schools and perhaps had extra highly-paid tutoring or those who enjoyed the obsessive life-long dedication of a tiger-mom. That would skew the population to students from a narrow demographic along with a very small number of unicorns. Forget about late-bloomers, promising students that went to crappy high-schools, forget about making up for decades of exclusionary practices. And after all that, guess what, the children of the uber-rich would STILL get in because a pile of money big enough to pay for a building will ALWAYS bend reality. The most elite schools will always have their admissions under a magnifying glass, but there's a lot of excellent universities out there which offer a superb education and don't have outrageous admissions requirements. A student who got top-scores and excellent grades can still go to their pick of a large number of these other fine schools if they get rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT/Caltech because of losing out to some intangible criteria.
- cbm-vic-20 8y ago
  > A student who got top-scores and excellent grades can still go to their pick of a large number of these other fine schools if they get rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT/Caltech because of losing out to some intangible criteria. That's me! I was rejected from one of those schools and ended up at a "tier 2" school, and have been very successful. IOW, getting rejected from a "tier 1" school isn't a big deal, and a student may be better off at a "lesser" school.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  >A student who got top-scores and excellent grades can still go to their pick of a large number of these other fine schools if they get rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT/Caltech because of losing out to some intangible criteria. This is both correct and why the Asian students' Harvard suits offend me. If we're holding the bar at Harvard or zilch, what the hell did I spend 4 years of my time on?

crispyambulance 8y ago

Yes, this is right. For one thing, it simply isn't possible to have truly "objective" criteria for admissions. If it were only based on standardized test scores, the bulk of the students that got in to the most elite schools would be ones who went to elite private high schools and perhaps had extra highly-paid tutoring or those who enjoyed the obsessive life-long dedication of a tiger-mom. That would skew the population to students from a narrow demographic along with a very small number of unicorns. Forget about late-bloomers, promising students that went to crappy high-schools, forget about making up for decades of exclusionary practices. And after all that, guess what, the children of the uber-rich would STILL get in because a pile of money big enough to pay for a building will ALWAYS bend reality. The most elite schools will always have their admissions under a magnifying glass, but there's a lot of excellent universities out there which offer a superb education and don't have outrageous admissions requirements. A student who got top-scores and excellent grades can still go to their pick of a large number of these other fine schools if they get rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT/Caltech because of losing out to some intangible criteria.

cbm-vic-20 8y ago
> A student who got top-scores and excellent grades can still go to their pick of a large number of these other fine schools if they get rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT/Caltech because of losing out to some intangible criteria. That's me! I was rejected from one of those schools and ended up at a "tier 2" school, and have been very successful. IOW, getting rejected from a "tier 1" school isn't a big deal, and a student may be better off at a "lesser" school.
akhilcacharya 8y ago
>A student who got top-scores and excellent grades can still go to their pick of a large number of these other fine schools if they get rejected from Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/MIT/Caltech because of losing out to some intangible criteria. This is both correct and why the Asian students' Harvard suits offend me. If we're holding the bar at Harvard or zilch, what the hell did I spend 4 years of my time on?