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Harvard started the institutionalization of "hollistic admission": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2

Harvard started the institutionalization of "hollistic admission": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in. According to the article, it was not about being fair, it was about limiting the admission of a specific group of people. In general, the more complex a system is, the easier it is for people to game the system, and therefore the easier it is to hide inequality. It's hard to believe that Harvard does not know this, but I guess I'm dead wrong here as our progressives always ask for a more complex system to battle inequality. In contrast, look at China. Their National College Entrance Examination is widely considered the most equal system in the country. Is it perfect? Of course not. However, students from poor country-side have a shot to get into elite universities. All they need are good teachers and well designed problem sets and text books . The cost of the books cost less than few Burger King's double cheese burgers. In the meantime, the government invested heavily on teachers. The result is that the best teachers are always in public schools. The inequality really lies in the fact that fewer and fewer quality teachers are willing to go to the poor areas nowadays. But hey, it's not like our government are focusing on raising teacher quality in the US either, right? What about the fact that tests themselves can be gamed, we may ask, like students cramming for exams? The problem turns out to be relatively "easy" to solve: make tests differentiable. Just take a look at a problem set from India's JEE, China's NCEE, Korea's CSAT, or Japan's entrance exams from different universities. You'll see how hard it is to cram or to "tutor" for an exam. If we use math as an example, the only patterns one sees in a problem will be mathematical patterns. If one can cram for that, well congratulations, the person just learned good math.

cycrutchfield 6y ago
Imagine looking at China and its massively wasteful system of cram schools and rote learning and thinking that's a system you would like to emulate.
- hintymad 6y ago
  Whether exams, which solely focus on academics, are effective for selecting talents is definitely up to challenge. That's a whole different topic from which system is less likely to be biased or gamed, though. Just to fact check one thing: cram schools and rote learning for elementary students are rampant because of cut-throat competition for students to get into middle schools, but it's not that much in high school. Sooner or later you just can't rote learning any more. It's like one can probably rote learn James' Calculus, but good luck with Stein's or Rudin's Analysis. Besides, remember most of the good teachers are in public schools? The quality of cram schools was pathetic compared with what's offered by public schools, so the cram schools don't make much of a dent.
diebeforei485 6y ago
Generally speaking, the problem sets might seem harder but the average score is also lower, so it's a wash.
- hintymad 6y ago
  The key is "differentiating". Different students should fall into different score buckets -- a hard problem to solve, to which Chinese teachers dedicate large chunk of their time, for good or for worse.

cycrutchfield 6y ago

Imagine looking at China and its massively wasteful system of cram schools and rote learning and thinking that's a system you would like to emulate.

hintymad 6y ago
Whether exams, which solely focus on academics, are effective for selecting talents is definitely up to challenge. That's a whole different topic from which system is less likely to be biased or gamed, though. Just to fact check one thing: cram schools and rote learning for elementary students are rampant because of cut-throat competition for students to get into middle schools, but it's not that much in high school. Sooner or later you just can't rote learning any more. It's like one can probably rote learn James' Calculus, but good luck with Stein's or Rudin's Analysis. Besides, remember most of the good teachers are in public schools? The quality of cram schools was pathetic compared with what's offered by public schools, so the cram schools don't make much of a dent.

diebeforei485 6y ago

Generally speaking, the problem sets might seem harder but the average score is also lower, so it's a wash.

hintymad 6y ago
The key is "differentiating". Different students should fall into different score buckets -- a hard problem to solve, to which Chinese teachers dedicate large chunk of their time, for good or for worse.