<p>Very well said. At the same time, it's important to remember that qualifed/not qualified is not the only academic judgment there is, and there are many different levels of academically "qualified" students, some very much smarter than others.</p>
<p>The risk is that by including rockabilly bands, baseball, Proust, and knitting in the evaluation, one reduces the relative importance of intelligence differences among "qualified" students and turns the institution into the Camp for the Qualified, Well-Rounded and Sociable. That may or may not be the goal. I think Harvard is doing a great job at this already, but obviously to each his own.</p>