I would argue that Caltech’s is still a holistic process, just one that relies on particular characteristics more heavily than others. </p>
<p>Ultimately, I think you guys are a little too cynical – the goal of a holistic process is to pick the best set of admitted students for a particular school, not to pick a student body with particular characteristics or to give off an image. But the admissions process is trying to prospectively identify successful members of society, which is a complex outcome. The admissions office at MIT feels they are best able to identify future successful people by taking into account a variety of objective and subjective factors. That’s all a holistic process is.</p>
<p>There’s a great chapter in Nate Silver’s book The Signal and the Noise about professional baseball recruiting, which is analogous in many ways to college admissions. In baseball, a prospective recruit has objective statistics (batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), but also certain intangibles. And the teams are interested in identifying future superstars, so they look both at stats and at intangibles.</p>
<p>Zephead, what I suspect Golffather is referring to is the desire on the part of top schools to attempt to reflect the makeup of our society and to extend the possibility of acceptance to those who for socioeconomic or chronic societal reasons do not have equal access to rigorous high school programs, SAT coaches etc. Performance on standardized tests is argued by some to be tied to socioeconomic status. Creating a diverse student body as opposed to a completely homogenous student body is usually the goal.</p>
<p>Sometimes that means looking at what challenges a student may have overcome in order to achieve academically. Sometimes that may mean that a student doesn’t test well in terms of standardized testing, but has other factors that point to strong intelligence and work ethic.</p>
<p>Many students naively believe that admissions is, or should be, a meritocracy. While in many ways it may be in part, academic stats are not the actual measure of merit The stats make you eligible for admission. </p>
<p>The rest of the variables that form the “admit” are based on a college/university’s own whims on class makeup. Often, it will want some athletes, some artists, some underrepresented minorities; it may favor compensatory admits based on gender in STEM students, etc.</p>
<p>Many students are disappointed when not selected to tippy top schools with high stats. And some are bitter when it seems that other students they know who are not at the same performance level ARE admitted. In other words, when they discover we do not live in a meritocracy.</p>
<p>But in general, students are wisest to depersonalize their outlooks about acceptances – because it’s not necessarily a reflection of your accomplishment – or even rational – so much as a reflection of a school’s need to balance it’s class makeup according to its own ideas or stated commitment to diversity.</p>
<p>Shooting in here: I’m from Norway, and as many countries in Europe, Norway has a grades-only approach to acceptance to universities. That means that no matter how good I am at learning languages, I won’t get into the amazing Arabic department at the University of Oslo unless I have one of the top 60 grade scores among the others who apply to the same programme. If I come 61st, I won’t be admitted, and simple as that. However, I bet that several of the people who get into the programme regrets simply because they cannot grasp Arabic as a language, and finally drop out.</p>
<p>Why do I tell you this? Because this is quite the opposite of what most American colleges and universities do, including MIT. Although you rocked your SATs and have a 4.0 GPA doesn’t mean that you’ll be the next great STEM researcher. Therefore MIT and other schools try to figure out who has the best potential – not who is the best at correcting grammar in a five hour exam. Of course that doesn’t mean that you would be a bad researcher if you have 2400 on your SATs, but there are so many other factors also contributing to your potential as a researcher that colleges and universities try to find. Just think of Einstein and how much he loved (hated) school… Didn’t turn out too bad, did he now?</p>
<p>@harvardlogic13 and @kmcmom13 nailed what is going on.</p>
<p>Sometimes there are too many great candidates and not enough spots. MIT gets upward of 14,000 applications for 1,000 spots. Mos of the applicants who are declined are well qualified.</p>
<p>Sometimes a student with a lower score (but still in the range that predicts their success on campus) is infinitely more interesting and more passionate about their life’s journey than a student with a perfect score who spent their academic career trying to be on top of the heap academically. </p>
<p>Better to stop prepping for the test, and prep for life. Those kids stand the best chance in an already crowded field. And it shows in the interview sessions - trust me.</p>
<p>I think there are several related but distinct issues here that are often confused. The first is whether perfect scores or gpas are particularly impressive. It seems clear to me that a 2400 is not much better than 2390 and that a 4.0 is not much a better than a 3.99. Those differences are just noise. Is a 2400 much better than a 2200? As far as I know there are no publicly released studies on this [I assume some colleges have studied this but don’t release results]. The one exception to this rule that I can think of is tests like the SAT math II and physics subject tests where you can miss a lot of questions and still get an 800. Although a student who gets a 790 on such a test may easily get an 800 on another test, the very best presumably miss very few questions and have enough of a cushion that they are extremely unlikely to get anything less than 800 on another test. It’s not clear if admissions officers use this in admissions decisions though.</p>
<p>Another issue is that “holistic” and “meritocratic” [usually taken to mean academic merit] are often portrayed as opposed. In fact, it is possible to be neither “holistic” nor “meritocratic” [The University of Michigan’s admissions before Grutter could be described this way] and it is possible to both “holistic” and “meritocratic” [PhD admissions could be described this way as ability to conduct research which is evaluated holistically is typically the main criterion].</p>
<p>This is also the issue of whether admissions officers can accurately determine important intangibles like motivation and empathy. The general body of research on similar issues is suggestive that intangibles would be very hard to predict but perhaps admissions officers can predict these things. Or perhaps not.</p>
<p>Another common belief is that MIT admits people primarily based on STEM research potential. I’m pretty sure this is not true [although I wish it was!].</p>
<p>most people who apply to MIT have the credentials. if you dont, your not going to survive, and i assume your pretty much removed from the get go.
now you have a large number of people with near perfect or very high test scores and GPAs. you can’t take a kid over another because he got a 2310 and the other only got a 2290… those scores are too similar. very good scores will get you past the first checkpoint, but a 2400 and a 4.0 wont get you anywhere if you have no EC’s and no personality. no process can be entirely holistic, applications contain imperfect information. but by eliminating legacy and focusing on EC’s and personality, I think MIT comes very close to reaching the holistic threshold.</p>
<p>GolfFather: that is statistically impossible, is it not? There aren’t enough perfect SAT scores to make up 99 percent of the serious applicants, even if every one applied to HYP. </p>
<p>I know I’m picking here, but I also know that statements like that can send kids into a whirlwind of emotional despair.</p>
<p>The median SAT score at MIT is probably something like 2240 [I got this by summing all the 25th and 75th percentiles per section and dividing by 2 so it is probably a small overestimate]. Even if set the cutoff for near-perfect at 2240 which seems really generous only about half of attending students have near-perfect SATs. Presumably then considerably less than half of serious applicants have near-perfect SATs.</p>
But, interestingly, I think there are many people who would call PhD admissions highly non-meritocratic, because they use “meritocratic” as a synonym for “strongly based on stats”, which PhD admissions most emphatically are not.</p>
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For what characteristics do you think MIT is trying to select? I would argue that they’re trying to select for outstanding future alumni, many of whom will (obviously) go on to STEM careers.</p>
<p>I think if your definition of merit is simply stats then you’re defining merit wrong.</p>
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<p>I agree MIT wants outstanding future alumni and that many alumni will go on to STEM careers but it seems the vast majority of alumni do not become STEM researchers. Hence, I think that there is more emphasis on soft skills [leadership, community service, etc.] than I think there would be if MIT simply wanted to maximize research potential. Like I would consider working at an innovative tech start-up as something that MIT values but is decidedly not STEM research. Perhaps I am wrong though.</p>
<p>fwiw, Caltech: “Given our highly competitive applicant pool, the SAT/ACT median scores of our admits are incredibly high, but we still take a holistic approach to evaluating our candidates. We critically read letters from high school counselors, teachers, and research mentors. We evaluate each student’s high school curriculum and grade trends. We read their essays on science and why they are passionate about STEM. We look at extracurricular activities, both STEM-related and not.” [Response</a> to critique of undergrad admissions | The California Tech](<a href=“The California Tech”>The California Tech)</p>
<p>ps. I always think it’s amusing that posters argue with MollieB.</p>
<p>I remember reading somewhere that “Holistic admissions” was implemented in order to reduce the amount of Jews entering the top universities. Many top universities at the time had a very large Jewish enrollment that the top admission people wanted to somewhat curtail. They couldn’t just legally discriminate against them; thus, they came up with a Holistic admission concept in order to get a wider cross section of society into their student body. Today, I think is has morphed to look for many things such as a specific musician, writer , state location of student etc. However, without question, universities can now discriminate without being sued by claiming holistic admission.</p>
True, but that’s also true of top PhD programs, which are unquestionably trying to select the best future researchers. I’ve been really surprised by the number of people in my PhD cohort who are graduating from top labs with good publication records, but not even doing a postdoc (which, in biomedical sciences, = not going in to academia). I have a postdoc lined up, and I’m starting to feel like I might be the cheese, standing alone.</p>
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I think more arguments are always better, but then, that’s also an occupational hazard of being a scientist. Argue away, I say!</p>
<p>And, before I have to get back to doing real work, quoting for truth:
<p>For those interested in a detailed history of the rise of holistic admissions as a means to discriminate against Jews, The Chosen by Jerome Karabel may be worth checking out. I was under the impression that the original intent of holistic admissions was not a broader cross section of society but to keep the elite colleges dominated by the New England WASP elite despite the group’s academic mediocrity. The last sentence is arguable. Although courts have typically been quite deferential of college admissions policies, colleges can still get sued if someone believes they were discriminated against. A federal investigation in the early 1990s of discrimination against Asian-Americans prompted reform at many elite colleges. However, some allege that colleges went back to their old policies pretty soon after the investigation ended [Steven Chu has written extensively on this. Ron Unz’s recent article “The Myth of American Meritocracy” also discusses this in detail]. The deference that courts have shown to college admissions may be somewhat curtailed in in the upcoming Fischer v. Texas case as well. </p>
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<p>That’s a good point but I think the vast majority entering PhD programs intend to be researchers while I don’t most entering freshmen at MIT ever intended to become researchers.</p>