If I were an AO I’d first ask why? Why did the kid do this? Do I see a clear pattern and evidence of intrinsic motivation in some direction or other? Or is this kid grinding for no better reason other than in the pursuit of some edge to be gained (real or imagined).
Why should one motivation be better than the other? Is this the stated goal of colleges to reward some types of motivation and not others? Is this part of their mission statement?
And are AOs competent to suss out these motivations reliably? Often being some 22 year old kids themselves …
If those are their goals, it looks like arrogance to me.
3 Likes
I’m curious: what would this evidence look like?
1 Like
Since when is everything spelled out in a schools mission statement? And yes, motivations are not equal and most info sessions make that pretty clear. It’s not very difficult to see if a kid is checking boxes or pursuing depth in an area of passion when you look at the whole picture.
3 Likes
I did not know it is so easy to see kids motivations 
It is an arbitrary way of making decisions.
It means if I were an AO I can arbitrarily attribute some motivations to you. And you have no recourse.
You should be disturbed by this.
It is also the tool by which some kinds of bias are expressed.
4 Likes
It is called holistic admissions. At the end of the day it is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?
That is an abuse of the word holistic.
If holistic means anything goes, there will come a time when that word will be litigated.
How would an applicant to HYP who writes “I want to go to HYP so that I can major in economics and go to work in Wall Street or management consulting after graduation and make a lot of money” in the essays be looked at? That is likely the genuine and honest motivation of many, but would that honesty be viewed positively by HYP admission readers?
Holistic admissions in the modern sense is supposed to mean evaluating an application based on multiple factors. Trying to discern the motivations of an applicant (really not sure how one would do that) isn’t necessary.
Unless we’re talking about the original intent of holistic admissions, which was specifically meant to screen out, or at least reduce the number of, undesirable applicants.
1 Like
Ok. So maybe I am misreading what was said, and not taking “motivation” literally enough.
I think AOs read a “package” and try to get get a picture of who this kid is, to understand them. As such, they may interpret some of the choices/results of a path presented to them, the journey in front of them. Are they, at some level, interpreting a “motivation”? Isn’t that part of the process?
I interpret that as determining the depth and coherence of an application, which is perfectly fine. For example, a student who claims a passion for something but only started their non-profit/volunteering activity a few months earlier and joined a club in senior year isn’t convincing.
But discerning motivation is looking at two applicants with similarly strong accomplishments (say, math research and competitive math awards) and saying applicant A is intrinsically motivated and B is just a grind looking to gain an admissions advantage. There’s no way for the AO to objectively determine that, and it would therefore imply a bias.
2 Likes
Come on folks. You’re kidding, right?
As far as the difference, IME across several distinct careers over more decades than I’d care to admit, supervising something in the area of 2500 employees collectively over the years, mindless grinders are waaaay more likely to burn out, less likely to do the best work across the longest arc, less likely to be empathic, less likely to be good team players, etc. Whereas people who truly love what they do are the opposite, more or less.
And if you can’t spot the difference I don’t know what to say. It’s pretty plain to me, and not only in professional spheres. I’ve interviewed for my alma mater for decades and can spot the difference a mile away. Why you think AOs couldn’t do the same is bizarre to me. I know several. They can.
6 Likes
It’s a good thing colleges don’t use holistic admissions to screen out the number of undesireable applicants anymore. That would be unthinkable to a school like Harvard in the modern age, I’m sure…
They say that during job interviews, the interviewer is primarily trying to assess whether or not they would want to work with you - and that includes having a skill set, but it also includes things like personality, how passionate/internally motivated you are, how willing you seem to help coworkers out when needed, and things of that nature. I have often wondered whether AOs have a similar attitude of trying to imagine which students they would want to be in a class with (who would work hard, ask good questions, keep up their end in group projects, contribute ideas - which includes not only having interesting ideas, but also the willingness to share them with others…). I have no idea whether they consider things of that nature, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
2 Likes
I agree. Also many grad school admissions committees do, but that’s off topic.
1 Like
The ones I know definitely do.
1 Like
You’re mixing being able to assess someone you work with vs a student you only know from their application. If you meant being able to assess an applicant’s depth, sincerity, etc as Tony mentioned above, that’s fine. But if you’re talking about discerning motivation, we can agree to disagree.
Perhaps you can provide an example of how they’d know someone has intrinsic motivation?
That’s determining fit, not discerning motivation.
1 Like
OK, but what is fit and what does it include? In some cases, might it include motivation?
1 Like
Suppose I were to start by saying that most high school curriculum is trivial, and if you didn’t get a 4.0 on it, you lack motivation :-).
I think it is not a bad premise to start with. Now what do we do with the rest of the kids who are below a 4.0?
I also think that if you didn’t take the highest rigor courses available at your school, you are a slacker , and don’t have motivation.
We can go down this route, with very plausible definitions …
At least these are well defined definitions.
For any college, there are more desirable and less desirable applicants, as defined by the college. When the college is selective (i.e. not open admission), its admission process aims to produce admits who are most desirable (both individually and in aggregate) to the college. This does not mean that the admission process has to be holistic or non-holistic.
1 Like