@T26E4 I agree completely with what you have said. I agree that having completely based merit decisions would not allow for the most futuristic, forward-thinking pioneers. Instead, you would have a diversity-lacking, uniform, class of 2400 admits of which a large percentage are Asian.
We need the non-merit part of the application as well. That is why American schools are consistently ranked the best in the world, and schools such as Peking and Tsinghua, and the Indian IITs are not, although they are considerably harder to gain admission to. And that process is trust me, completely meritocratic. The IIT exams are impossible. The SAT is actually a joke compared to them. Seriously check out some IIT questions if you have time.
But back to my point, that is why American schools or on top, or at least partly why. Because the applicants are evaluated holistically. But the problem with that is, what is a good “holistic” candidate? Who is to say that Asian kid you just rejected isn’t a “holistic” candidate? No one but the admissions committees at the top tier schools, of course. And the fact of the matter is, simply a meritocratic system is the optimal, most fair, and standardized way to evaluate applicants, because everyone’s perception of a perfect “well-rounded” applicant, or “hooked” as we would call it, is different. That is why you can have something get into Harvard but not Yale. My case for example…I was waitlisted at Carnegie Mellon with a 15-16% acceptance rate, and accepted at Duke. But alas, there are those rejected to both, accepted to both, and so on. There are infinite number of combinations among the top schools, and the college admissions process is very random. Thus, the problem becomes one of uncertainty.
If I know that Harvard will accept me, and Harvard is my first choice, I wouldn’t apply anywhere else. But one does not have that guarantee, because who knows what Harvard wants? The admission officer at that particular date at that particular time who happened to read your application and felt good that day so decided to admit you. This speaks to the larger concept of why meritocracy is so efficient but not necessarily flawless. A pure meritocracy has its downfalls, as evidenced above. But, alas, it is still definitely the most fair.
And yes, life is not and should not be fair all the times.
In response to the questions of the internationals, I believe that is kind of another controversial topic. Yes, I believe that international students should gain more seats (based on my meritocracy principle). But if you look at the way things are and for what reason they are that way, it makes sense that American universities prioritize American students. That is a very difficult and controversial standpoint though, and to be honest, I am not even really sure what is right, what is fair, or what should be on that front. Hats off to you for bringing that up.
But, when I speak to the problems with the current admissions process, there are a few big ones. As I said before, no one can be sure where they will gain admission to. It is simply just too random, especially if you are part of the “general pool”. And what does that do? That’s right, jack up the number of applicants. People don’t even want to go X school for example, they much rather go to A, B, C, or D. But they apply to X anyways because it is a good school, and they would still definitely get a good education, and it opens up more doors than their instate public. That was the case for me with Duke. It wasn’t one of my top (OMG I love this school) choices, even though I am loving it more with every day. But I applied because I knew getting into HYPSM is tough. So, the problem with this uncertainty is that the number of applicants is jacked up, and every year it gets worse. And every year more people apply. The acceptance rates drop continuously. And when people see the acceptance rate get lower, it just causes people to apply to even more places, and it is cyclical. This process will continuously get worse. And when Harvard receives 100,000 applicants for 1500 spots in its class one day, to some extent they could have picked 3000 of those kids, that would have been basically like the 1800-2000 (80% yield rate) they would have admitted a few years prior, and it will LITERALLY be picking out of a hat. It will just get even more random. That is the biggest problem. And you may think, acceptance rates haven’t dropped that much year to year, but yes they have. If Harvard was 5.9% last year, and is 5.3% this year, every tenth of a percentage point is huge. Just look at it this way. To go from 5% to 2.5%, which is “only a 2.5% drop”, you would need twice as many applicants. So every percentage point when it gets to such low acceptance rates indicates that several thousand more have applied.
It is not because Harvard is getting any better. It is because people are just unsure of their admission decisions evermore. And one day, it will literally be completely random for who is admitted from the top 30% of qualified applicants. And, that, is definitely unfair.
