I agree, in some cases that is true. In many other cases (athletes, developmental admits, legacies), I find that harder to believe. Meanwhile schools are rejecting students with objectively stronger credentials. How many of those, I’m wondering, have interesting qualities that are not being exposed by the current approach?<br>
I was not referring to the hooked applicants as the casual ones (and agree that many hooked applicants are quite determined). I was referring to the many applicants who do not really even have any hooks. Due to the lack of transparency, the mystery about what “hooks” entail, many students apply who have virtually no chance of being admitted (because they believe the process is a crap-shoot). If clear, objective, threshold criteria were established, I believe those applications (in addition to those of the lower-scoring “hooks”) would decrease. They would no longer bother to apply.</p>
<p>Of course, all this is a little speculative, and probably not critical to the question of whether a robust interview system would be practical (if we chose to have one). Our schools could follow the British model, if not by having a lower applicant load, then by not devoting so much energy to inspecting all the extracurricular hoo-ha. Simply take it on faith that bright, vibrant people will find interesting things to do with their free time.</p>
<p>Lol, tk21769, I love your link to the Oxbridge interview questions, especially the one about Ovid’s chat-up line! I have posted two others elsewhere, that you’ve probably seen already–“How would you get a horse on board a trireme?” and “Who would wear a four-in-hand, Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Disraeli?” Another interesting question, from Law: “Can a man make a contract with God?” Their approach works well for them. </p>
<p>Oxbridge colleges do practice a variant on affirmative action, though, mainly based on the type of pre-university schooling. They have been trying to increase the number of students from comprehensive schools (which might be called something different by now).</p>
<p>I doubt that there are many underqualified students who are applying to HYPSM. That’s why their adcoms can say that 80% of applicants are qualified. The applicants are already self-selected. There are just far more of them than applicants to Oxbridge. Do the math: the US population is six times larger than that of the UK. Oxbridge together have about 23k undergrads. HYPSM together have less than 30k. It means an awful lot more American students clamoring to get into HYPSM than UK students applying to Oxbridge. Even if the initial pool were reduced by more than the 20% deemed not qualified, it would still be larger.</p>
<p>^ I don’t know why we’re suddenly comparing the whole population of HYPSM to the whole Oxbridge population. Students don’t apply to a consortium, they apply to individual schools. Our individual schools are smaller than theirs. Now for all I know, maybe we do have more applicants. However, if 25% of matriculated students score lower than 700 on the verbal SAT even at Harvard, wouldn’t it stand to reason that many more applicants score lower? The Ivies are not famously self-selecting. Reed and Chicago are famously self-selecting. Those are schools that really do emphasize intellectual merit to the exclusion of all the other baloney. To expose talent, Reed uses challenging interviews (define free will); Chicago uses off-the-wall essay topics (Put two or three ideas or items in a particle accelerator thought experiment. Smash 'em up. What emerges?). </p>
<p>If top schools can muster up to slog their way through thousands of essays and LORs and Arts Supplements and school guidance letters and Coach reports, they can muster up, somehow, to conduct serious interviews. In fact, back in the “thousand male leaders” heyday, they did. One notorious technique was to have a window nailed shut in a stuffy room. In the middle of the interview, one would announce, “My it’s warm in here! Say, could you open that window please?” Then quietly observe the young man’s “determination” and “resourcefulness”. The goal of the interview was not to expose intellectual talent. It was to gin up one more basis to accept a dull, rich WASP instead of a high-scoring Jew. Plus ca change.</p>
<p>The proof is in the pudding. It is in the disproportionate numbers of Ph.D.'s and college presidents who started out at schools like Reed and Chicago, versus the disproportionate number of determined, resourceful, broad shouldered and jut-jawed Ivy-trained doo doo heads who run the country’s iBanks and insurance companies (not to mention the swaggering little Legacy who ran the country for the last 8 years).</p>
<p>Quantmech: Yes, I saw your posts. Wonderful! My favorite is the “trireme” question.</p>
<p>Oxbridge = Oxford + Cambridge. Just a way of lumping the two together, sort of like HYP, HYPS, HYPSM, HYPSM+C . . .
Don’t actually know the origin of this–might be interesting.</p>
<p>It’s called a portmanteau word (a kind of blending or contraction).
Other examples:
“spork” = “spoon” + “fork” (a new kind of plastic utensil)
“Motown” = “motor” + “town” (Detroit)
“Dixiecrat” = “Dixie” + “democrat” (southern Democrat)
“brunch” = “breakfast” + “lunch”</p>
<p>tk21769, you are a man after my own heart. I love your emphasis on intellectual merit, your dismissal of the rest of the baloney, and your sense of humor! Brilliant!</p>
<p>Quantmech wrote to me to say my S would have loved the Oxbridge interview. Perhaps he would have. However, when it came time to decide where to apply, he eliminated schools where the student body would not be diverse–academically and otherwise. He’s been introduced to different perspectives and interests that I did not think he would have been exposed to when he started in college.
Colleges see the value of diversity not just for themselves but also for their students.</p>
<p>“Some of them [wealthy urm students] are equally insulated rich white kids for all intents and purposes.”</p>
<p>That may be true in some rare cases, but it is far from the general rule. I remember a news story several years ago when the actor Danny Glover was unable to hail a cab in midtown. Even if the taxi drivers didn’t recognize his as a film star, but still he was well-dressed (indicating affluence) and his black skin trumped all. </p>
<p>The Danny Glover scenario is not uncommon, even for wealthy and famous blacks. One basketball player was washing his car, a white man drove up and asked him how much he was charging; a black actor reported getting into an elevator with his dog and upon seeing the other occupant, a white woman cringe, he commanded, “sit” - - both the woman and the dog sat on the floor. </p>
<p>I have had similar experiences myself. Once, when meeting my D at her top tier day school, one of D’s white classmates ran up and hugged me. An older student who had escorted the younger ones to the lobby asked D’s classmate, “Is that your babysitter?” And I remember D saying that she liked to wear her school uniform, even to play in the park, b/c when wearing the uniform, people knew she attended Fancy Day School and treated her better.</p>
<p>These sorts of things happen to black people all the time - - and, as the Danny Glover story demonstrates, wealth and fame do not insulate or otherwise protect black adults or their children from outrageous racially insensitive conduct to which their affluent White counterparts are rarely, if ever subjected.</p>
<p>Re post 84:
Actually, American students apply to multiple schools. Which means there is a large overlap among the applicants to similar schools. My general point is that there are far more American students who are qualified to apply to top schools than there are UK students qualified to apply to Oxbridge simply because of the larger size of the American population. Which means it would take more members of the faculty to interview all the qualified applicants.</p>
<p>As for using a cutting off floor, I think it is a very risk-averse strategy. My reservations have nothing to do with diversity per se, but with being willing to take a risk on a late bloomer or someone who is lopsided, or someone whose talents are not captured by high test scores.</p>
<p>Re post 90: I agree. I merely want to point out that there are different types of experiences–both positive and negative–and perspectives that are worth contributing to a student body.</p>