<p>Your conjecture isn’t backed by hard facts either. For all you know, Harvard flips a coin when deciding between two applicants.</p>
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<p>nobody claims that it is a complete meritocracy. I just don’t think most of us can attest to having been actually affected by this imperfection. it works most of the time.</p>
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That assumes that admissions officers compare each candidate individually to every other candidate. “Do we take Student A or Student B? Well, Student A has x and so over Student B. So we’ll take A. Now do we take A or C?” They don’t do that (aside from the fact that they don’t have time). They’re building a class, and a lot of accept/reject decisions are made on the basis of gestalt. What do we see in this application that says this person will bring something we want to our campus? It’s not a side-by-side comparison of candidates.</p>
<p>“.But each of these “trained professionals” will have different opinions and subtle biases, so, in the end, it’s still not a complete meritocracy.”</p>
<p>Of course, getting into college isn’t a complete meritocracy. Such a system is more likely to exist in places like Asia/Europe in which college admissions is based virtually entirely on test scores. That’s far from the case in the U.S. where at many colleges – particularly the very top ones – admissions officers pick and choose from applicant to create a well rounded class.</p>
<p>Ok. Listen. There’s a book about admissions at Wesleyan The Gatekeeper (which I think citygirlsmom has been referring to), which was written ten years ago when things weren’t even as crazy competitive they are now. It follows admissions officers through the season. </p>
<p>This book and the adcom it focuses on LITERALLY says that people who would have been accepted if their app was read in early February are rejected in late March because the adcoms had been admitting too many people earlier, and had to be more selective. It LITERALLY says that when your ED apps are read is pure luck (not based on when they get turned in or anything). It’s not like the adcoms read through all the apps, and then decide who to accept…although some apps get discussed, many just go through a couple of readers. Obviously, a totally outstanding app will be let in no matter what, but the adcoms are not going to go back and compare each and every very good app to each and every other very good app to decide which very good app is better. If you happen to be a girl (or econ major, or violin player, etc) with a very good app read during the last few weeks and they’ve already admitted too many girls (or whatever), well, that really is just bad luck for you. You may very well have been admitted if you were one of the first apps read.</p>
<p>This is not about who was qulified each year, even. It’s about who was qualified on a day-to-day basis, and since which day your app gets read on is pure luck…well, seems like there is a luck factor to me.</p>
<p>PS. I’ve got no stake in this debate, since I got into my first choice ED.</p>
<p>Depends on the definitions. There are a bunch of events which take place, not one, with regard to admission. In terms of each applicant, these have different odds that are affected by a number of different things. Person who is reading your file is in the midst of a messy divorce with a person who has the same name as yours and is mad at the world on that day because of a letter that arrived from a lawyer that is really creating a problem (could happen). If you think about it, there are really a lot of little events that add up to help you get in or not. If a sufficient number line up properly you make it if not you don’t. Is it luck (good or bad) or simply the reality of the process? And is luck simply a shortcut way of capturing these myriad of events?</p>
<p>I heard somewhere that the job of admissions officers (of elite schools) is not to admit individual students, but to assemble a class. I’m sure this only applies to ultra-selective colleges where holistic admissions are necessary because of so many good applicants that are above a certain threshold. Most applicants are qualified, so it comes down to who they feel fit into their image of a good student body. As Northstarmom mentioned, a lot of it is based on things that are beyond your control. Down the ladder, admissions are usually more predictable and quantifiable.</p>
<p>And as a side note, I believe that some people were incorrectly throwing around the term “ad hominem.” It specifically refers to the effort of debunking another’s proposed argument by attacking them personally rather than logically. It’s entirely different from “blaming” or “making excuses,” which is what I interpret to be the meaning of the previous uses. I don’t mean to be difficult or the one that points out trivial things, but it bugged me.</p>
<p>Take care =D</p>