"Make college admissions a crapshoot"

Parents Forum
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<p>"However, we have no confidence in our ability to distinguish among students in that group, and we can still only accept about a third of them. We don't stop trying -- we take it very seriously, and spend a lot of time on it. But if you took the class we admit and replaced it with our waiting list, no one but their parents would notice any difference." When you cut through it, he's saying the same thing as Schwartz, except he doesn't want to argue his job out of existence."</p>

<p>Except that he's lying. The overall student pool might look the same, but the development office would be up in arms at losing multi-million-dollar contributions, as would the regularly contributing alumni, the orchestra director would like resign, the football team would regularly lose to Harvard, and the class would be even whiter, with a median income even higher than it does know. There would be scores of unhappy GCs, feeder schools would be p-o-ed, and...</p>

<p>It is the "standard stump speech". He knows it. (And when they end up with 10 oboeists rather than 3, you have some VERY UNHAPPY students.) The students are "fully qualified", but relative to whom they took in building a class, they are LESS qualified. (Imagine him making the opposite speech: "Hey, yous rejects, yous a bunch of losers!") The point is, the single easiest way to increase prestige is to REJECT lots of good candidates.</p>

<p>Now to qualify that: one of the odd things that happens is that as more and more students are rejected, beyond a certain point, "selectivity" actually declines (this is not contradictory). This is because once one goes beyond the law of diminishing returns, the vagaries of yield and "chemistry" that go into building a class become greater. It becomes less predictable as to who will actually attend, who will fill out all the departments, etc. But the answer to that is to make selection LESS rather than more random, evaluating "interest", developing closer relationships with GCs, making it easier for low-income students to attend (if that is a goal), and competing with the Emories and Vanderbilts of the world by offering small scholarships to the near-wealthy in lieu of loans. And that is precisely what schools like Yale are doing.</p>

<p>NOTHING is random.</p>

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<p>Mini -- You're quibbling. He wasn't talking about developmental admits, or filling needs for oboe players (something he addressed separately). As for alumni, only about 25% of the legacy applicants are accepted, and the ones not accepted often include pretty heavy donors, and more kids from feeder schools than are actually accepted. </p>

<p>And your last long paragraph, I don't follow at all. Yale has a yield of 75% on the people it admits. In essence, it's completely predictable who will actually attend: it's whoever is admitted.</p>

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<p>I can't believe I'm agreeing more with JHS than mini. :)</p>

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<p>The GFG:</p>

<p>I do believe you are countering your own argument! :) If there is a possibility that the fabulous oboe player will decide to play ultimate frisbee, then the adcom will admit 3 or 4 oboe players. ditto the athletes, and so on. Which is why I argued that once the niches have been filled (and overfilled), the pool from among which applicants can be accepted at random grows quite small (and I have not even discussed development admits, facbrats and legacies).</p>

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<p>Once again, I think the point is being missed. Schwartz is suggesting that a random selection from a minimally qualified (for that institution) and self-selected (in that they applied) applicant pool will yield a reasonable distribution of scholars, athletes, legacies, etc. He is not suggesting applying random selection after micro-managing specific "slots" (which, as marite points out, would leave about 8 openings). This is furthermore defensible given that the admitted QB may elect to join the choir instead. The random selection may not yield a QB or an oboe player, but life will go on (even if the team does lose to Harvard - most years it does anyway). It is exactly his point that some students (or, rather, parents) will choose the oboe because they read here that selective colleges need oboe players. It is this "desperate adolescence" that may stifle students' intellectual risk-taking and individual growth.</p>

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<p>The oboe player example may not be a good choice. From what I could tell, there is rarely any preference given to musicians by any of the Ivies or highly elite schools. There are usually about enough fairly talented musicians to fill an orchestra and if not faculty members or outsiders are invited and sometimes paid to play.</p>

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<p>It is randomness itself to attempt to distinguish between a 3.83 and a 3.91 (or a 740 math vs. a 760). In fact, it is intellectually dishonest to do so, and it is better for colleges to be up front about it than lay claim to some superiority based upon it. </p>

<p>Having thus been freed from retaking SATs to move a 740 to a 760 (or a 3.8 to a 3.9) students might take, say, a class on grammar, or film, or modern relationships, and not just 10 APs designed to look good for admissions.</p>

<p>The notion of a "best" class that does not owe its existence to large helpings of randomness is, well ... not a view I share.</p>

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<p>The colleges we're talking about strenuously deny that they care about the difference between a 740 and a 760, or between a 3.83 and a 3.91. I believe them. It's the kids who overvalue those numbers. Also, I think some state schools that get 40,000 applications use them to cut down the number of applications someone actually has to read (and the HYPS schools probably do that, too), but I am not sure the bar is set at an illegitimately high level for those purposes, or that there aren't plenty of exceptions for 300-pound offensive linemen, oboists, and the like.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Therefore, for the lottery idea to work, it must be adopted with virtually no exceptions. Criteria for "good enough" can be sufficiently flexible that applicants who are athletes, violinists, members of minority groups, or from Alaska get credit for those characteristics, but there can be no guarantees of admission. I know that many institutions say they don't guarantee admission. If that is true, it will make my proposal easier to put into effect. My suspicion, however, is that some special talents are currently weighted so heavily that it is hard to imagine what could possibly tip the balance against admission.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Actually, Schwarcz seems to contradict himself here. He suggests giving credit for certain types of students but laments that "some special talents are currently weighted so heavily that it is hard to imagine what could possibly tip the balance against admission." It sounds as if he wants to give a tip, but not too much of a tip. So when does a tip become a hook?</p>

<p>It would depend on the size of the school and the size of the pool. For his own institution, random admissions with minimal tips might generate totally imbalanced classes (no oboes one year, a surfeit in another). For a large school, this might not matter as much. In fact, large state schools are able to achieve diversity without trying, using the "admissible" standards he advocates because they admit such large classes.</p>

<p>I also agree with JHS that it's parents and students who overvalue the difference between 750 and 800. I've read my share of "I got a 780 on my SATII-Physics; argh.... should I retake?"</p>

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<p>What an interesting article! I see this from a different perspective - the "Is it worth what our kids give up to get into these schools?" perspective since these schools are so very competitive to get into. As an AP teacher, I have to say that many of the kids who are totally focused on getting into the best colleges are obsessed with it from 7th grade. I am now in a rural area, but this was very true in my old school, a more suburban area with more ambitious students and parents. I see how these kids don't take art, they don't take tech courses like drafting and architectural drawing, or business courses that might help them manage money later on, and often they don't do band, or chorus, because it will cut into their study time. They play sports, many because it will look good on their applications, they run for class offices, but the majority of these kids don't have passions other than to get into a top school. (Notice I said "most," not "all" driven kids are like this, and most of the less driven kids are even less passionate about things, which is a whole other story.)</p>

<p>Intellectual curiousity?? They are mostly curious if what I am teaching is going to be on the test. I would love to have the kid I read about on the scholarship thread, who went and read primary documents for literature studied in class - but in 15 years of teaching, I have only seen one or two of them. Most of the ambitious kids are on the treadmill of wake up-school- study-sports-sleep, do it all over again. </p>

<p>Now, as a parent of a junior for whom I asked advice on another thread, right now I would LOVE to be dealing with one of those ambitious kids who are giving themselves every opportunity to succeed. But really, to be honest, I wouldn't want that for my child, if he had to sacrifice what I see a lot of kids sacrificing - sitting still and looking at the dust motes, being silent, listening to the rain drip off of the roof, or whatever makes them happy and gives them a few moments of calm in their lives.
These kids just don't have the time for that in their busy, competitive lives.</p>

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<p>Perhaps Schwartz would not consider no oboes vs. a surfeit as "totally imbalanced". I understand it is only an example, but the point is that some yearly variation in specific slots will not defeat the educational mission, and will be outweighed by the benefit of mitigating the gamesmanship (his assumption, not mine).</p>

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<p>


</p>

<p>Hypothesis: A random sample from the "good enough to admit" pile will do as well and gain as much as a subset chosen by "an entire class of highly trained, educated, experienced, and dedicated professionals."</p>

<p>Tested by: Give 1,000 professors a dollar. Ask them to bet on one of the two strategies.</p>

<p>Anyone want to guess which approach would attract the most bets from professors? I can't say I know the answer, but it would be a fascinating trial.</p>

<p>I'd bet on random selection, myself.</p>

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<p>I'm aware that they deny that they make such distinctions about gpa and test scores, but I don't believe them. I'm sure that they rank a 2240 as higher than a 2180, and it's the same score, statistically.</p>

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<p>Washdad:</p>

<p>But you're talking about only one set of stakeholders: the profs. the adcoms have to be concerned about the orchestra and choirs, the basketball team and the ballet group, the college newspaper; not to mention potential donors and alums. And even among the profs, there will be dissension. About ten years ago, I had an earful from profs at a top (small) school who were venting against adcoms for admitting too many econ majors and not enough classics majors. Their argument was not that the econ majors were undoubtedly more qualified, but that the adcom had their eyes trained of future donations. Prospective econ majors were obviously more likely to strike it rich than classics majors. </p>

<p>As a matter of fact, profs will also say that a mixture of students may be a good thing. A class full of history majors may benefit from having anthropology, government or economics majors in it, or indeed science or humanities majors (and that's not even considering other types of diversity).</p>

<p>As for oboists, their absence or presence has a bearing on what music can be played. Same as football. If not enough students are interested in rowing, you can't have a successful crew.</p>

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<p>MSUdad:</p>

<p>2180 and 2220 are the same statistically. 2240 is pushing it. But our S's GC mentioned the psychological effect of breaking the 100 barriers, whether it's 2100 or 2200 or 2300. So 2180 is the same as 2200, but 2200 is more impressive. So a better argument is that adcoms consider 2350 the same as 2400; and perhaps, they consider 2300 the same as 2400.</p>

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<p>"But the answer to that is to make selection LESS rather than more random,"</p>

<p>Mini,
The author and the adcom seem to be saying the process can't be made less random when picking from a large pool of essentially equal candidates regardless of whether they are selected blindly or by evaluating each candidate. The university can fulfill its mission either way. However, from the applicant's standpoint it matters very much how the selections are made. That is why the adcom concedes, "no one but their parents would notice any difference."</p>

<p>I may judge Lowe's and Home Depot as essentially the same store with equal pricing. Both can supply me with the materials I need to accomplish the task at hand. It doesn't matter to me which store I go to, but Lowe's and Home Depot both care very much which store I go to.</p>

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<p>"Hypothesis: A random sample from the "good enough to admit" pile will do as well and gain as much as a subset chosen by "an entire class of highly trained, educated, experienced, and dedicated professionals."</p>

<p>Wrong research question because it is based on poorly formed hypothesis. You wouldn't have Harvard admitting a "happy bottom quarter" under such circumstances, nor would "do as well" or "gain as much" come anywhere close to encompassing the school's institutional mission. Nor would they weigh individual performance very highly in accounting for their success or failure.</p>

<p>Profs might bet one way or the other. They aren't given the same charge as the admissions office.</p>

<p>"The university can fulfill its mission either way."</p>

<p>Anyone who says that is lying at worst, being disingenous at best. Try it out the first time they reject the $20 million donor.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
If not enough students are interested in rowing, you can't have a successful crew.

[/quote]

And yet the world will not end.</p>

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<p>Of course, the world will not end. But you won't have the same college or the same college experience. The world will not end if whole departments are abolished, if profs cease teaching, if.... if.... So what? Is that an argument?</p>

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<p>But you will have A college experience, simply one that is absent rowing. Which is unlikely to be an issue for 99% of the student body. And Schwartz's point (again and again and again) is that by eliminating the micromanagement of admission, the OVERALL experience of the student body will be enhanced, because it would be a more robust, intellectually risk-taking, non-careerist cohort (his thesis, not mine, but I do sympathize).</p>