My Soul Mate at Swarthmore

<p>Even beyond qualified applicants in terms of standardized scores and ranks, it is becoming more difficult to distinguish one’s self in the applicant pool. Students are moving passed the concept of perfect scores and community service to stand out, which is why it is difficult to determine one students fate of the other, who are essentially more similar candidates than ever- and perhaps why this concept is so intriguing.</p>

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<p>Have you lived anywhere else besides the United States?</p>

<p>Not sure what you’re trying to imply…</p>

<p>This is an interesting article. :)</p>

<p>I dont think a random lottery is ridiculous. I happen to be in the camp that believes the SAT is a poor and inexact measurement of success in college. Countless times kids with high but not perfect SAT’s perform as well as kids who did. I am also in the camp that believes the real agenda of the super elite schools is that exclusive club for success (or so they think), called the alumni association…or in some schools Skull and Bones or similar private clubs. Why? Because they know deep down that there are brilliant college graduates at almost every school in the country so it comes down to who you know, not always what you know. Not just for the beginning entry level jobs either. Often the CEO’s and CFO’s pick each other for precisely the same reason. And we can all see where that got us recently with the collapse of Wall Street and the circus in Washington, right?</p>

<p>I don’t envy the adcoms their task each admissions season. Its a tough job. And we can all cringe when we hear (or sometimes see here) the people whom we wouldn’t admit to National Dogcatcher School being admitted to an Ivy or super elite school. People with character issues or 'hooks. </p>

<p>But we all know that the Rhodes, Fulbright and Truman Scholarship Committees grant their prestigious fellowships to students from all over the country and often to second and even third tier schools. And medical, dental, law and architecture schools admit students from the same schools. And therein lies the answer.</p>

<p>Administrations, most particularly of elite private institutions, will never join, advocate, support, or applaud any system that does not allow “developmental” admits. They will never willingly change the current system because that system brought them to prominance.</p>

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I think your recollection is correct that you first drew my attention to that existing method of handling admission anxiety.
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<p>epiphany I too remember that conversation we had about the NRMP program for colleges.</p>

<p>Sally the financial aid part could be taken care of by students (and parents) pre-qualifying for aid, so they know exactly what they will get at each college.</p>

<p>I say get rid of the “randomness” by devaluing all these BS EC’s. Why should a kid have to spend 4 hours afterschool every day doing more work? Can’t they be kids and have fun instead of growing plants for their science fair project or volunteering at a homeless shelter just to get into Princeton? I understand that some of these competitions and such demonstrate academic ability, but there are much easier ways of colleges getting this kind of information. Most EC’s should be minimal time requirements, like the AMC/AIME tests. </p>

<p>I say switch over to the Law School admissions process. Look at grades and very difficult (LSAT) standardized test scores. Pretty simple and it’s fair. Most people can pretty much tell where they’ll get in when applying to Law School.</p>

<p>I am actively involved with selecting our residents for postgraduate medical training, and it is not possible to apply the resident match system to undergraduate education for many reasons,some of which were already mentioned-ie financial.
Prequalifying students financially would be impossible due to last minute changes in the parents finances-just look at what has happened this year!
The resident match is still far from a perfect system and many students still end up having to “scramble” for any kind of open position every year when they are not successful.
The huge numbers of high school students each year would make this largely unworkable, and the stress level is still extremely high for medical students.
Despite all attempts to carefully screen applicants and evaluate all applicants each year, there are still many students who although they may get their first choice training program can and do end up being asked to leave programs for various academic and other reasonsl</p>

<p>“Prequalifying students financially would be impossible due to last minute changes in the parents finances-just look at what has happened this year!”</p>

<p>I am not sure the matching system will work or not but I think pressure on both students and parents will be reduced if colleges move the admission and financial aid application process to the end of the senior year.</p>

<p>^Moving it to the end of the senior year would give both schools and families very little time to get their acts together for final decision-making followed by move-in and enrollment in September. The whole acceptance, commitment, and waitlist procress would have to be compressed to about a week. Not feasibile.</p>

<p>cblintonck notes"This is quite possibly the most honest and insightful thing I’ve ever heard from a college admissions officer. It suggests that in a way, we already have a pretty “random” process for college admissions at the most selective colleges, in which once candidates pass a certain bar of qualifications, they’re going to be selected more for the sake of variety of interests and backgrounds rather than on the basis of fine gradations of relative merit. Of course, that’s not pure randomness in the sense that adcoms aren’t making random decisions. But it is random in the sense that there’s a certain randomness to how any individual candidate’s interests and background stack up against the interests and background stack up against the subjective and largely non-merit criteria the adcom is looking for at the precise moment that particular candidate’s file comes up for consideration. </p>

<p>If you look at it that way, it becomes apparent that a lot of the stress associated with college admissions is self-induced, predicated upon a false assumption on the part of students and their parents that college admissions is a purely merit-based game, and therefore every acceptance or rejection should be construed as an indication of where the candidate falls in a rank order of merit. 'Tain’t so. Lighten up, people"</p>

<p>Response: I completely agree. Many times admission’s officers make subjective decision which seem to “dance on the head of a needle.” Normally, I would agree that they should simply have a lottery for those kids who pass a first screen of competance. I don’t think it would make one bit of difference as to the quality of the overall class. HOWEVER, the problem is that most schools need a wide variety of majors in order to fill up their departments. A lottery might provide an overabundance of liberal arts majors to the detriment of the math and science departments, as an example. Thus, a pure lottery won’t work.</p>

<p>Bizarro. I don’t know how my partial post 27 got posted, since I never submitted it, I thought. <em>shrug</em></p>

<p>I was trying to say that I didn’t know that a match system for undergrads had been suggested at the same time (or prior to) my suggestion of it and the similar suggestion of other cc parents. I wasn’t pointing to a (known) match system.</p>

<p>dontno: "I say get rid of the “randomness” by devaluing all these BS EC’s. Why should a kid have to spend 4 hours afterschool every day doing more work? Can’t they be kids and have fun instead of growing plants for their science fair project or volunteering at a homeless shelter just to get into Princeton? I understand that some of these competitions and such demonstrate academic ability, but there are much easier ways of colleges getting this kind of information. Most EC’s should be minimal time requirements, like the AMC/AIME tests. </p>

<p>I say switch over to the Law School admissions process. Look at grades and very difficult (LSAT) standardized test scores. Pretty simple and it’s fair. Most people can pretty much tell where they’ll get in when applying to Law School. "</p>

<p>I completely agree and couldn’t say it better.</p>

<p>Does the United States Military Academy use the law school process? Should it?</p>

<p>I can’t help but imagine the sons and daughters of potentially big donors getting their name in the hat more than once.</p>

<p>"dontno: "I say get rid of the “randomness” by devaluing all these BS EC’s. Why should a kid have to spend 4 hours afterschool every day doing more work? Can’t they be kids and have fun instead of growing plants for their science fair project or volunteering at a homeless shelter just to get into Princeton? "</p>

<p>Colleges that care about ECs aren’t looking for kids who’d prefer to “have fun” instead of being in clubs, volunteering, playing sports, etc. Colleges that care about ECs are looking for students whose idea of fun is being in clubs, volunteering, etc. Those colleges know that such students will continue to have that kind of fun while in college, thus helping the college maintain something that makes such colleges very different than are many others: having a vibrant, active campus life that is student-directed.</p>

<p>Saying this as an Ivy graduate who long after graduation continues to be very active in clubs, arts, and a variety of other things because I find such activities to be fun.</p>

<p>This is an interesting debate, and I’ve felt for at least three years, since my eldest was applying, that the admissions process is, indeed, fairly random. She went to an amazing magnet school with incredibly bright, high achieving students. After adjusting for race and socio-economic factors, admission to elite schools was seemingly random. </p>

<p>While schools do some pre-screening for “fit” and a “balanced class”, there is a point where they seem to randomly accept from within the same pool-- in our case, the white-and-Asian-major metro area middle class suburbanites. From that pool, I have joked the adcoms take the files, toss them in the air, and it depends on where the file lands as to whether the child is rejected, wait-listed, or admitted. </p>

<p>Even assuming they really, truly, read the applicant’s whole file, it has to be a challenge to say “yes, no, or maybe”. This is why some schools (Wash U when my D applied) have impossibly long wait-lists. It’s no surprise that adcom turnover is incredibly high. </p>

<p>Switching to a lottery after initial prescreening would make adcom lives easier and would present students with less of a feeling of rejection when not selected. I love the match idea, as well, it seems incredibly sane. </p>

<p>I’ve also thought we could save some angst with a simple modification to the current system. Everyone submits a primary common application, and then is INVITED to submit a secondary, once certain standards have been met. This is where that initial screening for baseline academic and demographic fit could be made. This would differ from the current system where you submit a supplement at the same time. This would not be Early Decision or Early Action, but an earlier review that eliminates the students the school would never select, anyway. Just a thought. Med Schools sort of do this, though a challenge is that many automatically invite a secondary, as they can collect additional fees this way.</p>

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<p>I’d say that this “wise” professor has found the perfect platform to post his moronic contribution to the world of higher education. From the Chronicle to The Huffington Post? Bottom of the garbage bin comes to mind for both the source and the format!</p>

<p>There are good reason why bigwig deans lambasted the “idea” … it intimates that the people entrusted to deliver the schools the very best CLASS of freshmen are somehow missing the correct target. Does it really matter that the adcome could enroll a similar class from the “rejected” students? The reality is that for most schools, less than 50% of admitted students end up enrolling! The message, however, is that a lottery system would be BETTER than relying on the experience, intelligence, and common sense of the people hired to select the classes of students. That is simply … ridiculous! </p>

<p>Fwiw, this is the same sorry theories that are discussed on the sidelines at games where a selection has to made among athletes. When teams are formed to start “select” soccer teams, coaches have to pick 16 or 18 athletes from pools that can be 10-20 times larger. Invariably, the non-selected claim that the coaches were biased or simply dumb. Yet, after a few years, however, one starts realizing that almost NONE of the rejected players are active in the league. They did not make the top teams, got on less competitive teams, but finally got washed out as better players came in. On the other hand, most of the original players remain active. Bottom line: the selection worked as planned and the system was fair. Brutal, cruel perhaps, but fair! </p>

<p>The reality is that the US has several thousands colleges and universities and that most everyone finds a place that offers a good fit. In addition, the VASt majority of students in the US attend their first or second choices. Yet, for some reason, the anecdotes of “crapshoot” and other utterly silly qualifiers offer great cocktail fodder. Some of this starts with the assumption that about 30,000 valedictorians the US produces annually ALL deserve a spot at HYPS! Or the incorrect perception of perfect scores (see Token’s posts.)</p>

<p>As far as I am concerned the wise professor can take a seat next to the Moron-in-Chief at the Education Conservancy.</p>