<p>The current system of college admissions (to good and top tier schools) is crazy with hype and anxiety. People believe all sorts of things about possible ways to increase their chances of admission to schools that may or may not be right for them. There are also tons of outstanding and "right" applicants, all applying for the same schools. It is a select few who carry the pressure of having to choose between candidates in a gray decision.
I had an epiphany that new schools could be built, or existing schools publicized and improved to expand the top tier to accommodate the many students. Students apply into a centralized system and have essays graded on a rubric and tagged with themes or character traits. Using grades and activities, and the essay "tags" applications are sent to around 10 schools. The schools do a further review and offer an interview to students. If the interview goes well the students have been accepted. I feel this would greatly improve the whole process because it creates a more personalized college-student bond as the student is "selected" and specially recruited, and reduces the stress of choosing schools to apply to. Of course applicants could also apply to a few (< 3) non-selected schools.</p>
<pre><code> I know this is a lot of text, but I'd appreciate your thoughts about the process or my idea. This isn't for an assignment or anything, just a "shower-epiphany" for societal improvement. :)
</code></pre>
<p>PS: This is only letting me add two tags to the post as opposed to the promised 25.</p>
<p>On the surface that seems like a fair idea, but when you dig deeper I think it starts to fall apart. Colleges want a diverse student body, not just a few thousand freshmen with similar character traits. There is a vast number of schools out there, and choosing 10 based on grades and “tags” may well result in getting schools you don’t like at all, as much more goes into a selection than those items (e.g. location, cost, size, majors). The current process allows students to find their best fits, then see if they get in. That way, schools aren’t given applications from students that don’t want to attend.</p>
<p>And, probably most significantly, someone would have to put together and fund this centralized organization with the resources to process thousands of people. Besides, this is kind of what happens. College Board notifies colleges of students with scores, self-reported GPA’s, and academic interests within bounds specified by the college, and these students are “recruited” through e-mail and snail-mail, assuming the student takes the PSAT. </p>
<p>The current system seems sloppy, but it’s probably the best. It seems (and is) unpredictable because it is a human process, in which committees make decisions based on traits that are not necessarily quantifiable. But this results in an incoming class that creates the environment that college admissions officers are trying to generate, and that is a significant point of pride for many colleges and universities.</p>
<p>It would also be irrelevant to most students, who go to an open admission community college or apply to a moderately or less selective local state university that does admissions by the numbers (grades and/or rank, plus standardized test scores).</p>
<p>I think this is closer to the system in place in other countries. A Chinese neighbor of mine who was complaining about the college process in the US said that in China you take a test, and then that basically determines where you go to college. My grandmother said the process was similar in (communist) Romania. Even in Canada I think the process is much less of a “thing”: [url=<a href=“Getting In | The New Yorker”>Getting In | The New Yorker]Getting</a> In : The New Yorker<a href=“beginning%20is%20relevant”>/url</a>.</p>
<p>Your process would seem difficult to implement in America, since it sounds like you want to force top universities to conform to a central firm’s idea of admission, instead of letting them freely choose who they want to admit.</p>
<p>I’m far from happy with how the college system works right now, but I’m not sure this solution would work.</p>
<p>In the US, moderately selective schools (which is most of the ones that are selective at all) go mainly by the numbers (grades and test scores). It is only at the top of the scale that the numbers fail to differentiate between applicants who all have near maximum numbers. So the most selective schools end up using opaque holistic methods to select a fraction of near maximum numbers applicants who greatly outnumber the size of the admissions class.</p>
<p>Bingo. The youngest of the T20 universities (Caltech, Chicago, Stanford) were all established in 1890-1891. If America could build 3 new major, private universities within a single year, why haven’t any more been built in over 100, even after quadrupling the national population?</p>
<p>^ Because one element that goes into “rankings” (published and in people’s heads) is peer reviews. Note the age of the ones that tend to have the highest ranks. We revere age and the fact our captains of industry seem to come from those schools (mostly because they have inherited the money to attend).</p>
<p>In 1976, a new private university was started in the US; today it has approximately 490,000 students (about 225,000 full time equivalent students), which would certainly count as “major”. However, it may not be on the radar of a typical poster here, since it is rather low on the prestige scale.</p>
That’s actually pretty enlightening… I’d always wondered why it’s considered impressive to be a Fortune 500 company, but being at a top 50 college isn’t nearly as impressive. I guess that’s because age plays a factor in how people view colleges. (I guess this sort of also works out because new companies need to spring up to do new things, but things that schools teach are less subject to change). I wonder if the college situation would improve if people just didn’t see age as such a sign of prestige.</p>
<p>Thanks for your replies. I agree that it is irrelevant to many students not applying to top schools. I also know it would be very hard to implement. One flaw is that the colleges would presumably want more than just a synopsis of the essay and writing skill.</p>
<p>I think the holistic system of admissions is preferable even though people freak out about it- there just doesn’t seem to be a less problematic way. What I think could really help is a system more like Britain’s where you can only apply to 5 schools, since it seems like one of the major problems is all the admissions rates going way down because everybody applies to 20 schools because they fear the low admissions rates; it all feeds itself and it’s seeming like the whole thing keeps getting worse, so limiting the number of applications per person could help with that.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood why more apps leads to more competition. Even if someone applies and gets in to 100 schools, they can only attend 1. So 99 of the schools they applied to just have an extra slot they need to fill in from a waitlist or something? I can see why more apps would lead to more people being waitlisted and more people getting in from waitlists, but how does it lead to more people not getting to attend schools they otherwise would have?</p>
Right but presumably class sizes are not decreasing, so a college still wants to get a full class. More qualified people apply and get in, pushing less qualified people out. But then the more qualified people that got in applied and got in to many other schools as well, so the odds that any one of them attend this particular college is lower. So the college still needs to pull from the pool of less qualified candidates that were pushed down, or else they’ll end up with smaller classes.</p>