The Myth of Meritocracy

Applying to College
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<p>Check out this review:</p>

<p>History</a> News Network</p>

<p>The book discussed is one of two within the last five years written by respected sociologists that present powerful evidence against the common view that admissions at elite colleges are primarily about academic "merit" or much concerned with effecting social justice; in other words, that elite schools have basically fair and good processes of admission.</p>

<p>The idea that they are fair, or try very hard to be fair, turns out to be false. Rather, even if it is no one office's or person's consciously articulated scheme, elite colleges work both to assure themselves of having most of their students from the wealthiest families in America and to shield themselves as much as possible from the kind of criticism such a practice, if widely noted, should deserve.</p>

<p>Since CC is a community consisting of many thousands of parents, students, and others who are in one way or another extremely interested in college admissions at the nation's most competitive institutions, it might bear reflecting on what kind of negative social effects, ideological distortions, etc. the system of elite education produces. </p>

<p>Try reading, if you're interested:</p>

<p>Karabel, Jerome. 2005. <em>The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.</em> New York: Houghton Mifflin. (557pp.)</p>

<p>Soares, Joseph. 2007. <em>The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges.</em> Stanford, Cali.: Stanford UP. (201pp.)</p>

<p>and the piece by Bill Deresiewicz in the American Scholar: The</a> Disadvantages of an Elite Education: an article by William Deresiewicz about how universities should exist to make minds, not careers | The American Scholar</p>

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<p>Where did you get this idea? It was never my impression that the admissions goal of elite colleges is to be “fair,” rather their goal is to admit the most impressive student body who are most likely to have the greatest impact on the world.</p>

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<p>I’m missing something, Who ever said it was a meritocracy? If it were a meritocracy every high-schooler would be rated 1 to 1 million and then the first 2,000 would be assigned to school 1, the next 5,000 to school 2 and so on.</p>

<p>For the most part these are private institutions sifting through tens of thousands of applications for a limited number of spots. The fact that some of those spots go to the children of privilege is hardly surprising since, hello, they’re the children of (educational) privilege. If it’s an issue of legacy, given a pool of candidates with overwhelmingly similar statistics why wouldn’t any business choose to work with someone that they’ve already had experience with? </p>

<p>From what I can tell the system is as fair as a flawed system can be - a subset of the best and the brightest compete for admission to environment where they can study with other equally intelligent candidates. If these books purport to be surprised that the wealthy have an advantage, well, let’s just say the authors could have saved themselves a lot of research time by opening their eyes and walking around in the real world. </p>

<p>Besides, we already have a meritocratic system in place, it’s called your state flagship university.</p>

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<p>I think you are missing the OP’s point about meritocracy. I believe he is using merit in the holistic sense, in that it includes the “most impressive student body who are most likely to have the greatest impact on the world” and that elite schools are not choosing students in this fashion but rather other criteria under the guise of this motto.</p>

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<p>“Where did you get this idea? It was never my impression that the admissions goal of elite colleges is to be “fair,” rather their goal is to admit the most impressive student body who are most likely to have the greatest impact on the world.”</p>

<p>I agree. They’re trying to select bright, talented students who’ll create a well rounded active class and then go on to become successful in a wide range of fields, not just medicine and law.</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t say “class crafting” in the Ivy or NESCAC style is grossly unjust. Still, I’m not so sure it’s the ideal model for producing the best academic environment. </p>

<p>Selection based on standardized test scores and grades alone would be even worse. More nearly ideal, in my opinion, is the Oxbridge approach of combining objective measures with an academic interview. Grades and test scores establish threshold criteria. The final filtering then is up to the faculty, not to admissions office functionaries, based on an assessment of how an applicant thinks about more or less off-the-wall problems. ([Oxford</a> University releases sample interview questions - Times Online](<a href=“The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines”>The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines))</p>

<p>To my knowledge, no selective American schools do things quite like that.</p>

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<p>I think this is the best way to sum up Ivy Admissions:</p>

<p>You might never know how someone could be rejected but you ALWAYS know why someone got accepted.</p>

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<p>"the final filtering then is up to the faculty, not to admissions office functionaries, based on an assessment of how an applicant thinks about more or less off-the-wall problems. (Oxford University releases sample interview questions - Times Online)</p>

<p>To my knowledge, no selective American schools do things quite like that."</p>

<p>That’s because what works for Great Britain wouldn’t work for the US. Unlike what’s the case in most countries of the world, campus activities – clubs, etc. – are a big part of what is considered the college experience here. I think that I learned more at Harvard from my participation in ECs than from the classes that I took.</p>

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<p>Right, because state flagship universities never reject the most academically meritocratic applicants in favor of less qualified students who are able to fulfill other institutional goals…such as athletes. For example, before enrolling at the University of Kentucky, John Wall admitted a lack of confidence whether he even had a sufficient SAT score necessary to be academically eligible to play. It was recently revealed that Derrick Rose’s high school SAT score and certain grades had been doctored and the University of Memphis may have known about it. </p>

<p>To be fair, many private schools also admit athletes on highly preferential grounds. The point simply is that state flagship schools are hardly perfectly academically meritocratic. That is, unless you want to argue that admitting star athletes who have little intention of actually graduating is meritocratic. Wall and Rose attended college for only the minimum mandated single year before jumping to the NBA, and frankly, most sports fans never honestly expected them to stay longer. How would it feel to be the guy rejected from Kentucky or Memphis because the school would rather admit athletes like Wall or Rose who never really intended to graduate anyway?</p>

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<p>Meritocracies exist on lots of levels - academic, artistic and athletic. Wall and Rose were the best basketball players that their respective schools could find. They were recruited by the schools because of their physical talents and their projected ability to win games, attract money-spending fans and gift giving alumni. If you want to argue that big time athletics is not part of the charter of an educational institution be my guest, but frankly that genie left the bottle decades ago.</p>

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<p>Probably the same as it feels when the school admits students who plan to, and do transfer after a year or two.</p>

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<p>They underlying premise of these works, and others have addressed it, is that college admissions should be,
“much concerned with effecting social justice”;
“primarily about academic ‘merit’”;
“fair, or try very hard to be fair”</p>

<p>I would disagree. Higher education institutions need to be true to their missions. They ought to have a free hand in the methods they use to go about that, including admissions. Social justice and fairness standards tend to be applied in a very self-serving manner. If my group is under served, then admissions are not fair or just. Whose standard of fairness should college be accountable to? It is best left to those institutions to decide.</p>

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<p>Moving away from the artistic and athletic points, meritocracy isn’t true for academics at state universities. A committee is currently looking at public universities discriminating against females in the acceptance process. Illinois has a black eye because of political favoritism on acceptances, but political decisions factor into decisions in many states including my own. Connecticut and Texas, for example, conveniently ignore the quality of the G.P.A. achieved at a particular high school thus casting a blind eye to educational merit.</p>

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<p>I wholeheartedly agree. Cal Newport had a similar take on college admissions, but I’m having difficulty finding it. The gist is that kids should have an essay centering around how they plan to use their time in colleges–what courses they wanted to take and why–and an interview to assess how a student could answer hard questions to demonstrate their creative problem solving. In an era of resume padding, I think this would go a long way in eliminating BS and crafting intelligent, self-directed classes.</p>

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<p>Let me put it to you more specifically. How would it feel to be rejected from Kentucky or Memphis over somebody who are barely academically qualified, but just happen to be athletically qualified? School is supposed to be about academics, not athletics.</p>

<p>As a case in point, notice that of all of the world’s top soccer players on showcase during the current World Cup, practically none of them other than the Americans actually went to college. Indeed, the concept of being admitted to college simply to play sports is a concept utterly alien to everybody in the world except Americans, to the point that foreigners are baffled by the concept every time it is explained to them.</p>

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<p>Which is precisely the logic that Southern universities - both public and private - used to exclude all black students during the Jim Crow era. In the 1880’s, W.E.B. Dubois could go to Harvard, but couldn’t be admitted to his home flagship state university, the University of Tennessee nor to his home-city school of Vanderbilt. UT and Vanderbilt wouldn’t desegregate for another 70 years. </p>

<p>But those schools were certainly true to their missions - which was to educate only white students - so to follow your logic, they should have had a free hand in doing so, right? As you argued, those schools should have been allowed to decide what their mission was without reference to anybody else’s definition of fairness, right? Moreover, if a school today decided to revert back to being all-white, they should be allowed to do so, right?</p>

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<p>“How would it feel to be rejected from Kentucky or Memphis over somebody who are barely academically qualified, but just happen to be athletically qualified? School is supposed to be about academics, not athletics.”</p>

<p>It feels bad for anyone to be rejected for any reason from a school they want to attend. </p>

<p>Many students (including nonathletes) want to go to Kentucky or Memphis because of their athletic teams. The students and proud alum of schools known for their sports would rather that their schools make it a priority to have strong sports team than to set their sights on being the Harvards of their regions.</p>

<p>There are many people whose dream school is a sports powerhouse because the school is a sports powerhouse. </p>

<p>That’s the beauty of living in the U.S. Whatever you want out of a college experience is likely to be available somewhere here. This includes colleges for those who view college as their ticket to professional sports careers.</p>

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<p>Sakky,</p>

<p>You have mischaracterized my position. My point is about fairness in admissions, not flaws in mission. Segregation is wrong and infected many aspects of life including college admissions. Admissions offices in the South didn’t implement segregation but they certainly reflected it.</p>

<p>So, what is fair? Who decides? I still say it is best left to the institutions. They are, of course, subject to the law, which makes reverting to being all white moot. The same freedom to decide that produced UT and Vanderbilt also produced Harvard.</p>

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<p>It seems to me that if Harvard wanted to be entirely fair in admissions, it could simply auction off all admission slots to the highest bidder.</p>

<p>College admissions in the U.S. is too complex for people to ever agree on what is “fair.” The best we can do is identify some invidious practices (such as discriminating against racial or religious groups)and try to eliminate those.</p>

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<p>At sakky u, probably. At virtually every other school in the country (K through college), no.</p>

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<p>And you see this as a good thing?</p>