<p>This is a great article (that was linked off the Freakonomics blog) about the origins of the admissions process used at almost all highly selective American universities. It's a fascinating discussion about the meaning of merit, the brand management aspect of admissions, and what it is exactly colleges are pursuing. (In particular, it also explains the good reasons for rejecting better applicants, on any metric, for worse ones.) Here are some juicy bits:</p>
<p>The meritocratic [admissions process instituted at Harvard in 1905] soon led to a crisis. The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically. By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvards freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising.</p>
<p>The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. [...] Finally, Lowelland his counterparts at Yale and Princetonrealized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this moment that the history and nature of the Ivy League took a significant turn.</p>
<p>// analogies to Asians today?</p>
<p>The admissions office at Harvard became much more interested in the details of an applicants personal life. [...] If this new admissions system seems familiar, thats because it is essentially the same system that the Ivy League uses to this day. According to Karabel, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton didnt abandon the elevation of character once the Jewish crisis passed. They institutionalized it.</p>
<p>// hence essays, recommendation letters, interviews...</p>
<p>In the wake of the Jewish crisis, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton chose to adopt what might be called the best graduates approach to admissions. Frances École Normale Supérieure, Japans University of Tokyo, and most of the worlds other élite schools define their task as looking for the best studentsthat is, the applicants who will have the greatest academic success during their time in college. The Ivy League schools justified their emphasis on character and personality, however, by arguing that they were searching for the students who would have the greatest success after college. </p>
<p>// dovetails with whining about MIT/other allegedly meritocratic institutions rejecting obviously smarter kids for obviously dumber ones. are their utility functions clearly unreasonable? i don't think so.</p>
<p>"Should our goal be to select a student body with the highest possible proportions of high-ranking students, or should it be to select, within a reasonably high range of academic ability, a student body with a certain variety of talents, qualities, attitudes, and backgrounds?" Wilbur Bender asked. To him, the answer was obvious. If you let in only the brilliant, then you produced bookworms and bench scientists: you ended up as socially irrelevant as the University of Chicago (an institution Harvard officials looked upon and shuddered).</p>
<p>Have at it! :)</p>