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After a morning here in which admissions leaders and legal experts discussed strategies for colleges to look beyond the grades and test scores of applicants, Art Coleman said that it was time to acknowledge the "proverbial elephant in the room." That's the issue of merit.
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<p>The elephant in the room is that scholastic aptitude and achievement is unevenly distributed, so colleges obsessed with diversity resort to "non-cognitive" measures.</p>
<p>No, it’s that there are more characteristics to success than simply one’s SAT or other standardized test scores. People in the real world seem to know that.</p>
<p>Our kids have a friend that is a gifted musician. He is a pretty good student but not a “wow” student. He applied to the best music program around for his instrument and career goal (high school band director). His GPA and test scores were in the lower range of their “norm” but the kid is a natural and won a pretty prestigious scholarship. To me that is still a merit award.</p>
<p>At most schools merit awards are given out by the admissions department and to the students that the college most wants. Test scores are usually the top item on that list, but other factors come into play so you can’t just put a test score/ gpa-class rank list in order of highest to lowest,draw a line and predict that those over that line get the merit money, though , yes some schools, particualrly the larger ones do that. Often other factors, what I call “wish list” factors come into play. If a school is at a 60/40 female/male ratio, more males will get merit with lower academic indices. If a school is seeking more URMs, that comes into play. So do geographics. So do certain ECs, majors, and anything else that a particular school is seeking. </p>
<p>My son has some friends who were not “meritous” in any way, shape or form with border line grades and Test scores for admissions at some schools that still gave them some small merit award. I suspect it’s because they are full pay, and those schools are giving them a discount to get the rest of that hefty price tag that their parents are willing and able to pay. Yes, that is done too. Good business sense to discount a few thousand to snare some of those kids whose parents can comfortably pay the rest of the tab. Full pays are getting hard to find for some of these private schools.</p>
<p>Every time the word “merit” gets used in the context of college admissions, it ought to have quotes around it, because it has nothing to do with the common-language meaning of merit. Most of the time, it gets used in the context of “merit aid”, which simply means a marketing/price discounting strategy used to increase enrollments of students from relatively high-income families. While the marketing part of the institution makes certain there is an aura of reward for achievement about the program, as a practical merit “merit” and “wealth” could be used interchangeably here.</p>
<p>In the context of the linked article, what “merit” means is nothing more (or less) than a set of admissions criteria and formulas for public universities that would reliably pass judicial scrutiny if it happened to support the admission of more minority students than would have been accepted under a simple algorithm of grades and test scores.</p>
<p>“The elephant in the room is that scholastic aptitude and achievement is unevenly distributed, so colleges obsessed with diversity resort to “non-cognitive” measures.”</p>
<p>That seemed like a fairly minor part of the article…are you sure that’s not just what you’re obsessed with?</p>
<p>I would also argue that scholastic aptitude and achievement is not the ONLY way to measure cognitive ability. I think our education system is still very stuck on this concept (as reflected by NCLB, standardardized testing, SAT etc); they need to recognize that there are other equally legitimate ways of measuring/demonstrating cognitive ability (as reflected in Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences). Educational experts and leaders know this but most choose to ignore because it is not as easy to measure other types of ability as it is to to do “scholastic” testing.</p>
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<p>And not just from high-income families. My “gifted” S was given “merit aid” by the school he attended based on SAT and GPA (and financially he would not have been able to have attended without that aid); unfortunately he messed up first year and lost his merit scholarship, but the school then adjusted his need-based aid and he ended up with about the same amount of grant aid. Ultimately they looked at what would it take to get a student from the midwest -who would increase their rankings both academically and with respect to diversity - to attend their northeast institution and then figure out what pools within the institution the funding should come out of…</p>
<p>By the way, S has Aspergers and is very much a “hands on learner”, testing in college was much more difficult for him than it was in HS where he breezed through (probably because of photographic memory more than actual learning and applying what he learned…). But by the time he graduated, and after several co-ops (internships) during college, he was getting straight A’s in primarily grad level engineering courses!</p>
<p>If you search back in the CC files, you’ll find a young man whose screenname was Mr. Tubbz. (Real name Michael Tubbs) He had a very hardscrabble background, incarcerated father and a mother who was 16 when she had him. He only had a 28 on the ACT, but wrote an essay that won a national essay contest and was complimented by Alice Walker. Anyway, I believe through Questbridge or a similar system, he wound up getting into Stanford. It’s evident by all means that this young man took advantage of every opportunity, becoming a campus leader, now a councilman for Stockton CA, promoting programs of all sorts, and was recently on the news. It is SO evident that this young man had a work ethic and leadership skills and an ethos of rising above what life had handed him to improve not only his own station but those around him. It is a beautiful, inspiring story and Stanford made the right move in admitting this kid. </p>
<p>But, you know, there are always the kind of unimpressive people on CC who would complain that their “rightful” spot at Stanford was stolen from them by this kid because they would have dutifully offered up their superior ACT scores and by golly, they always did exactly what was asked of them by their teachers and parents and isn’t that what Stanford wants?</p>
<p>One could argue that Stanford found merit in a less obvious place precisely because it considered the starting line (disadvantaged situation) as well as the finishing line (ACT scores and the like). Someone who started “behind” others may actually be more “meritous” in merely catching up most of his/her initial disadvantage compared to others.</p>
<p>Of course, to many people, “merit” is whatever they or their kids have an advantage in over others in whatever competition (e.g. college admissions) that they enter. For example, [playing</a> lacrosse seems to be favored in Wall Street employment](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?) for whatever reason, perhaps partially because it screens for people from wealthier backgrounds who can afford it while still in high school or college (since it is a relatively expensive sport).</p>
<p>Off topic but . . . Lacrosse is hardly an expensive sport relative to anything other than track and basketball. Where I grew up (Western New York, Southern Ontario), lacrosse was a ticket off the reservation and out of abject poverty. Lacrosse is associated with wealth now because it is played at a lot of prep schools and suburban high schools in wealthy neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Well, actually, athletes are just aggressive, and they are screening for well educated, risk tolerant applicants who have the aggressiveness to compete and know how to play on a team. There’s a lot in common between wall street and athletics, actually. </p>
<p>But, that’s an aside.</p>
<p>Merit awards are important for some kids. If you look at the basic aid structure of the top level schools, and how much aid is actually given to middle class and upper middle class students, it’s just kind of an across the board nod to the fact that all of the students are meritorious. </p>
<p>It’s like the direct mail campaigns. I don’t really get why people are so stunned when they find out that most of the driving force behind selective pricing is a bid to get the best class possible based on what the institution needs and wants. It is the job of admissions to get the best class for the school. they do this in various ways. And this acting like “merit” is some special category other than diversity scholarships for financial aid is really pretty silly, imho. They are just working all the angles they can.</p>
<p>But beliavsky isn’t talking about merit AID, so why are we going there?</p>
<p>He’s talking about the definition of merit. It is abundantly clear from the totality of his postings (and I didn’t even get a 2400 on my SAT, lol, but I can figure this out) that he’s a strong believer that intelligence is largely genetic, it is distributed more heavily in Asian and white populations than among blacks and Hispanics, and that colleges “should” take into account only or primarily SAT scores / grades and academic merit, because they should have as their goal just rewarding academic merit, not whether one was the president of the senior class or helped little old ladies cross the street.</p>
<p>Yes, Eugenics has always led to such attractive ways of life. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>At this point in our culture, simply having enough compassion to notice someone needs a bit of help across the street might be more useful and merit-able than any kind of ability to pass a test. It’s certainly more rare and, therefore, far more valuable.</p>
<p>Well, at one point there was a kind of lacrosse mafia on wall street for the mid atlantic schools, so it skews the ‘statistics’ if you don’t know what is going on. It was more about who you know than what you played.</p>
<p>However, anybody who knows that business knows that athletes from Dartmouth also did quite well. Paulson played football.</p>
<p>The point is that hiring authorities look for an athletic background because it carries many of the qualities they want in an employee. The lacross skew is just about the fact that a lot of those in hiring positions five and ten years ago had played lacrosse. If you look at BofA, you see they had a huge military bias in their hiring.</p>
<p>Different groups favor different backgrounds because they are familiar with the people, is all.</p>
<p>Lax in H-town is pretty much only played in private schools and wealthier suburban publics - there has been a citywide effort for a few years to donate equipment and coach time to get inner city public school programs started. We just want to grow the sport EVERYWHERE!!!</p>
<p>Sadly, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) advocate for that in our city (and a coach) just died of cancer last year. Since my only D is off to college out of state, I am not as plugged in and hope it is still continuing.</p>