"It’s crunch time for college applications, and hopeful high school seniors are working hard to impress admissions committees to land a spot at the school of their choice.
But what if that committee wasn’t actually a committee of people. What if, instead, you had to impress a robot – or win over an artificial intelligence-driven algorithm?
You did everything you could to package your application to highlight just the right combination of grades, extracurriculars and eye-catching essays the counselor at your high school said the admissions committees at your target schools were looking for. Was it all a big waste of time?" …
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/12/02/college-admissions-when-ai-robots-decide/2147201002/
Some colleges that admit by stats only (e.g. CSUs in California) can feed all of the applications into a computer program. It would not be surprising if that were done.
Other colleges may have specific stats thresholds for auto-admit (e.g. Texas public universities) and/or auto-deny that can be done by computer without any AI needed, leaving a much smaller pool of applications that needs to be read to consider subjective criteria.
AI should be very helpful here, but should not be confused with a simple statistical cutoff, especially if based on a test score if one wants to optimize the class selection as judged by some defined criteria. Remember that subjectivity may still have a place in selection as we learn more about the nuances of motivation and goals. AI can help us learn more about our own behavior, but that does not mean that we are close to understanding our species actual learning behavior.
Why do so many creative individuals leave the universities?? What are we missing here?