<p>Besides the PRACTICAL concerns of there being too many students relative to the number of professors in one department (e.g. biology) and not enough students relative to the number of professors in other departments (e.g. classics), you have to remember that college administrators and admissions people tend to be idealists who think everybody is the same, so if there are no Asian guys majoring in Theater/Drama or painfully few Hispanic females majoring in chemical engineering, it's an afront to their philosophical view of humanity and they chalk it up to an evil system of antiquated socialization that they feel obligated to rectify. So you generally can't go wrong with zigging when everybody else in your ethnic group and gender is zagging.</p>
<p>Eventer, in response to post #80: My point was that this time of year there are always lots of news articles about how colleges like Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford reject a lhigh % of valedictorians and 2400-SAT scorers. On the SURFACE, that makes it look like they aren't very impressed with just gaudy test scores and GPAs, and that they are getting tons of applications from people who are not only extraordinarily brilliant, but also have done a lot of fascinating things outside the classroom. Which leads students to think that they have to get a 4.0, super-high test scores, AND nurse orphaned baby seals back to health/find a cure for cancer/win an Olympic medal in synchronized skeet shooting to get accepted.</p>
<p>But if you look BENEATH the surface, I'm guessing that the vast majority of the valedictorians and 2400 SAT folks who get rejected are simply rejected because the are of a gender (male) AND of an ethnic group or religion (fill in over-achieving ethnic group or religion here) that produces lots of tip-top applicants AND who want to major in pre-med/econ/engineering/bio (i.e. majors that get way more applicants than they have room for).</p>
<p>The colleges don't tell you that, maybe because it would make them look anti-Asian, anti-Semitic, eager to get people into majors that their gender/ethnicity usually avoid, and desperate to fill up the less-in-demand-subject classrooms (philosophy, classics, etc.), rather than simply very selective and in search of well-rounded students.</p>