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Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

From reading HN the last time this controversy came up, I've come with a possibility.

I think a portion of it is that if you judge based solely on academics then you will only get a certain type of person who is focused on scores in academics. You could easily fill your class with the top X% of scorers but that won't necessarily make an interesting group of graduates in the real world. It especially won't make an interesting group of people to interact with. I don't think I'd go to that school even if I had been admitted.

I think part of it is that they're hoping to find people who will end up being important people in the world. Not necessarily just those who perform well academically.

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The admissions are based on academics, extra-curricular activities, and personality.

I can understand how #2 is important, but #3 is ripe for personal bias.

A high bar, with people passing it entering lottery quotas is a far fairer way of having both diversity, and removing personal bias from the equation.

Absolutely this.

Academic performance is mostly a disqualifier to figure out if someone would be successful enough. Harvard, doesn't really care about the GPA of its existing students which is why they also don't care about grade inflation. They're looking for signals that you'll succeed outside of academia. If you want to go to Harvard, stop looking at the application as a checklist. The best applicants are differentiated beyond the classroom.

> Academic performance is mostly a disqualifier to figure out if someone would be successful enough

Really?

Harvard has around 1000 admissions spots in any year. I think there are roughly 30,000 people who score a SAT 2200+ in a given year. Say half of those a have A level GPA. At that point there's more significant non-academic differences, than academic differences.

I think we would agree that non-academic considerations are important. I wouldn't say that academic performance is a disqualifier, which makes it sounds like there's an inverse correlation between academic performance and success.

Sure that's why they have an entire category called extra curriculars, which Asian applicants also do well on. The only category they score low on is personality, which measures, through a half hour interview, such lofty ideals as courage and leadership. It's obviously just there so Harvard can give a subjective score to balance out their racial ratios.

> They're looking for signals that you'll succeed outside of academia

You mean signals like parental wealth?

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