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Given that this change seems to have been pushed by the Diversity team, I think they were probably finding that minority and female demographics were severely underrepresented in the demonstrated interest category and probably did much poorer in alumni interviews as well. Eliminating those factors makes it more likely that minority and female candidates will get in on general academic merit and then hopefully make the choice to pursue engineering once they get there.

Basically, I'm reading this as a diversity play, not a rich/poor play. Whether it will actually work or not is another question that's hard to answer without seeing their data. I can pretty much guarantee that on the male/female side, though, demonstrated interest massively favors male applicants. Female students just aren't encouraged to do (or maybe don't have as much interest in) the kinds of things that impress admissions committees in that category, regardless of what they may end up wanting to study by the time they graduate.

It's worth being said that "rich/poor" (or, socioeconomic diversity) is usually a diversity metric HE is also tracked on, so it'd be rare to see an organisation take a stance that would also negatively affect that.

Contextual recruitment (which they say they're moving to), is the current industry best practice in this regard of looking at the issue across most of these factors, so not sure it's favouring one characteristic over another.

> I'm reading this as a diversity play, not a rich/poor play

Is there a factual basis for this reading?

I'm not sure what you're asking. It says multiple times in this press release that they're trying to increase diversity. It leads with the first sentence "The mission of Carnegie Mellon University includes the cultivation of a diverse community." and then follows with "The goal is to provide a more equitable, level playing field where all segments of our applicant population have the same opportunity in the admission process."

They want diverse students, which includes poorer students, but also includes underrepresented demographics (looks like male/female split is 55/45, and hispanic/latino and black numbers are small).

"Diversity" related words are used thrice in the article, "inclusive" ones six times, but neither rich or poor related ones are even mentioned. Seems factual enough !

I'm grateful that, when I applied to CMU, the process allowed admissions to recognize that I was a passionate achiever in many areas, including my chosen area of study.

Jumping through some of the arbitrary hoops and doing the busywork of high school turned out not to be among my passions, so if I'd been evaluated purely based on GPA I'd have probably been passed over in favor of someone better at following rules and perhaps less of a creative and independent thinker.

I ended up having quite a high QPA at CMU. I was the same person, but CMU and I turned out to be far better matched than high school and I.

I'm sad to hear that the admissions process no longer has an appreciation for these kinds of good matches.

CMU alum (CIT '17) here.

During orientation there's a 1-2 hour ceremony where you're effectively welcomed in to the college- think like a graduation but the inverse of it (the exact phrase is slipping my mind right now), where the president speaks along with a few students.

The one point that stuck out to me from that was the then-president, Subra Suresh, mentioning that they hadn't admitted a single student who had gotten a 2400 on the SAT, though some had applied. It was implied that they weren't looking for test scores, but rather for people who had potential beyond checking statistical boxes.

My main question from reading this is "if your applicants are consistently getting 700+ SATs by category, and you don't want them to demonstrate the things they do in their field that demonstrates their passion, then how do you differentiate them?"

Demonstrated interest in CMU isn't the same thing as demonstrated interest in STEM.

> Eliminating demonstrated interest seems to go against the whole Carnegie Mellon ethos. After all the motto is "My heart is in the work."

"Demonstrated interest" is a term of art in college admissions that refers to "demonstrated interest in attending a particular school". Things like "I interviewed with a CMU alum", "I sent letters to the admissions department about how much I <3 CMU", etc. (All of these are in TFA.)

It doesn't refer to "demonstrated interest in STEM." TFA is not talking about ignoring demonstrated passion in STEM.

> wealthy parents will push their children into the activities CMU is looking for

I had the same thought, but there may be more to it... they unfortunately left us speculating as to what findings about their admissions process led them to this change.

Trying on a slightly fringe hypothesis: engineering has surpassed finance as the perceived get-insanely-rich discipline. So the top engineering schools are now more vulnerable to those who will pretend their "heart is in the work" but really just want to get on track to becoming Lord Voldemort (take your pick of real-world unscrupulous CEO). I have nothing against financial success being a motivator. But as a university, or as a manager for that matter, I'd want to filter out anyone for whom it's the only motivator.

Put another way: a demonstrated interest requirement selects for intense drive/motivation of any kind. Maybe CMU is looking for a specific kind, e.g. intellectual curiosity.

As an aside, agreed there will always be admissions gaming. But if the game is going to be broken, changing the rules periodically at least prevents the hacks from becoming too commoditized.

how about we recognize education for what it is in this country: indoctrination and grooming for your role in the economy. to make it more relatable: the mission statements (ethos) from schools are exactly like company culture statements from tech ("don't be evil"); they're meaningless as far as the real purpose of the organization. CMU doesn't care about passion - it cares about bottom line and its bottom line is a function of donations/tuition/research funding (in the form of institution overhead).

with the harvard asian personality thing, the nyc public schools shsat thing, and now this i wonder how is that people don't recognize all of this hand-wringing over affluence begetting affluence and "hacking" for what it is: band-aids on a broken system. we should decouple education (which is essential for being productive) from social selection. how? i don't know because all of this is so highly coupled that you'd need a phd in market design and non-linear optimization to even start unwinding the relationships.

edit: i'm getting downvoted. when microsoft/google/uber/etc. speak from their ethos does anyone believe them? when fb last year released chat for children and claimed to be interested in helping kids or whatever did anyone believe them? what's the difference here? CMU doesn't even operate under the guise of a public service - it is a private institution after all.

> we should decouple education (which is essential for being productive) from social selection. how?

It seems straightforward: Lower the cost of education significantly. The reasons you cite are the reasons for the public universities in the US, AFAIK. The number one predictor of college education, IIRC, is parental wealth or income; education wasn't always this expensive.

great. now fund public institutions better than private so excellent researchers have the tools and the compensation they need in order to work for them rather than privates. california seems to get it.

Excellent researchers does not equal good education for the broader student body. It's also not at all clear that increased funding leads to better educational outcomes or higher likelihood of landing a good job (the data is a bit old, but the divergence is clear here: [1]).

Either way, education funding is just something that the US population is demonstrably not interested in. Very few people push for more taxes to pay for education, which is what it would take, leading to things like teachers needing to strike just to get low-class income. And outside of specific demographic groups we do not have a culture that encourages academic study from a young age like many other countries do. These are big socioeconomic problems that are going to take a generation or more to change even a little bit.

[1] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/11/30/Shocking-C...

> Very few people push for more taxes to pay for education

That's not supported by the facts. A candidate for U.S. President who advocated funding free college education for families with incomes under ~$100K received the most votes for President. A candidate who advocated free college education for everyone arguably was third most popular (though we have no official measure of that).

> http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/...

The parent's cite is about the relationship between future earnings and tuition; it's not about public funding.

Presidents don't make tax laws, Congress does. Please point me to the majority of representatives getting elected on platforms of raising taxes for education. Outside of a few states like California you'll find that that is a minority platform.

I see where the mixup is with that citation. Tuition is a direct proxy for college funding (think of it as student funding rather than public funding). I meant it to show that increasing funding for colleges does not equate with improving outcomes for most students.

> Please point me to the majority of representatives getting elected on platforms of raising taxes for education.

Democrats may retake Congress in the fall.

> Tuition is a direct proxy for college funding (think of it as student funding rather than public funding). I meant it to show that increasing funding for colleges does not equate with improving outcomes for most students.

I see what you mean. AFAIK, tuition increases have been closely correlated with public funding cuts, so overall funding may not be increasing.

I have wondered though: Students pay X times as much as they did 20 years ago; are they getting something better? Unfortunately, that's not how market pricing works; as the U.S. has tried to expose everything to market forces (including people's health!), higher education prices seem to be based on supply and demand, and demand for something so essential is highly inelastic.

I'd love to see it happen, but keep in mind that not all democrats are gung-ho about raising taxes for things like education (or cutting spending in other areas).

I'm trying to find total funding numbers for public universities and am coming up short on nicely formatted nation-wide data. However, it looks like in CA, UC per-student public funding dropped from $23,000 to $8,000 from the late 70s to 2017 [1]. In the same time period, tuition went up from $630 (in 1976 dollars) to $12,630 last year. I can't find comprehensive information on the third big component of funding - alumni donations, but at UC Berkeley they have been growing significantly year over year for at least 7 years [2]. States are very different in how they fund schools, though. For example, Texas has a sovereign wealth fund that generates a huge amount of money. In Massachusetts, tuition growth outpaced per-student funding cuts over the last 15 years - look at chart 7 in [3].

Anecdotally, it seems like total funding is going up with tuition, but the money is going towards things like student annexes, stadiums, ancillary faculty salaries, etc. that generally have little to no impact on education outcomes.

[1 worth reading - some interesting data] http://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in-... [2] http://www.dailycal.org/2016/07/17/uc-berkeley-receives-reco... [3] http://massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=higher-education...

Thanks. Here's an overview of the debate about the correlation between funding cuts and tuition increases:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/24/new-study-att...

> money is going towards things like student annexes, stadiums, ancillary faculty salaries, etc. that generally have little to no impact on education outcomes

I fear (I don't know) that's just another claim by the right to support funding and tax cuts. That is their goal in every situation, AFAICT.

That is basically the German system right?

idk, I've always been pretty skeptical of early decision programs

what's the demo of kids that can commit to a private college before knowing what potential scholarship/aid packages are actually on the table?