Secrets of Elite College Admissions | Hacker News Reader

Secrets of Elite College Admissions

wsj.com

51 pointsbookofjoe30 comments

> They switched a legacy applicant—meaning that a parent had earned a degree from Emory—to “deny” because of his light extracurricular involvement. The original readers gave him a score of 2 out of 5 in that category, observing that he wanted to major in pre-med “but we don’t see activities to support that,” one of the admissions officers said.

>But while the student listed neuroscience as a major, “there is no example of neuro in the file” in terms of activities or in the essays, the admissions officer said. She suggested that they move the applicant to the wait list, which would be “a softer landing” than an outright denial.

This kind of focus on extra-curricular activities is a complete waste of time, and is actually very discriminatory against low-income students. I believe there is no correlation between being a good doctor and doing "medical related" extra-curricular activities in high school or between being a good neuroscientist, and doing "neuro science" related extra-curricular activities in high school. Having good interpersonal skills, good verbal and written communication skills, and strong math and science fundamentals is far more important.

> Among those who didn’t make it into Lafayette that year was an applicant from Pennsylvania who ranked fifth in his high school class of more than 600, with a 3.96 GPA and 1450 on the SAT. His financial need to attend Lafayette: $66,810 for his freshman year.

I think they did the student a favor. I am sure that a student with those grades and scores could easily attend a top notch state university for much cheaper and receive as good if not better an education.

I agree. The focus on extra curricular activities is ridiculous. Even for students who demonstrate them, it must be frustrating to have to devote time to those activities instead of your personal life or other passions.

And all that just to give people illusion that they got in through special merit, not just baseline merit + some luck.

It would be much cheaper and much better for both students and universities if applications were handled by a random number generator. That is, from the pool of students that applied to a given facility and crossed some per-faculty grade threshold, just bin then together and pick at random, until all places are filled.

(If you're worried about grade inflation, introduce university-provided exams instead. And/or design the first year to aggressively weed out anyone who can't pull their weight.)

But alas, there are lots of people making lots of money from handling admissions and providing extracurriculars, I'm pretty sure they'd object :).

If you're worried about grade inflation, introduce university-provided exams instead.

How is that any better than SAT or ACT?

> This kind of focus on extra-curricular activities is a complete waste of time

Strongly disagree. A big part of university is the campus experience. A college with low extracurricular participation is different from one with lots of it. A good predictor of students who won’t go to class and then be hermits is past activity.

Controls need to be in place to ensure this doesn’t proxy for discrimination. But we’d be amiss ignoring e.g. coding projects, community organisation and other accessible, self-guided extracurricular activities.

I mean, we've known that universities aren't just looking at academics, test scores, and extracurriculars. If that was the case, the majority of colleges would have algorithmic admissions. (Although, surprisingly, there are some universities who do use a composite scoring algorithm to aid admissions)

Having flexible processes give institutions the ability to "shape" the incoming class—after all, isn't it good for marketing to have people from X different states or Y different countries represented in your student body? The campus climate is also dictated by the student body—do you want a cutthroat academic atmosphere (similar to Berkeley) or a party-rich campus (similar to LSU or Penn State)?

Haha.

Penn State.

Penn State blows hard and always has. You ever try to go on a nighttime booze run in PA?

t. OU (which also now blows/has blown for a while)

This is a poor comment for HN

> ability to "shape" the incoming class

Also known today as racial discrimination where Asians are heavily downweighted, similar to how Jews were downweighted 40-50 years ago. Then again when Columbia rejected Richard Feynman because he was a Jew, it put a permanent stain on their reputation, and Feynman did all right anyway. I'm pretty sure smart kids will do all right, Ivy League or no Ivy League.

With respect, no. This lens misunderstands both the "admissions" process, the larger goals a given Uni has, and charter they operate under. In practice at the Uni level a much more significant amount of filtering is done through aid packages.

There are plenty of elite schools outside the Ivy League which do not discriminate against Asian students. The aforementioned Berkeley, for example, had only 21% incoming white freshmen in 2019 but 17% incoming Chinese freshmen [1]. This is particularly striking given that only 1.3% of US residents are Chinese-Americans [2]. You’ll find a similar story for the representation of other Asian and south Asian freshmen at Berkeley.

[1] https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Americans

California law prohibits Berkeley from applying discriminatory racial preferences. It's my understanding that, with a handful of exceptions, almost all elite schools which are allowed to discriminate do so.

And there's a ballot measure in November that would allow Berkeley to discriminate based on race again.

Harvard isn't trying to pump out just academics or engineers, lawyers and doctors. They want to pump out prominent businessmen, politicians, activists, fields like these have a looser correlation to raw technical ability and can't really be measured by sat scores or GPA

> fields like these have a looser correlation to raw technical ability

Citation needed.

You think George Bush or Donald Trump got a 1600 on the SAT, valedictorian of their high school, and/or play the violin at a high level?

No, but they aren't really the examples of excellence you're looking for. :-)

They're not fucking nerds, no.

but skin color can measure it?

in some cases a most definite YES. America is not some post racial utopia, we are far away from Asians having prominence in politics or social life.

This could be because politics sucks and pay is low, so successful lawyer/doctor Asians do not want to participate in it.

One of the leading candidates in the DNC was Asian, this is about forced diversity from woke-ism

https://archive.vn/Zsk19

There's a market failure here: everyone now applies to 15-20 elite colleges, at an application cost of perhaps 1500$. Kids have no idea where they'll get in, and colleges have no idea who will attend.

Limiting applications to 8 or 10 schools would reduce the uncertainty on both sides

I think a better solution is the one where applicants get a limited number of times to mark specific applications as something they are especially interested in.

Apparently it just works out pretty well without restricting your application pool.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/05/05/527087730/epis...

There is already something called “early decision” at some US colleges, wherein you commit to attend a college if accepted.

US universities are always amusing to me. You pay about 100 times more than for a German university and end up with an education where you have trouble understanding the content they teach in Germany after graduation, unless you come from an elite university. But hey, it's really easy to find Standford equivalents in Germany as long as you search for a good university for your major, instead of just searching for a university. Of course it doesn't come with the prestige and the network, but honestly is that really worth a quarter million dollars? In the end, if you are smart and willing to learn, the only thing you really get from US elite university is prestige and better equipment and research opportunities. However, all of that isn't really relevant for a whole lot of people.

Well, it is fairly common knowledge that US universities are not worth the price they charge for undergraduate education if you are not in a position allowing you to network heavily. They are very good (and by that I mean very rich) for research however. For a European, going to the US before your PhD makes little sense.

Downvoted4truth. I just disagree with this:

>Of course it doesn't come with the prestige and the network, but honestly is that really worth a quarter million dollars?

Of course it's worth it. These are the kind of connections that guarantee you a job worth far more than that.

I think that if you get into Stanford, then yes it is worth the eye-watering tuition. If you get into the median school, then it probably isn't unless you're studying engineering, accounting or another field where graduates have good hiring prospects and earning potential early in their careers.

Studying abroad for an entire degree is underrated among Americans.

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