College Admission Is Not Fair

> She had taken the toughest classes, made the highest grades

> She was not admitted because her SAT score was 10 points below our threshold

> ...we admitted three other kids from that school who had slightly lower grades, less rigorous courses

> Instead it’s designed to be comprehensive and thorough, but fair….NO.

This looks like a lazy attempt to prop up a system that, instead of correcting flaws in its weighting and aspiring to be more fair, takes the easy option and just declares that they're not trying to be that. What does it mean to be "comprehensive and thorough" but not fair? "Comprehensive and thorough" describes the process and "fair" seems like what they should want to achieve with that process. If not fairness, what is it that they're trying to aim for by being thorough and comprehensive?

I grew up in Georgia and was always a fan of Georgia Tech. Few schools combined academic rigor with success in sports the way they did, and growing up I always knew I wanted to attend there at some point.

I applied to Georgia Tech in 2008 as a transfer/non-traditional student, and as a current employee. Let's just say my GPA going in wasn't stellar - my first year in college (not at GT) was a disaster. After getting my act together I worked hard at a small community college also in the Atlanta area to try to regain a lot of that, eventually bringing my GPA up to a 3.4 overall. As a non-traditional student with plenty of work experience (10 years) coupled with a pretty decent academic record[1] by this time I figured I had a pretty decent shot at getting in. I also had just started working at Georgia Tech in their IT department in desktop support.

I first applied to the College of Computing CS program, which at that point had a minimum transfer GPA of 3.5. I explained in my admissions essay that I retook all of the classes that I had done so poorly in early on, so if those could be canceled out I met the criteria (removing the early mistakes actually made my GPA a 3.7). The rejection letter came almost immediately with no explanation. I looked through the catalog after that and found that the College of Engineering had a transfer requirement of 3.0. At this point I had almost all the math, physics, and chemistry classes complete, so I was a good candidate for both the CS program and the engineering program. I applied to CoE for electrical engineering. The rejection letter came back even quicker.

I was very frustrated at this point and called the admissions office in an attempt to plead my case and because I wanted to understand why I was rejected. The woman I spoke to was very dismissive, and then proceeded TO CURSE AT ME because (in her words) "what kind of damn person tries to work around the system by applying to two different schools". Because I worked there I knew the org structure and was able to find who her supervisor was in order to file a complaint for non-professionalism, but that didn't matter because my emails were ignored. I transferred to another University System of Georgia school shortly after that both for employment and for academics.

There is an underlying mentality of holier-than-thou floating about that place. Growing up I always looked up to that school and to the people that attended (one of which was an uncle - when I told him this story he was astounded). Having worked with several graduates, including managing a few of them, GT grads are no better than any of the other local schools (Georgia State University, Kennessaw State, etc). So really, I don't get it. The prestige is all fake.

[1] it should be noted that all my math classes at that community college were taught by a professor that also taught adjunct at Tech.