Hacker News Reader

"but the more they study, the proportionally less time they have to do other activities that make students 'well-rounded,' which is one of the qualities that top-tier universities value."

"Well rounded" is code for "like the WASPs we used to admit in years past." Look at the kinds of things colleges value: community service, sports, etc. These are the things that used to in years past set people of good breeding apart from the regular people who were too busy keeping a roof over their head.

100% agreed. People take "well rounded" to mean "better person." In most cases, what it actually means is a person who has never known what it's like to feel hunger.

>"Well rounded" is code for "like the WASPs we used to admit in years past."

No it isn't. "Well rounded" is in fact code for any activity that has completely subjective merit which admissions offices can use to create quotas without officially having quotas.

Trying to experience a bit of everything isn't a WASP thing, it's bona fide Humanism. As Montaigne put it : « I like better a well rounded head than a well filled one ». Western Universities are (or should be) the heirs of this tradition.

Montaigne is a WASP thing.

I am Asian.

What I've noticed is that the kids who have to be "forced" to study ad-nauseum usually aren't the top performers. They're around the middle, but their families desperately want them to be the top.

The top students are much more self motivated. They tend to be more or less equivalent to their supposedly more-well-rounded white counterparts.

I agree. As a high-school student, I notice that the top few percent of the class is comprised primarily of individuals who either 1) are innately intelligent (to the extent that innate ability exists at all. Obviously, there are many confounding factors in most of the criteria used to determine intelligence, and in many cases people misinterpret privilege with actual tallent. The people who are "innately smart" are those that can perform well with minimum effort, for whatever reason) or 2) work hard but are intrinsically motivated.

Few people manage to get ahead solely through being compelled to work hard. It's very difficult to force someone to sacrifice four years of their life to attain a goal that they themselves are ambivalent about.

I'm willing to believe that this is what US universities are aiming for (i.e., "well-roundedness", passion vs. nurture, etc.) However, believing than an Asian kid did well on his scores / science competitions simply because a lot of Asian kids are pressured at home is called prejudice and extremely unfair to the kid in question. One (Asian) acquaintance of mine had great passion to be a computer scientist and pursued it against the wishes of his parents... who wanted him to be a doctor.

Explaining away someone's personal success because of their race is a particularly nasty thing to do to someone. Unfortunately, I see it happen all the time.

No, it's stereotyping, which is not quite the same. He's saying that parental pressure is a major factor in why a lot of Asian kids do well on their tests (hence the, yes, stereotypical "Asian father" meme); not that every Asian kid who does well does so only because of parental pressure (which would be prejudice).

The article discussed this extensively: these well-rounded-ness requirements are arbitrary, having been introduced in the 20's with the sole purpose of keeping out jewish students. While it may very well be true that the average asian applicant plays less sports than the average white applicant, it doesn't have any relevance to the applicant's aptitude for computer science.

I agree with you completely; however, if Harvard (for example) wants to find the next "leaders in business, innovation and politics," they are likely seeking people who've shown drive in their chosen fields.

For example, when I look to hire developers who are recent or soon-to-be college graduates, I may glance briefly at their GPA. While I care that they didn't flunk their classes (and aptitude in their language of choice is certainly important), I check to see what projects they did on the side. What open source software did they release or contribute to? Did they launch mobile or webapps while studying? Are they conversant in current events around their field of choice?

To me, passion is more important than grades or even degrees--in business. My question, which I believe is the same one posed in the article, is whether it is appropriate for schools to evaluate on that metric, too.

You're severely overestimating the ability of Harvard admissions officers to evaluate those traits based on college applications. You can at least narrow the scope to a single professional area in which the candidate must excel to do the job well. Do you think an average Harvard admissions officer can evaluate open-source projects? Or similar types of accomplishments in other specialized areas? They are looking in a vacuum and they hardly have the expertise to evaluate how passionate someone must be to have accomplished some line item in their application. They also have virtually no ability to question the applicant on anything.

This entire "holistic evaluation" thing, at this point is pretty much gamed out and the savviest parents and students know what the admissions officers are looking for, which means it plays out very much like the tests and the grades - people who really, really want to get into the top schools and will put in the effort are the ones who get in.

My hiring process is very similar to yours. Every one of 6 devs in my office has a history of side projects if out of college, failed startups if older, etc. I don't know if I would apply the same standard to a high-schooler though.

To give a specific example, I've always thought that community involvement is one of those developmental stages that happen later in life. Bill Gates is a great example: obviously a "leader in business, innovation and politics", who went from active, principled disdain towards all charity when he was younger to the world's biggest philanthropist today. Whenever I see community involvement coming from a high schooler, I always "blame" parents, college admission coaches, church, etc.

Similarly, serious commitment to more than one sport makes me think "ambitious parents" and "affluent" rather than "drive". I just don't buy that a high-schooler, all by him/herself, has the wherewithal to manage multiple athletic training programs. I did serious ballet before I went to college, and let's face it, while I did all the sweating, my mother gets more than half the credit.

I agree with your comments here, particularly bits about detecting drive in someone that young. I may have taken my personal experiences (I did say my original comment would be anecdotal!) and applied them too broadly to the difficult and complex issue at hand.

What this boils down to, to me, is the inability for admissions boards to release their exact criteria for admitting a prospective student. If, say, MIT released the exact formula for their perfect student, then people would immediately game the system (more so than they do already).

As some other users pointed out, and as you alluded to here, how can we tell the difference between 'drive' and 'trying to appear well-rounded'? How can we tell if a high schooler wanted to do those five-hundred hours of community service, or if they were coerced into doing so by a parent or school?

I personally believe that there is more to a successful academic (and professional) career than grades, so my initial dispute was the use of standardized test scores and GPA to indicate discrimination when it may have simply been another variable skewing the results.

It would be a very interesting case study for a university to release their full (objective) admissions criteria, however--while, sure, it would result in applicants trying to game the system, would it end up resulting in a more cohesive student base? What would the main factors be? How do you weigh passions vs., as you stated, ambitious parents?

I don't have any of the answers to the questions I posed in this comment (nor in my earlier ones), but it's an interesting thought experiment nonetheless.

> how can we tell the difference between 'drive' and 'trying to appear well-rounded'? How can we tell if a high schooler wanted to do those five-hundred hours of community service, or if they were coerced into doing so by a parent or school?

that's a good question - and this same question needs to be asked by a prospective employer during hiring interviews. In other words, you have to try and understand the applicant, and see if they really want it, or is only wanting it for extrinsic reasons (which i deem to be a bad reason for wanting to study).

I played football over the strenuous objections of my parents, who would have preferred I be involved in music.

You play sports to get laid, not because your parents make you.

I'm going to generalise a little bit from your statement about sports: it is dangerous to disregard the body (Sports) and focus mostly on the mind (Where things that would allow someone to excel in CS are). You don't need to be a sports star. Even just someone who exercises casually or plays sports socially.

Someone's physicality (Let's move on from just thinking about sports only) can/does have relevance to someone's aptitude for CS, or, their ability to do well.

"Exercising casually" is not the sort of "well-roundedness" that colleges select for. They look for "team captain", which, by the way, is far more common when your (expensive, private) school has 100 students instead of 1200 like a common public school.

"Someone's physicality (Let's move on from just thinking about sports only) can/does have relevance to someone's aptitude for CS, or, their ability to do well."

citation needed.

The Stanford & Harvard's of the world have a very real interest in ensuring that their demographics are preserved. "Well rounded" is a cop out, and your anecdote is a false dichotomy.

The high achieving students you're describing aren't not participating in extra curricular activities. That just sounds bizarre. Anyone who's intensely focused on getting into a top school also has their application filled with extra curricular engagements.

The problem with this view is that there are tons of Asian kids who don't fit this mold and it's even harder for them to get into top schools.