Throw Out the College Application System | Hacker News Reader

Throw Out the College Application System

nytimes.com

35 pointsdanso54 comments

This proposal assumes that the goal of top-tier colleges is to find the best and the brightest and give them an exceptional education, which will enable them to become even bester and brighterer. But that's wrong. The goal of top-tier colleges is inculcate people into a particular social class. Ivy league grads run the world, not because they're so much better and brighter than everyone else, but because the people who run the world were indoctrinated to believe that only ivy-league grads are capable of running the world, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. How do I know? Because people still care where you went to college even decades after you graduate. They stop caring about your GPA, but they never stop caring about your alma mater. If it were about achievement, then where you went to school should stop mattering after a decade or two or three, just like your GPA, but it doesn't. Once a Harvard man, always a Harvard man.

For a fun NLP experiment, count the language usage of "When I was at <insert school>" vs. "When I was at College".

You'll find that the schools people casually drop in with that phrase are by and large tier-1 schools. While most people who went to school to learn just use the latter phrase. The lesson is that when you go to Harvard of Princeton or wherever, you didn't go to College, you went to some place that transcends mere college, you went to someplace with an important name, and because of that name, you too are important.

Hell: here it is off of the USNews list using google

   "When I was at Princeton" - 16.3 million
   "...Harvard" - 5.93m
   Yale - 2.58m
   Columbia - 3.53m
   Stanford - 2.44m
   University of Chicago - 6
   MIT - 18.5m
   Duke - 1.37m
   University of Pennsylvania - 1.81m (without "the" - 2 results, "Upenn" 201,000, "Penn" - 13.3m)
   California Institute of Technology - 1 ("CIT" - 6, "Caltech" 887,000)
   Dartmouth - 691,000
   Johns Hopkins - 6.14m
   Northwestern - 6.64m

For reference: "When I was at College" - 9.46 million results "in college" (exact) - 29.4m "at college" (exact) - 7.88m "at university" - 31.4m "in university" - 7.050m

Here's the Tier-2

   Ashland - 860,000
   Barry - 843,000
   Benedictine - 95,300
   Bowie State - 2 (Just "Bowie" - 249k)
   Cardinal Stritch - 4
   Clark Atlanta - 6
   Cleveland State - 6
   East Carolina - 1.62m 
   East Tennessee State - 3 ("East Tennessee" - 3)
   Florida A&M - 3
   Florida Atlantic - 3
   Florida International - 3
   Georgia Southern - 877,000
   Georgia State - 1.65m
   Indiana State - 1.28m
   Indiana University of Pennsylvania - 2 (Indiana University - 5.07m)
   Jackson State - 466k
   Lamar University - 0 ("Lamar" - 441,000)

edit, words, Penn and tier-2

University of Pennsylvania is often referred to as "penn", if you want to rerun that search (though make sure to avoid "penn state", a different school).

The goal of top-tier colleges is to make as much money as possible, like every other business. Thats the reason they've come under fire for letting in students from China and the like that cheated on their SATs and rejecting tax paying US citizens, because they can charge the foreign students huge premiums.

Because people still care where you went to college even decades after you graduate.

Depends on who you hang out with, I guess. In my own crowd I find the subject of where you went to college (or even if you went) basically never comes up. But then again, there's that old joke:

"How do you know when you're talking to a Harvard man? He'll tell you."

My thoughts on the admission system is that there are not incredible incentives to improve it besides public outcry (which is powerful in it's own way, but not enough so to warrant a change overnight, perhaps not even over the course of 5-10 years). If a college overlooks a well-qualified student due to poor assessment, the two possible outcomes are that the student will go to another a school of similar caliber, or that they will end up going somewhere down a few levels of caliber. Although unfortunate, neither of these are too bad, and the hypothetical losses to the school and society are purely that, hypothetical. I believe that introducing an alternative to college that can offer a similar level of education without an application system (or with a more lenient application system) will help drive the incentives to where they need to be. For example, imagine Eileen is applying to Harvard and Harvard has the top program for her interest. We've measured that Harvard is the top program for her interest purely on the content that she would learn and the projects that she would complete. Unfortunately, Eileen gets rejected from Harvard, but now instead of going to UPenn, she signs up for online courses over the next four years that cover the exact same content and projects. Eileen goes on to invent the flexible solar-powered iPhone that reads minds and solves world hunger. She becomes Time person of the year. She donates a lot of money back to her online program. Future incredibly qualified applicants will want to follow in Eileen's footsteps and may sign up for online courses without considered Harvard at all.

The thing is that the person who took Eileen's place might be the progeny of a donor with a lot of money; or she will have a similar intelligence level so she will make the same financial contribution. So, apart from denying Eileen the Harvard experience, the college has not lost anything much.

This is possible, but it's also possible that the replacement will not have the same level of success. I assume that success distribution is more of a power rule than equally distributed. I think this is a fairish assumption because otherwise there would not be a tiered system for colleges in the first place. In this case, Harvard does in fact lose much.

This is just another example of how absurd the US college system is from the perspective of someone from another country.

The purpose of a university for undergraduates is not to select people of character, budding entrepreneurs,sportsmen,people with rich parents or anything else-it is to teach an academic subject to those best able to succeed at it.

The way to select them is to let the academic staff who will be teaching them decide. They will do that by means of exams and interview. How hard is that?

A. I'm currently serving as faculty at a graduate program, so I ostensibly have a say in the admissions process. This is my first year so I don't know how much time it takes, but I imagine a lot, even though the program is small. I don't know how in the world the academic staff can quickly filter from tens of thousands of applicants without some kind of broad benchmarks.

B. You act as if there is some absolute benchmark for "best able to succeed at [some subject]"...There is not. Sometimes the best engineers can come from people who hadn't initially aspired to be engineers and thus lack whatever credentials they could've built in their high school time. Sometimes character can be the factor in success, sometimes not.

Of course there is no magic that can decide who will do best at a subject-no one would ever suggest that there was and I don't see how that is relevant to my point.

That was, that candidates should be admitted on the basis of academic merit and that the 'right sort' of weaker candidates should not be given special consideration.

It may seem absurd to outsiders but it does make a certain amount of sense to me, especially in hindsight. I learned as much, maybe more from my classmates than I did from my professors, and am certainly glad that those classmates were people of character, budding entrepreneurs, and sportsmen (and all sorts of other eclectic types, yes even some friends with rich parents; connections come in handy later on). Had my University selected the entire class based on your criteria it feels like my experience could have been very different.

That is how a socially prestigious university perpetuates its elite reputation.

It admits enough of the brightest to ensure that it keeps its academic status and then gives special treatment to certain 'desirable' students, who give prestige to the institution in one way or another.

This would, of course, never work if the 'desirables' had to compete academically. They are thus steered into easier courses.

Of course, if the institution does not offer such easy subjects, it cannot play this game.

> The way to select them is to let the academic staff who will be teaching them decide. They will do that by means of exams and interview. How hard is that?

This debate is often framed as "Harvard vs MIT", where Harvard has been very successful in being ever more prestigious and important with their explicit "the smartest and the richest" strategy, while MIT is great, but not "near monopoly on the halls of power" great. The arbitrariness and thinly veiled racism of the admissions process is vexing, but they are crazy successful.

All that to say, it's not as easy as it seems it should be.

MIT cannot play this game, because it only offers hard courses.

While this idea has potential, I don't really see it taking off.

More and more colleges are being ran like businesses and the idea of spending time and money developing and running assessment centers does not make sense financially. Right now, candidates can be screened by a computer for test scores, GPAs, and key words on resumes. Alumni volunteer to interview potential students. The only paid staff are those reading essays (if they aren't graded electronically) and those making the final acceptance decision.

Universities may band together to create these assessment centers to share cost and upkeep, but even then costs are going to rise because the university still has to keep the yes/no admissions gatekeepers on staff.

Large universities seem to be doing fine with alumni donations and I'm not sure this method suggests enough of an increase in donations to make it a worthwhile investment for universities.

This is the crux of the matter. Stated differently, why would universities want to shake up their proven business model? For vaguely defined virtues like creativity, wisdom, and well-roundedness?

They are interested in the bottom line, first and foremost, and in any case are being run by executives pulled from the same executive pool that other large corporations are drawing from.

The author needs to first carefully define the problem without reference to Steve Jobs or academia golden-age idealism, and then posit a roadmap away from the current business model.

> This is the crux of the matter. Stated differently, why would universities want to shake up their proven business model? For vaguely defined virtues like creativity, wisdom, and well-roundedness?

Tier-2 private colleges are having a tough-ish time right now, it could be a way to differentiate and attract ambitious students- "after you've thrown your application into the goofy lottery system, why not apply here, where we take you seriously? As you can tell with this significantly less goofy admissions process!"

Bingo. Word is out that college is a chance game for the 'right' school and even when you get in, it's rigged. You simply cannot compete with China, India, or Malaysia for spots at Stanford or UCLA. Those kids and parents can just plain out work you. My wife went to UCLA for grad school. Her students could speak English better than her, and would just out wait the professors for points on tests. Every single little thing was an argument and you'd just tire out and give it to them eventually. The cheating was a real concern as well, as the other cultures didn't really have a sense of it being 'wrong', that it was just another arbitrary rule you had to jump through. You get caught? Then you didn't cheat well enough. Also, all those kids are then either ending up back in Asia or in a cheap H1B visa spot you can't afford a mortgage or kids on.

So, somewhat smart kids from Iowa will ask themselves: Why bother? I can't compete to get in, I can't compete when I am actually in there, and I can't compete when I get out. Forget this game, I'm taking my tiddly-winks and going home.

And that is where the tier-2 schools really shine. Vassar, Colorado School of Mines, the Claremonts, etc really can take those kids that aren't literally-cookie-cutter-perfect-snoflakes-drill-and-kill and make them really shine. Yeah, they won't be the CEO of Hundai or GE, but they will make a damn good Lt. Major, or a VP at 7-11, or a hell of a McDonald's franchise owner, or the best darn member of a school board that is always re-elected, or a real good child abuse prosecutor. You won't make billions, but you will make 3-4 million.

There really is a need here for B- students that deserve a good living. Getting rid of the darn SAT is a great way to attract them.

Yellow Panic much?

Seems like it huh? But it's not racism, it's population. Asia just plain has more people, that they happen to have a historical association with being seen as 'lesser' is the fault of the US here. Those people in Asia are just like the people in the US. Geniuses and idiots occur with the same probability here as there. But there are just more people there than here, so you see more of them at the top universities.

These are euphemisms for 'the right sort of people'.

I go to Carnegie Mellon and I actually have a friend who works in the admissions office. She's told me that, being a really strong tech school, CMU often gets applications from people who are academically incredible, but may not contribute to campus life, extracurricular organizations, etc. This has led admissions to try to look harder at candidates who might not have gotten an 800 on their SAT math scores, but maybe a 760 with some strong non-academic resume items. Campus life at CMU is definitely lacking compared to other comparable universities, so I think a system like this might be really useful to a school like CMU which is trying to better understand the creative skills and emotional intelligence of potential students.

I went to CMU (2007), and I found campus life incredibly rich. I spent some time at GT previous to that, and I would say it was much more diverse than anything GT could have provided to me. What do you find is lacking?

That sounds like code for admitting more of 'the right sort of people'.

A lot of the tools that admissions offices use (essays, letters of recommendations) emerged because Harvard, Yale, and Princeton wanted to keep out (or limit the numbers of) the "wrong sort" of people, which, at the time, were Jews, homosexuals, and other such undesirables. Yale even went so far as to have its alumni interviewers comment on the bodies of male applicants. College administrators talked quite openly about the idea that having too many Jews would result in an inferior or degraded college culture.

My source here is Jerome Karabel's book called, naturally, The Chosen.

2 things:

Cornell, basically an engineering school at this point, has a big reputation for 'gorging out'. AKA jumping off one of the many bridges on campus. This negatively affects the admission rates (from what I hear and no, I have no citation for that) Campus life is a big driver for many schools these days. It's not all new gyms and tail-gating, it's also the rape and suicide stats.

2: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/504/h...

The intro here is a very good look into the lives of admissions officers. The students, the parents, and the schools themselves are all guilty of 'pushing' the idea of college.

I would like to see a lot more scientific corroboration of the validity of emotional intelligence before it is used as part of university admissions process. Likewise with the one study the author cites that claims to quantify "wisdom." This all sounds like a cultural bias minefield.

"cultural bias minefield"

Most of the techniques discussed in the article's assessments are aimed at reducing the number of Asian-Americans and nerdy introverts. The promoters always have a load of code words, but the college leadership and fundraisers know what they're doing.

Since the equal opportunity lawsuits were ended -- at request of elite college insiders -- by Bush 41 in the 1990s, the rates of Asian admissions in elite colleges went down and hit a ceiling at 15%. The University of California is looking constantly for ways to duplicate the success of ethnic cleansing at elite private schools.

The use of the term "ethnic cleansing", which refers to systematic attempts to expel and, in many cases, murder people based on their ethnicity, is not appropriate in this context. Your use of the term makes your post, which otherwise raises important and historically-relevant points, lose considerable credibility.

This is an argument against the style, but not the substance of what the person has said.

I'm thrilled that MIT last year added maker portfolios to their undergrad applications. I chatted with a couple freshman who said they spent less time prepping for the SAT and got to use that time to work on their side projects instead. It's still early but hopefully other universities consider different metrics by which to define academic capability.

They've been there implicitly for a long time, I've been told MIT has looks for evidence an applicant can do projects. A couple I included in my 1979 application almost certainly helped push me over the top.

> Those with less than perfect grades might go on to dream up blockbuster films like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg or become entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Barbara Corcoran and Richard Branson.

Alternatively, one might observe that modern colleges are for the mediocre, noting that college had little to offer the cited personalities and would likely have at best delayed their path, or more likely, prevent them from achieving what they did by socializing them into conformity and obedience of authority and convention.

We may certainly choose to daydream that "If only Steve Jobs and George Lucas had completed more college than they did, maybe they could have done something even more amazing", as if college has this effect on people. (Lucas has two degrees, so it's unclear what the article's author is really meaning to say about him, apparently that the author thinks he should have gone beyond a Bachelors.)

It really would have to depend on your field, wouldn't it? There are no George Lucases or Steve Jobses of theoretical physics.

I can think of one historical figure who fit the bill. Michael Faraday, who established the basis for the concept of an EM field, had very little formal education. For such a person to rise to prominence in physics was as unthinkable in his day is it is now.

He was apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller at age 14 and became a voracious reader as a teenager. He later wrote that one of the books he read during that time changed his life—Improvement of the Mind, by Isaac Watts. He rigorously applied the personal development principles within and began studying science on his own from the book shop.

He started attending public lectures of a prominent chemist, taking copious notes on lectures and sharing them with others. He gave the chemist he'd been following a 300 page book based on the lecture notes and the chemist later hired him as a secretary! He had to endure a multitude of slights in the company of other scientists due to having humble beginnings while they were almost universally gentlemen, but it was his ticket in. Once he was working as a prominent scientist's secretary, he had access to the scientists' professional circles, if not social circles. He relentlessly continued his studies and got so good that people could no longer ignore him. Within a couple of decades, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford and he eventually became the most prominent physicist in the world.

There are probably similar stories of slightly less prominent physicists in this century, I just haven't heard of them yet.

An inspiring story, although I feel like it supports my point. My parent was basically stipulating that college is a waste of time for the gifted, but from the sound of Faraday's story he spent a lot of time on a sort of a "college track" of learning & lectures, even though he wasn't enrolled.

It's a great story of tenacity, but it reads more like "determined underdog gets a foot in the door and proves his worth the hard way" than "gifted magnate skips apprenticeship, becomes master"

Thanks for sharing it though :)

There are many in electrical/mechanical engineering which is I guess considered to be applied physics, to give a couple examples: Thomas Edison and Felix Wankel.

Did you know that Freeman Dyson does not have a PhD? Yes, he has been to college (and taught there extensively), but he is an exception to the typical academic path for theoretical physics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

> For example, imagine that a college wants to focus less on book smarts and more on wisdom and practical intelligence.

Why?

Because the current systems cant detect our Einstein, Mozarts, Da vinci's or even Jobs correctly;

Creativity is the "next thing" on XXI century, and creative types have hard times following rules, or working well in army-like societies; those people are our underdogs now; the system doesnt know what to do with them; and does not like them (until they create "star wars" or a flying car); so i would say its a joke and pretty much broken

Well, I assume we've all met people (particularly since this is a board nominally for entrepreneurship involving software) that did very well in school or in other activities where there is a very well-laid out set of steps to follow and flounder when responsible for picking what to work on. If cmu wants to have high-impact graduates, they may feel they have enough people who dot every i and cross every t and get perfect grades, and would like more of the people likely to be impactful in life.

It's called a vocational/trade school.

Here are some examples, from small to large, of approximately how many openings several well known colleges have for first year students each year, and how many applicants they get. First column is number of openings. Second column is approximate number of applicants:

    200  1200 Caltech
   1100  9200 MIT
   1300 13000 Yale
   1700 18900 Harvard
   1700 17000 Stanford
   4200 18000 UC Berkeley
   7500 14700 UT Austin

Even the smallest in that list dwarfs the operations given in the article as examples of successful use of assessment centers. I wonder if anyone has the resources to do that kind of in-depth assessment of, say, Harvard applicants?

Caltech gets over 5000 applicants each year* for nominally 235 openings. Where are your numbers coming from?

* http://collegeadmissions100.com/caltech-admission-stats/

The first column is rounded. My data source (Forbes [1]) had 231 for Caltech class size, which I rounded to 200. It's also a few years old.

I simply botched the second column. The second column should be relabeled "A Number Smaller Than The Number Of Applicants, Probably By A Factor of 1.2 to 4". :-)

It was calculated from the class size and the acceptance rate. I forgot that I needed to also take a look at the percentage of the admitted who enrolled, since many people are admitted to multiple schools so not all admitted to a given school enroll.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Ameri...

It's important to remember that applications will always outnumber prospective-students... Because people make more than one to different schools.

So it's not quite as hectic as the numbers initially imply.

This is an opportunity for an experiment: Upon implementing "assessment centers," how many years will it take for affluent families to figure out how to hack them?

Where assessment is possible, they already do it. The music department and art department require your audition or portfolio. Most other programs assume students are starting from zero (or near zero) and so assessments aren't possible. Any other systems are going to be a way for colleges to choose politically rather than academically. ("Street smarts?" Do you get bonus points for time in the state pen?)

I'd be curious to know how much this might exacerbate socioeconomic gaps, given implicit prejudices. The SAT might have cultural biases, but imagine a test where the entire point is to see how well you line up with them!

>The SAT might have cultural biases

I believe this is overstated in current versions of the test. I have seen how cultural bias is mitigated on these and other tests, a battery of stats are run on the raw item scoring and if a question is found to disproportionally punish a particular group captured in the demographics section, the question is thrown out of scoring even if the reason isn't clear on review.

> Legos

Does the NYTimes not employ sub editors anymore?

just throw out the entire college system. the whole thing is broken.

Yeah man. Let's throw out all of society as well, start anew. Everything's broken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com