"Holistic Admissions"... translation: we'll do whatever we feel like and...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone so bitter?

There are no clear "rules" or standards for admission. Two seemingly identical applicants can have two very different outcomes, leading to very logical feelings of unfairness.

No kid is more “entitled” to admission than any other.

Colleges aren’t obligated to admit students based on the criteria that YOU want.

Sure, colleges can use whatever criteria they want, so long as there is no economic price to pay. But let's see what criteria they shift to when the federal government revokes their participation in federal student financial aid programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:it's a code word for blocking asian kids. don't tell me you didn't know.

The schools that you obsess over optimize for outcomes, not inputs. An over supply of one dimensional students destined to be mid-level engineers and coders does not produce optimal outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Holistic is a business and legal strategy. By making things opaque under holistic and test optional, colleges get an overwhelming surplus of applicants to choose from to achieve their demographic and financial goals and they improve their selectivity rankings. From a business standpoint it makes sense not to discourage kids you don’t want from applying. They do not care about your kids.

From a legal strategy, holistic is the only way to achieve racial diversity while claiming not to give extra points for race. The Supreme Court ruling specifically provided a loophole that schools could consider race in a the broader context of an application. If you look at any of the measures, GPA, number of AP courses taken with a score of 4 or 5, SAT, state testing, leadership roles in academic or sports teams, elected positions etc etc you will see it doesn’t line up even close to some of the schools admit demographics. So you either allow back doors to race through holistic admissions r end up with top schools being overwhelmingly Asian and white.

[Anonymous]

Don’t get the buzz. All the schools have standards, maybe you don’t like them and sure they aren’t advertising every single little point that they assess students, but they do have metrics to decide their students.

[Anonymous]

Is the mental health of students and the quality of life on campus any better today than it was 30 years ago? I’d argue that the current form of holistic admissions has created more hostility and social divides- full-pay v FGLI, athlete v non-athlete, rural v suburban, international v domestic, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the mental health of students and the quality of life on campus any better today than it was 30 years ago? I’d argue that the current form of holistic admissions has created more hostility and social divides- full-pay v FGLI, athlete v non-athlete, rural v suburban, international v domestic, etc.

Admissions was holistic 30 years ago too. You're blaming everything bad on holistic admissions when many other factors are at play. The common app and the internet makes it easier to apply to multiple schools, and the number of college aged kids in the US has reached peak, hence number of applicants are way, way up. There is also the increased obsession that all parents and kids have with top 10 schools for the brand name. And, to complicate things, the pandemic pushed many schools to go test optional. I would argue that test scores were a very compatible part of holistic admissions, and I have the feeling they will make a return in the future.

[Anonymous]

Test scores are important. They are just not the most important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone so bitter?

There are no clear "rules" or standards for admission. Two seemingly identical applicants can have two very different outcomes, leading to very logical feelings of unfairness.

No kid is more “entitled” to admission than any other.

Colleges aren’t obligated to admit students based on the criteria that YOU want.

Noboday believes they’re entitled to it. They just deserve the admissions more than others who are given advantages for factors other than merit.

But what is “merit”? You may think it’s GPA and test scores. Someone else may think it is publishing short stories as a teen in a reputable journal or getting a patent on a significant invention or starting a business that makes $100k profit every year or lobbying for passage of a bill. Those are all meritorious in their own way and each may have value to a college, depending on its focus and priorities. I posit that merit is not just grades and test scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's a code word for blocking asian kids. don't tell me you didn't know.

The schools that you obsess over optimize for outcomes, not inputs. An over supply of one dimensional students destined to be mid-level engineers and coders does not produce optimal outcomes.

This 💯

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have top grades, difficult courses and high test scores you will get into an excellent college. It might not be Harvard. But you will be fine.

You don’t have a God given right to go to any college in the country that you want.

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone so bitter?

There are no clear "rules" or standards for admission. Two seemingly identical applicants can have two very different outcomes, leading to very logical feelings of unfairness.

No kid is more “entitled” to admission than any other.

Colleges aren’t obligated to admit students based on the criteria that YOU want.

Noboday believes they’re entitled to it. They just deserve the admissions more than others who are given advantages for factors other than merit.

What part of "Colleges aren’t obligated to admit students based on the criteria that YOU want." do you not understand?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid’s last name, zip code, and activities practically screamed “UMC-Asian-kid”. It is what it is- none of us change our kids’ life experiences, interests, or backgrounds. If it’s not enough for T-25, so be it. No one is entitled to anything.

Again, it’s not about entitlement. It’s about fairness and anti-discrimination.

It is not, it is about "evaluation in context".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone so bitter?

There are no clear "rules" or standards for admission. Two seemingly identical applicants can have two very different outcomes, leading to very logical feelings of unfairness.

No kid is more “entitled” to admission than any other.

Colleges aren’t obligated to admit students based on the criteria that YOU want.

Sure, colleges can use whatever criteria they want, so long as there is no economic price to pay. But let's see what criteria they shift to when the federal government revokes their participation in federal student financial aid programs.

Let's use Williams college as an example. Federal student financial aid is 0.6% of their budget. I'm pretty sure that they would be more than willing to give up that money to get the current bunch of clowns out of their business. If the nonsense doesn't stop it would not surprise me to see the top SLACs go in that direction, they don't need fed money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone so bitter?

There are no clear "rules" or standards for admission. Two seemingly identical applicants can have two very different outcomes, leading to very logical feelings of unfairness.

So. That’s how job interviews work too.
You need a baseline. Then everything else is vibes.
This is life.

So unfortunately true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone so bitter?

There are no clear "rules" or standards for admission. Two seemingly identical applicants can have two very different outcomes, leading to very logical feelings of unfairness.

No kid is more “entitled” to admission than any other.

Colleges aren’t obligated to admit students based on the criteria that YOU want.

Noboday believes they’re entitled to it. They just deserve the admissions more than others who are given advantages for factors other than merit.

What part of "Colleges aren’t obligated to admit students based on the criteria that YOU want." do you not understand?

“Which part” not “what part”. Using “what part” you are implying there is something unspecified. Well, then I guess you are referring to the layers of bias and double standards in college admission “criteria”, which result in racism.