Reply to NY Times on new application essays dabbling in so-called "identities"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Question for those that think life experience should not matter.

How should elite colleges select among students that meet thei admissions criteria.

For example, 100,000 students apply to Harvard and Harvard can admit 3,000 students total.  How should it select the 1 in 10 that will receive a yes?  What is the right criteria?

Can it care about gender ratio?  Can it want  broad geographic representation?  Can it care about different life experiences?  How should it consider the different opportunities to excel that it’s applicants experienced?  Is this just a numbers game?  [/quote]

The first filter should be academic.  Select all the 4.0, 1600s first.  They apply your filters - Black, poor, whatever but be clear about what they are.  Not some opaque mumbo, jumbo BS.  People get pissed off when academically inferior (yes, inferior) candidates get selected in the name of equity, which BTW, follows that candidate (and others that look like them) for the rest of their lives. That's theft and is BS. [/quote]

Goodness. Anyone with a brain knows that someone with a 4.0, 1600 SAT isn't necessarily a preferable candidate to someone with a 3.9, 1590 SAT, or even a 3.8, 1500 SAT.  That's how a robot would choose, not a human being capable of real discernment.  Especially because: what if the 3.9 candidate had way more rigorous coursework than the 4.0 student?  What if the 3.9 candidate achieved that GPA and SAT score while working 20 hours a week to help the family? What if the 3.8 GPA student had received the lower grade(s) freshman year while experiencing a medical or family crisis, then rebounded to 4.0 the rest of high school, showing resiliency?

You see, it's just dumb to have some kind of strict, robotic assessment that doesn't take anything else into consideration. Anyone who knows anything realizes that looking only at numbers does not give you the whole picture. Some of the smartest, most capable people I've known were not straight-A students, but were amazing students.

No one, I mean NO ONE, is entitled to a spot at one of the highly selective schools. That, my friend, is BS. You didn't get into Harvard? Tough luck. Neither do 99% of Americans.[/quote]

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