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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
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...SNIP...

The entire admissions process is about discrimination.  I don't mean that as a criticism - in making admissions decisions, schools discriminate against one set of criteria in favor of another.  You favor *only* permitting discrimination in favor of academic credentials - SATs, GPA, etc. - and no other factors.  That's fine I guess, but schools go for a well-rounded student body.  And they also are businesses, even though they are nonprofits, so admitting students based on name recognition and financial resources isn't exactly unreasonable either.

All you are doing is favoring one type of discrimination over al others - really, to the exclusion of all others.  While you think it's a logical type of discrimination, you seem blind to the possibility that others make different determinations, which are just as reasonable, though for different reasons.

FWIW, I didn't attend an Ivy League school, my kids won't, and I don't have a personal stake in this discussion.  [/quote]

Colleges discriminating based on academic scores and academic extracurriculars such as science fairs or research, etc. is consistent with the fact that the [b]sole purpose of college is academic education.[/b]

Colleges discriminating because the applicant's parents haven't donated enough to the school or didn't attend themselves is corrupt.
Colleges discriminating because the applicant is an Asian is racist.
Colleges discriminating because the applicant didn't play a sport in which they won't play professionally, or some esoteric sport that no one but the very wealthy play is idiotic.

Discriminating against someone because they are Asian or their parents are not wealthy enough to donate [b]is not reasonable at all. [/b], in any circumstance. All viewpoints are not created equal - some viewpoints are flat out wrong.[/quote]

Ah, here's the problem.  You believe this:  "the [b]sole purpose of college is academic education.[/b]"

You may want that to be true, but it is manifestly not the case.  And as an aside, you'd be better served if you embraced the nuance of situations, rather than describing any system that doesn't work the way you think it should as idiotic or corrupt.

Moreover, you haven't addressed the point raised by the poster below:

[quote]In 2020, there were 22,000 students who scored above a 1550 on the SAT. That is the top 1%. There were 21,000 students who scored a 35 or 36 on the ACT.

This student is certainly exceptional at test taking (and maybe he has an exceptional transcript to match) but he is competing against the other 22k kids who got the exact same scores.

Harvard offered admission to exactly 2,056 students this year.

Princeton admitted 1,890.

Yale admitted 2,272.

See how this works? 22,000 students with that near perfect SAT score. We can't add the perfect SAT kids with the perfect ACT kids, because there is certainly overlap with some students taking both and getting a top score on both, so let's just go with the SAT number only, since Charlie from TikTok listed SAT scores.

If we are going purely on scores, there are 20k students who will not be admitted because of the number of slots. I think the problem is that many of these students (and their parents) are unable to understand quite how many students are just as competitive as their child.[/quote]

So even if all schools' admissions were based, as you suggest they should be, on pure merit, there are still far, far more kids that "qualify" for admission that there are available spots.  And don't forget, each school's admissions process is siloed - they don't divvy up the pool of top students among themselves.  There are a lot of high stat kids that got multiple admissions offers.  Similarly, there are those like TikTok Charlie who got none.  [/quote]

It is all kind of funny to me. Several years ago I said all the lawsuits would lead to schools getting rid of test so they could admit who they wanted. People said that was impossible. I said the schools would find a way. Well they have. I doubt the test are going to come back and overtime this hyper focus on testing will wane. What will unhappy parents focus on next?[/quote]

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