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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Its interesting to consider the feedback loop.

AOs ar people who are wgood at gaming admissions, but ad at doing anything of note after graduation, so they go work in the Admissions Office, selecting for more people like themselves, until admissions evolvies into a parody of itself.

It's similar to other activities where winners become judges, pushing the activity into more extreme weirdness. Policy Debate is famous for this. They don't debate anymore, it's now a speed talking contest with weird requirements for what you need to say to get points.

[b]Admissions should be a service task performed part time by the kind of people the school wants to develop -- professors, industry professionals, artists, political and nonprofit leaders, etc[/b]. [/quote]

This is a bad idea, and reveals a serious misunderstanding that is harmful to a lot of organizations.

The skill set that makes somebody really good at chemistry, for example, is NOT the same skill set that makes people good at discerning the qualities and attributes of other people from a written submission.  And even if those people are good at finding the applicants that are similar to themselves, that leads to a stagnant field without a lot of the diversity that leads to innovation and fresh thinking in the field over time.

This is exactly the problem with professional workplaces that assume the person who is really good at sales or something would also be really good at leadership. [/quote]

there is ZERO evidence that AOs are good at "discerning the qualities and attributes of other people from a written submission". literally zero evidence. it's just an assumption. whatever studies of admission to various programs have been conducted always show the same thing - that you get better results when you REMOVE all human judgment and[b] rely on scores only. [/b]

it's so annoying when people here argue that, oh, if you only admitted 1600s and 4.0s, everybody would be the same. no, not at all. there would be more diversity because students would be allowed to just be themselves instead mold themselves to appeal to some random AO panel.[/quote]

Most of us don't want applicants reduced to test scores because we know our kids have talents and positive characteristics that make them interesting that aren't captured by the tests. You seem to think scores are the best thing your kid has to offer. [/quote]

Narrator: your kid is not very interesting and is essentially identical to tens of thousands of other kids.[/quote]
Better than just saying they're a 1550 or whatever. Colleges want people who participate in and outside of the classroom, right? [/quote]

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