Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges look for future leaders, that concept is vastly different from Olympiad winners. Olympia competition is limited to math, physics, chemistry, biology, information science. Limiting seats to Olympia winners is an extremely weird idea. The majority of math Olympia winners end up at Jane Street and Citadel. Do we want that for our society as a whole? Naw.

I think, if anything, we should exclude these Olympia people from the top colleges. They are free to attend state universities and such.

That’s one of the most stupid comment I’ve read on this forum.

Are you afraid they ruin the curve at your kid’s Ivy?

Doing well in those competitions or other stem competitions for that matter, builds critical thinking and resilience, plus that they have a higher IQ than most kids.

What would you do to test the other 50% of the campus that aren't in these specific testable majors?

There are only a few hundred campers each year, can’t even fill a liberal art college.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges look for future leaders, that concept is vastly different from Olympiad winners. Olympia competition is limited to math, physics, chemistry, biology, information science. Limiting seats to Olympia winners is an extremely weird idea. The majority of math Olympia winners end up at Jane Street and Citadel. Do we want that for our society as a whole? Naw.

I think, if anything, we should exclude these Olympia people from the top colleges. They are free to attend state universities and such.

That’s one of the most stupid comment I’ve read on this forum.

Are you afraid they ruin the curve at your kid’s Ivy?

Doing well in those competitions or other stem competitions for that matter, builds critical thinking and resilience, plus that they have a higher IQ than most kids.

What would you do to test the other 50% of the campus that aren't in these specific testable majors?

Anonymous wrote:Colleges look for future leaders, that concept is vastly different from Olympiad winners. Olympia competition is limited to math, physics, chemistry, biology, information science. Limiting seats to Olympia winners is an extremely weird idea. The majority of math Olympia winners end up at Jane Street and Citadel. Do we want that for our society as a whole? Naw.

I think, if anything, we should exclude these Olympia people from the top colleges. They are free to attend state universities and such.

Yeah, if you’re a camper in high school, JS or Citadel will take you no matter which colleges you attend.

Anonymous wrote:Colleges look for future leaders, that concept is vastly different from Olympiad winners. Olympia competition is limited to math, physics, chemistry, biology, information science. Limiting seats to Olympia winners is an extremely weird idea. The majority of math Olympia winners end up at Jane Street and Citadel. Do we want that for our society as a whole? Naw.

I think, if anything, we should exclude these Olympia people from the top colleges. They are free to attend state universities and such.

That’s one of the most stupid comment I’ve read on this forum.

Are you afraid they ruin the curve at your kid’s Ivy?

Doing well in those competitions or other stem competitions for that matter, builds critical thinking and resilience, plus that they have a higher IQ than most kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Foreign countries have far fewer colleges, they are all public and they are all either large or very large schools.

The US would have to nationalize and merge its colleges…perhaps adopt the model of some countries where you have top technical colleges, top humanities colleges, etc.

You can’t create this nirvana without fundamentally changing our system of higher ed.

Another note…Canadian colleges take the approach of easier to get in but harder to stay. The acceptance rates of their top schools aren’t that low and a school like Toronto is 80,000 students. Their approach is let lots of kids in and then see who makes it…I bet some with just OK stats end up doing well and high stats kids can’t handle it and drop out.

Sorta what UC is doing. One issue with that model is it works relatively well when the tuition is lower, like in-state tuition.

Most US top colleges are private institutions, their tuitions are already non-affordable. If you adopt Canadian model, it results in huge waste for middle class, benefiting the rich.

Except the UC schools would be required to have like 20%+ acceptance rates…similar to at least Oxbridge.

The Canadian model is closer to the rest of the world…sounds like you think the US system is fine the way it is.

I don’t know. I think Canadian colleges attract a lot of ignorant foreign students who paid a fortune then realizing they have no chance of graduating. So it’s good business for the colleges. Do I want that for our own citizens?

?? College is dirt cheap for Canadians.

Not at all understanding your point if the foreign students subsidize the natives.

Anonymous wrote:For the meritocracy crowd, how do you envision a transition purely to stats. From my understanding, this would reasonably involve the elimination of legacy admissions, complete elimination of applicant background and school disadvantage information from applications, rigorous reforms to the SAT or at least required AP/IB courses with test scores for consideration of admission, etc.

Meritocracy is when my kid gets in.

Woke Out of Control is when a racial minority, poor person, or foreigner gets to go and my kid doesn’t.

Anonymous wrote:Colleges look for future leaders, that concept is vastly different from Olympiad winners. Olympia competition is limited to math, physics, chemistry, biology, information science. Limiting seats to Olympia winners is an extremely weird idea. The majority of math Olympia winners end up at Jane Street and Citadel. Do we want that for our society as a whole? Naw.

I think, if anything, we should exclude these Olympia people from the top colleges. They are free to attend state universities and such.

I don't even see how these people envision humanities admissions would work. The best writers aren't always the ones from Kenyon writing who had many opportunities at Philips Exeter to get their writing into the "MFA style." Some people have fascinating talent that just needs practice and training. Most high schools don't offer substantial training in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, classics, or religious studies, so how would we go about questioning them on Tertullian and Radegund when they have no idea what the concept of hermeticism is?

I'm also deeply wary about the assumptions that our best STEM talent is solely in the top x% of olympiad winners. Many schools don't even have access to the olympiads, and that type of examination skews towards a certain demographic (highly educated parents).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Foreign countries have far fewer colleges, they are all public and they are all either large or very large schools.

The US would have to nationalize and merge its colleges…perhaps adopt the model of some countries where you have top technical colleges, top humanities colleges, etc.

You can’t create this nirvana without fundamentally changing our system of higher ed.

Another note…Canadian colleges take the approach of easier to get in but harder to stay. The acceptance rates of their top schools aren’t that low and a school like Toronto is 80,000 students. Their approach is let lots of kids in and then see who makes it…I bet some with just OK stats end up doing well and high stats kids can’t handle it and drop out.

Sorta what UC is doing. One issue with that model is it works relatively well when the tuition is lower, like in-state tuition.

Most US top colleges are private institutions, their tuitions are already non-affordable. If you adopt Canadian model, it results in huge waste for middle class, benefiting the rich.

Except the UC schools would be required to have like 20%+ acceptance rates…similar to at least Oxbridge.

The Canadian model is closer to the rest of the world…sounds like you think the US system is fine the way it is.

I don’t know. I think Canadian colleges attract a lot of ignorant foreign students who paid a fortune then realizing they have no chance of graduating. So it’s good business for the colleges. Do I want that for our own citizens?

The main issue is we do not know if AO's are doing their job or not. They could pick students by throwing darts after screening with a minimal set of criteria and schools would not be able to tell the difference between a cohort picked by AO's vs darts.

The arrogance is the assumption that AO's really know how to pick students based on things that can be easily manipulated like essays. Or "volunteering". Majority of the charities/volunteering are not done by students. Pay more attention to maybe recommendation letters from classroom teachers - maybe ask for 3 LOR's.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Foreign countries have far fewer colleges, they are all public and they are all either large or very large schools.

The US would have to nationalize and merge its colleges…perhaps adopt the model of some countries where you have top technical colleges, top humanities colleges, etc.

You can’t create this nirvana without fundamentally changing our system of higher ed.

Another note…Canadian colleges take the approach of easier to get in but harder to stay. The acceptance rates of their top schools aren’t that low and a school like Toronto is 80,000 students. Their approach is let lots of kids in and then see who makes it…I bet some with just OK stats end up doing well and high stats kids can’t handle it and drop out.

Sorta what UC is doing. One issue with that model is it works relatively well when the tuition is lower, like in-state tuition.

Most US top colleges are private institutions, their tuitions are already non-affordable. If you adopt Canadian model, it results in huge waste for middle class, benefiting the rich.

Except the UC schools would be required to have like 20%+ acceptance rates…similar to at least Oxbridge.

The Canadian model is closer to the rest of the world…sounds like you think the US system is fine the way it is.

Anonymous wrote:Foreign countries have far fewer colleges, they are all public and they are all either large or very large schools.

The US would have to nationalize and merge its colleges…perhaps adopt the model of some countries where you have top technical colleges, top humanities colleges, etc.

You can’t create this nirvana without fundamentally changing our system of higher ed.

Another note…Canadian colleges take the approach of easier to get in but harder to stay. The acceptance rates of their top schools aren’t that low and a school like Toronto is 80,000 students. Their approach is let lots of kids in and then see who makes it…I bet some with just OK stats end up doing well and high stats kids can’t handle it and drop out.

Sorta what UC is doing. One issue with that model is it works relatively well when the tuition is lower, like in-state tuition.

Most US top colleges are private institutions, their tuitions are already non-affordable. If you adopt Canadian model, it results in huge waste for middle class, benefiting the rich.

It would have to start by defining what constitutes merit. Is it being well rounded and playing sports and being student body president and taking a uniform distribution of APs? Does it involve being musical? Strong writing? Where to math geniuses who are dyslexic and will never be strong in humanities and foreign language savants who have zero clue where they will ever use calculus— because they won’t? Does personality matter, or is it a paper and pen thing? How do you account for the the fact girls tend to be a year plus ahead of boys.

The thing with merit is that we all define merit based on what we ourselves do at and what our kids excel at. And I think things work best when kids are allowed to do those things they are really great at, rather than using someone else’s measuring stick.

I think recruited athlete preference is silly in college. If you are pre-professional or a professional athlete, join a team and go to a facility to support that. You don’t need a full college. I think legacy admission perpetuates privilege over merit— and my kids are double legacy at a T25. Get rid of them, then let colleges decide what they think constitutes merit.

A great deal of the “merit” griping is parents who feel like their kid has more merit than another kid for a certain college and get their nose out joint when the college disagrees. Or parents who try to put their square peg kids in round holes because only an Ivy will do and are unhappy it backfires.

If your kid truly has merit in a given area, there is absolutely more than one college out there that will accept them and give them the ability to as far as their interest and hard work will take them.

In 2025, I’m much more concerned about college cost. We pay our last tuition bill this year. Thank goodness. It feels like I should just keep fund the accounts so someday any grandkid I have has the $2M college will cost.

Foreign countries have far fewer colleges, they are all public and they are all either large or very large schools.

The US would have to nationalize and merge its colleges…perhaps adopt the model of some countries where you have top technical colleges, top humanities colleges, etc.

You can’t create this nirvana without fundamentally changing our system of higher ed.

Another note…Canadian colleges take the approach of easier to get in but harder to stay. The acceptance rates of their top schools aren’t that low and a school like Toronto is 80,000 students. Their approach is let lots of kids in and then see who makes it…I bet some with just OK stats end up doing well and high stats kids can’t handle it and drop out.

Anonymous wrote:Colleges look for future leaders, that concept is vastly different from Olympiad winners. Olympia competition is limited to math, physics, chemistry, biology, information science. Limiting seats to Olympia winners is an extremely weird idea. The majority of math Olympia winners end up at Jane Street and Citadel. Do we want that for our society as a whole? Naw.

I think, if anything, we should exclude these Olympia people from the top colleges. They are free to attend state universities and such.

I agree with you.

^ SAT is different, it measures college readiness. I think all of top 50 colleges should go test required, state universities can decide on their own. But elite colleges should place certain threshold for incoming students, so that the resources are not wasted on kids who are poorly prepared.