06

Because I didn't post over the weekend, today I'll look at the most active threads over the past three days. In the Relationship forum, regardless of the question, the answer is always "divorce". Increasingly in the College forum, no matter the question, the answer is "test optional". That was the case with the most active thread over the past three days which was titled, "Why is it so much harder to get into a top school now?" and, of course, posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster believes that selective colleges are harder to get into these days and that there is a larger pool of qualified candidates and wants to know why. While some of the first to respond mention the availability of student loans which enable more students to pursue such colleges and the presence of international students who are full pay and, as such, financially attractive to schools, much of the discussion focuses on test optional admissions. The argument goes that due to grade inflation everyone has a high grade point average and standardized tests scores are no longer available to distinguish the top students. These means that there is a large pool of applicants with similar qualifications. Some posters go further and suggest that colleges and universities also focus on minority applicants who are less qualified, making things even more difficult for non-minority candidates. However other posters throw cold water on this suggestion by providing statistics showing that the minority acceptance rate has been stabile for some time. I just skimmed the 22 page thread and it looks like arguments about the validity of various tests dominates discussion and leads to several off-topic tangents. This thread again illustrates what I am officially dubbing "The DCUM Paradox". Families move to highly-educated, affluent areas where they target the best schools in hope that this creates a direct line to the top universities. However, come college application time, they find that they are competing with students from the same school in the same highly-educated, affluent area who all want to attend the same group of top universities. Because the top universities are not going to accept the entire senior class of the best high school in this highly-educated, affluent area, what was supposed to be a direct line is is anything but that. The family would have been better off choosing an economically depressed area with rundown schools and having the student become the high school valedictorian. Or, at least this is the impression one gets from reading threads like this. Frankly, I have no idea if the DCUM Paradox is grounded in reality or not. But repeated anecdotes in threads of this sort certainly support the idea.