
Ivy League Admissions Are a Sham: Confessions of a Harvard Gatekeeper - foobarqux
http://www.highly.co/hl/550b57736c696c4ab50a0000
======
rayiner
> This is why admissions officers will say "well-rounded" until they're blue
> in the face. There's nothing wrong with plain old eggheads—but let's try and
> get out there once in a while, too.

If you want to exclude the smart middle class kids, this attitude is the way
to do it. The kid whose parents belong to the country club doesn't work there.
He goes on the carefully orchestrated volunteer trip to Africa. The middle
class kid, on the other hand, can't count on the Bank of Dad to pay for movies
and pizza. She's the "egghead" who spends her time either studying or working.

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omgitstom
[http://gawker.com/ivy-league-admissions-are-a-sham-
confessio...](http://gawker.com/ivy-league-admissions-are-a-sham-confessions-
of-a-harv-1690402410)

~~~
foobarqux
HN kills articles from the Gawker domain. I tried to bypass it but it looks
like the submission has now been killed anyway.

~~~
omgitstom
Yea, that's why I put it in the comments. I'm surprised it didn't get down
voted quicker.

Edit: Point being that people might still want context even if HN frowns upon
gawker

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staunch
Even in the US, 1% of people are born in an environment that prepares them for
acceptance into elite networks like Harvard. But the other 99% of people make
up 99% of the geniuses.

Throughout history wealthy people have done almost all the great things,
mostly for the simple fact that they were the only ones in a position to
attempt them. Technology is rapidly leveling the playing field and, within a
couple of generations, humanity will tap into the 99% potential it has always
done without.

~~~
Dewie
"Even in the US," \- American social mobility is something that is often
touted, but not often proven. And last I saw, it seemed to have been
exaggerated (though I don't have any great overview over research on this at
all).

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devindotcom
I don't know about this. His complaints seem to be that the pool of applicants
is largely made up of highly coached overachievers, and that standardized
tests and an hour-long interview aren't enough time to get to the core of
whether someone will be a good Harvard student or not. I wouldn't call that a
"sham," more like a systematic failure to recognize, highlight, and quantify
the many forms of achievement and merit. A sham to me would be that someone
upstream from these reviewers is throwing away all this data and just
accepting a pre-formed list of rich white people.

Evaluating students in the first place is an extremely hard problem
technically and philosophically. That Harvard even has in-person interviews
for all its prospective students suggests it's less of a sham than many other
admissions processes. Does this guy think the all the other schools are giving
five-hour interviews, or psychological test batteries, or brain scans?

You have to decide who you're going to let in, and so far no one has found a
really reliable way to separate the wheat from the chaff - that is, where the
wheat is the type of student you want. Even selecting a 'type' of student is
risky, considering people at the age of 16-18 are essentially larval. So not
only do you have to gauge performance, but potential. Good luck with that!

There's also an ignorant undercurrent of "kids these days," as if kids in the
90s and before didn't have advisors or vanity trips or ultra-practiced answers
for every question. The way _he_ got in is the _right_ way, even though as he
points out shortly after, there is no right way.

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hkmurakami
Exclusion is tradition at these schools.

 _By 1926, Harvard moved away from admissions based strictly on academics to
evaluating potential students on a number of qualifiers meant to reveal their
"character." A report released that year by an admissions committee endorsed a
limit of 1,000 freshman per class — allowing a shift in policy, as Harvard
could no longer admit every student who achieved a certain academic cutoff.

Here's how Karabel sums up the new changes approved in 1926, which would
effectively allow the Harvard administration to limit its Jewish student
population:

The committee decisively rejected an admissions policy based on scholarship
alone, stating that "it is neither feasible nor desirable to raise the
standards of the College so high that none but brilliant scholars can enter"
while stipulating that "the standards ought never to be so high for serious
and ambitious students of average intelligence."

When the faculty formally approved the report eight days later, Lowell was
further elated, for they also approved measures making the admissions process
even more subjective. In particular, the faculty called on [Committee on
Admissions chairman Henry Pennypacker] to interview as many applicants as
possible to gather additional information on "character and fitness and the
promise of the greatest usefulness in the future as a result of a Harvard
education." Henceforth, declared the faculty, a passport-sized photo would be
"required as an essential part of the application for admissions."_

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-
di...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-
discriminating-against-jews-2014-12)

disclosure: I am a Princeton alum and applicant interviewer. There is
definitely a strong element of self-perpetuation at these schools, for better
or for worse.

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foobarqux
Had to use highlighting service to bypass gawker block. Sorry.

~~~
6d0debc071
That's actually a service I haven't seen before and find an interesting little
thing. So thanks for linking to it anyway ^_^

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nickysielicki
When you read this, it's so damn clear that education is going to change
_dramatically_ in the next 15 years.

I'm pretty scared for late in my career when I'm going to be competing for
jobs against people that got educated in a much better way.

------
revelation
I don't get it, they are having _volunteers_ gatekeep and giving ratings on a
scale of _absolutely superior_ to _not recommended_?

I mean, we've heard lots about interviews for hiring, but this is just
ridiculously misinformed and terrible on every level.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I think they're just alumni interviews. And from what I understand they don't
make much of a difference in the application process. I have a friend who used
to do these sorts of interviews for Harvard and he expressed similar
sentiments, namely that he found it disappointing how the kids he most liked
never got in (generally because they were poorer and not as polished as the
wealthier kids who got in over them).

~~~
hkmurakami
I'm an alumni interviewer for Princeton, and that evaluation metric reads very
similar to ours.

I've also experienced the limitations of making an appeals to the admissions
committee based on adversity and potential and what the school could do for
the student.

My sense is that the alumni interview only really affects the borderline cases
or if you give a truly horrific review of the student for one reason or
another.

The process selects for a certain mold of person. Diversity happens only
within this smaller universe, imo.

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gradstudent
OP: Why post this stupid link instead of the Gawker story?

~~~
daniel-cussen
Gawker is banned from this site, and rightly so.

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Dewie
So? Post as much about the downsides of (admission to) prestigious schools as
you want. People are still going to fawn over people who went there, and those
who went there are going to continue to flaunt it (because, hey, it works).

~~~
rwallace
Some people are going to fawn over people who went there, and some aren't.
Don't be one of the first category, and to the extent such matters are under
your control (e.g. if you have influence over hiring decisions in your place
of employment), don't tolerate other people doing so either.

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jsnk
> Instead of giving people a boost on the ladder to upward mobility

If college admissions went by this person's standard, that would indeed be a
sham.

~~~
hkmurakami
Well they already do this, to a lesser degree.

Ex: a student from a less priviledged background whose school did not offer
20AP courses, but did take the 3/3 that were available and had high marks on
them, will be "boosted" versus a student who took, say, 9/12 that could have
been taken, for example.

