The New Republic

If you want a college full of ladder-climbing boring automatrons you could do that. The selective nature of the process means that applicants will be running around being competitive. But not taking to account whether a person is interesting seems silly. I know a lot of people who do well on tests but are booorrrringgg as human beings and not the type of people who would enhance the institution.

- gibsonp

September 12, 2006 at 10:53am

My wife is French and went to an elite institution, and I can confirm that the preparation there for elite schools is much more useful, or at least interesting and positive for one's educational development, than the equivalent here. Gibsonp talks about certain people "doing well on tests". Fair enough, but tests like the SAT are really the culprits of that. They are the easiest to game, and easiest for people who do well on tests to master without demonstrating concrete knowledge. If we had, for example, a test on comphrehension of great literature, science, and so on, we would at the minimum be encouraging prospective students to master these subjects. The biggest problem with introducing a French-style process here, however, would be agreeing on the "canon of knowledge,", the comphrehension of which prospective students would be judged. France has a central administration and strong (and somewhat conservative) institutions that decide what history is the most important, which books are "great", and so on. This would be impossible here, it seems, particularly since few colleges even try to put forth a "canon" anymore or even reject that there should be a common base of knowledge. The idea is intriguing, though, and I've often though that many other countries send their young people off to college with far more rounded educations that seems to be the case here.

- larrynorton

September 12, 2006 at 12:44pm

Blond Protestant boys from good families who played football, sailed, and didn't bother studying too hard had "good character"; thin Jewish boys from immigrant households who spent all their time reading and arguing did not. That prejudice disappeared from the admissions process long ago Really? From what I've seen, it's returned, in the form of pressure on applicants to be "well-rounded" ie do lots of volunteering, play half a dozen sports etc. Which is an easy way to bias the admissions process against brilliant Asians who, like the jews 80 years ago, far exceed their peers on every measure of academic merit. btw U Cal Berkeley is now effecting de facto quotas against Asian admits, of the same type that were used against jews in the last century by the ivies.

- teplukhin

September 12, 2006 at 3:30pm

What larrynorton said. Even if we can't agree on a canon, we should at least require all college applicants to take AP-style exams for math, the hard sciences and at least one foreign language not spoken in the examinee's household.

- teplukhin

September 12, 2006 at 3:32pm

As someone who came from modest means, I had to work during high school. I had little to any time for the "proper" extra cirriculars like sports or volunteering. I had to earn money to help pay for school. I guess that made me inferior, even though my grades were stellar in high school and college. And that work experience didn't hurt in my 20+ years in the engineering field. That makes me less well rounded? Bah. I'd say I'm more well rounded than those jocks that sponged off daddy's money. The slug that's in the White House right now comes to mind as to what I detested in college, those supposed more 'well rounded' types. Seems as usual class warfare is alive, well and being waged sucessfully by the haves on the havenots.

- tnmats

September 12, 2006 at 3:58pm

tnmats - I'm on your side. We should end this idiocy about the importance of volunteering, sports etc and get back to merit. For all the problems with meritocracy, it's still much fairer and more effective at selecting real talent than the alternative. Which is the current system of bogus "character" proxies that are nothing mroe than resume-stuffer activities for middle-class and rich kids.

- teplukhin

September 12, 2006 at 4:05pm

Let the "well-rounded" kids go to the second-rate private colleges like Colgate, Haverford etc, where they can use their networking skills to land the bond trader jobs they always coveted and not waste any time or space at the top tier institutions of learning. Those schools should reserve most of their spots for students from any school or background who score the highest on a set of advanced, detailed, subject-matter tests. And should fund all students but those with household incomes in the top two or three deciles.

- teplukhin

September 12, 2006 at 4:11pm

Each system has its weaknesses. Still, I recall my class being given an SAT test when we were 15 (just for fun!) and our being astonished that this was what determined whether or not American kids got into university. The downside of the English A-Level system is that it encourages very early specialisation. I studied no science, maths, geography etc after the age of 16. On the other hand, Enlish Literature A-Level involved, for us, a 4-5,000 word individual study, a three hour Shakespeare exam (Henry IV, Pt 1 and Othello my year), a further exam on Milton and Chaucer plus a third paper on more modern authors (Austen, Conrad etc). At the very least all this - and the other books read during the two year course that did not feature on the set text syllabus for that year's examinations -gave one a decent grounding in the subject. A-Level History also involved an individual study plus eight hours of assorted exams. As I say, no system is perfect but there's something to be said for one that demands high school kids read books even if, as previous commentators have mentioned, there might be greater practical difficulties in implementing such a system in the US.

- amassie

September 12, 2006 at 5:28pm

From what I've seen, it's returned, in the form of pressure on applicants to be "well-rounded" ie do lots of volunteering, play half a dozen sports etc. Which is an easy way to bias the admissions process against brilliant Asians who, like the jews 80 years ago, far exceed their peers on every measure of academic merit.

I attended an Ivy League University. I was also captain of three varsity teams in high school. I took many A.P.s including Latin, Macroeconomics, B.C. Calculus as a junior, Multi-variable calculus as a senior (alas there was no A.P. for "multi"), and others. I also scored highly on my SATs.

You know what I found? The same kids who loaded on the extracurriculars were the same kids who scored highly on standardized tests and who did well in class. Before you start making judgments about who is and who is not qualified to be at good colleges, I suggest you rethink your stereotypes that people who applied themselves are without merit. The truth is that when applying to very competitive schools everyone has great grades and great test scores. After that, it is the other things that distinguish an applicant. Many of us did those things and still maintained high grades and test scores.

People are able to accomplish these things irrespective of whether they are wealthy. My family and I are immigrants from a third world country. Growing up my brother and I attended public schools. I did well in school despite my sports activities and I did well in sports despite my being Asian (which you seem to think should hinder me). I found your post quite offensive. After putting in all that effort, for all those years, who are you to tell me that I did not "deserve" it?

- burntedge

September 12, 2006 at 6:08pm

Was anyone else struck by the weirdness of this Times article? I'm not just thinking of the weirdo who "said his eyes had teared up when he heard the news." The weirder thing is that Harvard's program isn't even a real (i.e., binding) early admission program! Buried at p. 2 is the admission that "Under Harvard's early admissions program, which is known as early action, students do not have to decide until May 1 whether to accept an admission offer. Even so, many potential applicants did not understand the distinction between Harvard's program and those that require an upfront commitment and were discouraged from applying." I hate to be mean spirited, but any kid who doesn't understand (or won't take the time to learn) the basic difference between early admission and a Harvard-type "early notice" program probably isn't cut out to attend a school like Harvard. It's not like there are that many options out there - regular admission, early admission (binding), and early notice (non-binding). The other thing is that the supposed rationale for poorer students not applying early notice -- i.e., not knowing how much financial aid will be available -- isn't even an issue! The article admits that students whose families make less than $60,000 don't pay ANYTHING to attend. Zero. I can't imagine that Harvard's applicant pool is comprised of such a bunch of dolts.

- litwinski

September 12, 2006 at 6:27pm

Your achievements are most impressive, though your logical reasoning ability needs a bit of remedial work. There's no assumption in my post that Asians can't play sports; I merely point out the fact that many less-qualified non-Asians use sports and extra-curriculars to gain spots in elite schools that many better-qualified, smarter Asians fail to get. As shown by Berkeley's ceiling on Asian admits. Nothing against you in particular, so calm down, laddie. The truth is that when applying to very competitive schools everyone has great grades and great test scores If so then it's obvious that the standards of those exams and those clases are too low. As attested by poster amassie's experience and the experience of nearly every east european child whose parents emigrate to the US, our standards are lame. Much of what passes for freshman and sophomore instruction in this country, at even the best schools, would in other countries be less challenging than what's served to college-track 15- or 16 year-olds. The average Russian kid, for example, is typically 2-3 years ahead of the most advanced US kids when it comes to math.

- teplukhin

September 12, 2006 at 6:31pm

The current SAT exam does a poor job of sorting out people at the top. The score of 800 on the SAT II in physics puts you in around the 90th percentile. That is not going to distinguish among the best students. The SAT II in math is of similar uselessness in distinguishing among the brightest students. What is more revealing is that 800 on the physics is obtained by scoring 60 out of a possible 75. This means that in fact one could use the actual raw scores to make distinctions but the test scores do not. The current practice of Ivy league schools and perhaps many others is to let students take the SAT I as many times as they like and to record the highest score received on each exam regardless of whether they were scored on the same day. So the student getting a perfect 1600 (on the old SAT I) in his or her junior year the first time taking the test is lumped together with the student taking the test three or four times to get the highest possible score. This may boost the ego of admissions directors who boast that they deny admission to hundreds of students with perfect SAT scores but it is not exactly accurate. Furthermore, grade inflation is not confined to colleges. An increasing demand from students and their parents has put pressure on the high schools to produce more A students. Among other things, it means that intellectual achievement has become less important than persistence. In achieving high grades, turning in every single bit of homework and dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's is more important than getting a 99 on a long, comprehensive and challenging final exam. The inflation of grades and the scoring of the SAT exams has had the affect of creating a homogenization at the top. With large numbers of students with very similar profiles, it is easy for colleges to make their choices on the basis of their private prejudices. From what I observed of the admissions process for the last couple of years, top universities often chose good applicants over truly outstanding ones. I am not sure why this has occurred but from the examples I saw this is too often the case.

- Jonathan Cohen

September 12, 2006 at 8:04pm

Really, you people. Try looking at the data sometime. "Those schools should reserve most of their spots for students from any school or background who score the highest on a set of advanced, detailed, subject-matter tests. " The top 100 schools would be around 99% white and Asian. They wouldn't be exclusively rich, but pretty close. The only thing that keeps URMs (underrepresented minorities) in the pretense of being in the game is rampant grade fraud. The University of California just instituted a minimum GPA of 3.0, a standard that will almost exclusively affect white suburban boys. They didn't dare institute the other logical standard, a baseline SAT score, because the logical cutoff point for UCs would be 500 (per test, or 1500). That would actually be too low, as it hits the top 50% of whites and Asians. But it would be 70 points too high to pick up any URMs. "The score of 800 on the SAT II in physics puts you in around the 90th percentile. That is not going to distinguish among the best students." Only the best students take the Subject tests in math and physics. Did you ever look at the populations? Roughly 10% as many students take the Math 2c as take the SAT, and only 3% as many take the Physics test. There's a real issue as to whether or not the Subject tests are normed properly, but anyone who thinks it's too easy because 3300 kids out of the entire US class of 2006 get an 800 needs to study up. As for Math 2c, anyone who thinks it's too easy is either exceptionally ignorant about the bottom 85% of all math students or isn't aware of the test's difficulty. "The article admits that students whose families make less than $60,000 don't pay ANYTHING to attend. " That doesn't mean they get a free ride. It means that the school will ensure that the student will get financial aid. It's pretty well established that most elite schools are now *not* need blind. They're more likely to accept well-off kids because they are more likely to react to a discount and so accept the offer (increasing their yield). Student A gets $10K from Harvard every year and goes in debt for the rest. Student B gets $10K from Harvard and dad foots the bill every year, so that's $30K instead of $40K--a great deal. Student A decides to go to the elite public university, Student B takes the Harvard deal. That happens enough times and Harvard (as well as many other elite schools) starts giving preference to the kids with well-off dads. This has been going on for a few years. The UCs are practicing defacto discrimination against both whites and Asians, btw. Look at Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara, the "white" campuses--and notice that both are going up the rankings as a result. And please, enough of the superior European schools. They boot out the kids who can't make the grade. That's not happening here. Don't get me wrong--I think we should institute standards for college. But the racial gap will be intolerable and will simply not fly. As a result, college is becoming the new high school. We are turning out three tiers of high school students. The top 10% is doing harder work than any other generation in history and is comparable to schools in other countries. The middle 50% is roughly on par with the averages in the past. The bottom 40%, disproportionately poor and URM, is the population we never bothered to educate in the past, and it's simply absurd to pretend that they're getting the same education as the other two tiers. But we engage in that pretense every day. It's already killing our community college system and is trying hard to choke our lower-level public university system (although this level is fighting back). Finally, the SATs aren't "easy to game". They're not that hard, and the new test is disastrous. But the scores correlate very well to ability.

- jmkerr

September 13, 2006 at 1:31am

because many colleges themselves are jokes. Most students aren't there to learn, many professors aren't there to teach, and common tracks (i.e. Liberal Arts) lead to nowhere. The whole system is a ridiculous waste, and should be scrapped. For programs that provide no real training, I'd max it out at 2 years, focusing on teaching us barely literate college students how to write. For programs that offer skills and training that will be applicable in the workplace, like the sciences, determine the number of years it takes to prepare someone fully and make that the length of the program. But this whole 4 year (and over $100,000) conception of college is worthless. The chief function of our college system is to tax the middle-class to pay for academic research, not to sharpen the talent or intellect of the next generation.

- 4andrew

September 13, 2006 at 1:31am

jmkerr- good points all; thanks for your insights and data. One quick question: where does the (increasingly common) half-hispanic, half-vietnamese or otherwise -asian kid fall in this convoluted, Old Dixie-style racial taxonomy? More generally, there's obviously a trade-off between academic quality and enhanced equality; why our society chooses to remedy the inequality at the college level instead of much earlier, at the secondary or primary levels, is a good question for the NEA and the political class. It seems to me that the solution would be a combination of a) some kind of Texas-style, guaranteed admission to elite public schools for the top x% of every high school class-- maybe the top 1% could be guaranteed admission to Berkeley, the next 4% to UCSB UCLA, and so forth; and b) (means-tested) private school vouchers. No way around it. When we have to create ridiculous acronyms like URM to hide the fact that there are truly disadvantaged minorities (eg the Vietnamese) who are running rings around not just the URMs but also the white kids, we're running out of excuses. Let's try to get back to merit. We're not helping the URMs otherwise.

- teplukhin

September 13, 2006 at 12:58pm

enough of the superior European schools. They boot out the kids who can't make the grade. That's not happening here Sure it is, it just happens at the next level, with the divide between community colleges and real colleges. We track at post-secondary level, the european system tracks at the seoncdary level. Not to say there aren't significant benefits to tracking later-- more mature students making more informed career choices, for starters-- but let's not pretend that we don't track.

- teplukhin

September 13, 2006 at 1:05pm

Jmkerr made many interesting points, and I think he is right that our current system works in part as it does to ensure that sufficient URMs get to the next level. I thought I'd go back to the discussion about France and point out that they are introducing affirmative action into the elite schools there (Sciences Po et al). Previously, the system hadn't yielded very much racial diversity. If I understand correctly, the solution in France is to maintain the gruelingly high standards for most students, but to specifically exempt students from designated underpriveleged districts. This has the advantage of being nominally race-neutral, but could sharpen the inevitable side-effects of affirmative action programs by making it clear which students benefited from the program and which not. Unfortunately, I don't see any perfect way to reconcile the dueling imperatives of selecting the "best" students for elite education and ensuring that the school body is reflective of society as a whole. Lowering or adopting partially non-academic standards makes it easier to achieve the desired mix of students, but at the cost of being able to identify some truly extraordinary students.

- larrynorton

September 13, 2006 at 3:53pm

The affirmative action push at Sciences Po got bad press and is regarded among the students of the Grandes Ecoles (and others) as a wrongheaded stab at American-style affirmative action. I'm not pronouncing an opinion here, but simply raising the important question that the students admitted under this program remain with the stigma attached to those an extraordinary priviledge in a system that values the 'concours' (entrance test) for one and all. I'm a little pessimistic and a little sad that this program will probably not have its intended effects. In his post, DB is simply calling for a shift in focus from the dippy character essay to books and knowledge -- because even if high school students don't do well enough to get into the school of their choice, at least they will have spent their time acquiring skills that will help them in their future education, wherever that may be. I think the caveat of "in theory" that DB attaches to the meritocracy argument deserves to be explored. Each system has its faults, and, since France is being offered as a potential model, it is worthwhile looking at its drawbacks. 1) A look at the demographics of those admitted to the ENS or l'X (Polytechnique) shows that those who make it past SPE or Khagne (prep school) are mostly the sons and daughters of those who are already solidly placed in the caste of the former students of the Grandes Ecoles. Not great at encouraging diversity, and not exactly the meritocracy it aims to be. 2) Those same parents are the ones who know how to get their kids into the most prestigious prep schools (Henri IV and Louis Le Grand), and this puts them at a distinct advantage. 3) The oral component of the 'concours', or entrance examination, allows the committee to see the student in person and could be a source of some prejudice from the crusty old sods that administer it (my opinion). It is also done on such a small scale and so centralized that it would be difficult to replicate. The Grandes Ecoles students, the very few, have access to scholarships and the rest of the masses that attend institutions of higher learning in France are often lost in the shuffle, left to their own devices, and mercilessly weeded out after taking a stab at college life. 4) the system favors a certain type of intelligence, one that is as good at working under pressure (social, intellectual), often favoring those families willing to let their kids live far away from home I was at the Ecole Normale Superieure at a time when there was some "ENS Europe" controversy was brewing (an attempt to open admission to EU students by dossier). I mention this because it provides (in microcosm) a showdown between the competing systems of entrance by 'concours' (test) and entrance 'sur dossier' (application). Many were dead set against the dossier system, which they said undermined the supposed meritocracy. (For some reason, ENS Europe's most vocal opponent was the resident Troskiite!) In the end, if these naysayers had won out, even that a modicum of diversity would have been snuffed out. OK, so I say yes to a push for meritocracy and cheer three times for a renewed commitment to content/competence driven entrance criteria. But I would like to avoid the negative effects of the French system which, if I may say so, is in no position to be offering lessons in avoiding a self-perpetuating elite.

- acgraves

September 13, 2006 at 7:41pm

David Bell makes an interesting point, but there's nothing inherent in the essay requirement that says that volunteering or playing in a concert with Eric Clapton (apparently the subject of George Harrison's son's essay) is more interesting than having a summer job or reading a book. Essay topics can be designed to exclude personal references (a book that changed you (or a teacher), what would you take to a desert island, if you could travel back in time where would you go & why, what is justice, etc.), and students can be told that name-dropping will not be looked on kindly. The problem, I suspect, is with the people who read the essays, who are looking not for brilliant minds but for catchy stories & personal interest (which perhaps answers Jonathan Cohen's perplexity, in his last paragraph). A friend of a friend who sat on the admissions committee of an Ivy League college said that time and again a good student, even a very good student, was rejected in favor of a student who had a sob story, or some personal interest angle. In English universities professors themselves do admissions. It's a lot of work, but it keeps the system honest - professors can be trusted to look for academic aptitude and intellectual curiosity - and gives teachers a stake in their future students. Of course that system would never work here, because American students do not apply for a subject (although there's no reason why they couldn't, with the caveat that they could change), because American universities are as impersonal and modular as factories, and because very few American academics (pace David Bell) have any interest in their students, or in teaching. I remember my college advisor telling me that she liked my essay, but that it was so uncompromisingly about an intellectual experience that it might intimidate the admissions people and I might want to consider dumbing it down. I don't think she would have said that if professors did admissions. The SAT-I is an funny test, designed as it was to ferret out native intelligence in people who have had an indifferent education, but are voracious readers or think about triangles in their spare time. Even so, it's a test with content, not an intelligence test, and as such one can study for it, though the College Board tries to deny this. (Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about "gaming" the test - odd that studying should be considered a form of cheating!) But it has to be said that the content of the SAT-I is elementary & middle school not high school material. Good schools require, in addition to the SAT-I, three SAT-II subject tests. The fact that most schools do not means that the SAT-I yields a good enough bell curve for their applicant pool - a very depressing thought. The SAT-II are honest, substantive tests, but they have their flaws: the language tests are too easy, and none of the humanities tests require an essay, because we're too cheap to pay for readers. (Although, sadly, writing skills are so poor that I wouldn't envy those poor readers.) The circle that the SAT-I tries to square is this: is it possible to spot intelligence in an eighteen-year-old who's had a bad education? What does one do with such people? What's fair? It's a terrible conundrum, and I would avoid it entirely by improving primary and secondary education. But the policy makers apparently disagree with me, and we persist in a mystical belief in the transformative power of a college education, in spite of mounting evidence of noncompletion and mediocre teaching. A funny coincidence - David Bell gave me advice on applying to college (very informally) when I was a high school senior. I doubt he remembers! tepplkhin wrote: What larrynorton said. Even if we can't agree on a canon, we should at least require all college applicants to take AP-style exams for math, the hard sciences and at least one foreign language not spoken in the examinee's household. ------------------ Why on earth math and the hard sciences?? I took the BC Calculus AP, and although I enjoyed the course and did well on the test, I haven't thought about calculus since then, and regret not having studied something closer to my native bent instead - say, Latin. If there's one AP everyone should take, it's the US history AP - not everyone will be an engineer, but we're all citizens. (And no, I'm not a historian.) I think amassie would be surprised and dismayed to see what goes on in English schools nowadays. I worked there for a year and couldn't believe how low the level was - of both students and teachers. Seeing how the tests were graded gave me an appreciation for multiple choice exams (which I never thought would happen).

- ggponi

September 18, 2006 at 3:31pm

Here (I hope) are some paragraph breaks: David Bell makes an interesting point, but there's nothing inherent in the essay requirement that says that volunteering or playing in a concert with Eric Clapton (apparently the subject of George Harrison's son's essay) is more interesting than having a summer job or reading a book. Essay topics can be designed to exclude personal references (a book that changed you (or a teacher), what would you take to a desert island, if you could travel back in time where would you go & why, what is justice, etc.), and students can be told that name-dropping will not be looked on kindly. The problem, I suspect, is with the people who read the essays, who are looking not for brilliant minds but for catchy stories & personal interest (which perhaps answers Jonathan Cohen's perplexity, in his last paragraph). A friend of a friend who sat on the admissions committee of an Ivy League college said that time and again a good student, even a very good student, was rejected in favor of a student who had a sob story, or some personal interest angle. In English universities professors themselves do admissions. It's a lot of work, but it keeps the system honest - professors can be trusted to look for academic aptitude and intellectual curiosity - and gives teachers a stake in their future students. Of course that system would never work here, because American students do not apply for a subject (although there's no reason why they couldn't, with the caveat that they could change), because American universities are as impersonal and modular as factories, and because very few American academics (pace David Bell) have any interest in their students, or in teaching. I remember my college advisor telling me that she liked my essay, but that it was so uncompromisingly about an intellectual experience that it might intimidate the admissions people and I might want to consider dumbing it down. I don't think she would have said that if professors did admissions. The SAT-I is an funny test, designed as it was to ferret out native intelligence in people who have had an indifferent education, but are voracious readers or think about triangles in their spare time. Even so, it's a test with content, not an intelligence test, and as such one can study for it, though the College Board tries to deny this. (Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about "gaming" the test - odd that studying should be considered a form of cheating!) But it has to be said that the content of the SAT-I is elementary & middle school not high school material. Good schools require, in addition to the SAT-I, three SAT-II subject tests. The fact that most schools do not means that the SAT-I yields a good enough bell curve for their applicant pool - a very depressing thought. The SAT-II are honest, substantive tests, but they have their flaws: the language tests are too easy, and none of the humanities tests require an essay, because we're too cheap to pay for readers. (Although, sadly, writing skills are so poor that I wouldn't envy those poor readers.) The circle that the SAT-I tries to square is this: is it possible to spot intelligence in an eighteen-year-old who's had a bad education? What does one do with such people? What's fair? It's a terrible conundrum, and I would avoid it entirely by improving primary and secondary education. But the policy makers apparently disagree with me, and we persist in a mystical belief in the transformative power of a college education, in spite of mounting evidence of noncompletion and mediocre teaching. A funny coincidence - David Bell gave me advice on applying to college (very informally) when I was a high school senior. I doubt he remembers! posted by teplukhin on 2006-09-12 15:32:22 [warn tnr] [respond]

- ggponi

September 18, 2006 at 3:35pm