<Former Ivy League admission officer>

If you let the professors pick the kids, you'd get very few "leaders" coming out of the elite schools and lots of eggheads and tinkerers. Knowing this, the schools use recent grads and professional bureaucrats whose job is to carry out mandates handed down, not by faculty, but by the trustees, who have a broader, and more worldly perspective on who should be admitted.

It's interesting that eggheads and tinkerers are not perceived as leaders or leadership material by those recent grads, professional bureaucrats, and trustees. Why is that?

In this day and age where we consider everything a learnable skill, from ice hockey (Gladwell) to math (Asian culture) to seduction (Neil Strauss et al), why are eggheads and tinkerers seemingly considered unteachable in the ways of leadership (real leadership, as espoused in the article)?

I don't agree with the comment you're replying to, but wanted to point out that there's a huge difference between being teachable and trying to learn. The "eggheads and tinkerers" are perfectly teachable, but the labeling presumes dilettantes who don't seek out either mastery or leadership, or a role in the greater world.

You can inspire somebody like that to change, but it's a lot more work than taking somebody who's already seeking it on their own.

Full disclosure, I was denied by every Ivy League school I applied to

schools use recent grads and professional bureaucrats whose job is to carry out mandates handed down, not by faculty, but by the trustees, who have a broader, and more worldly perspective on who should be admitted.

Admitted according to what criteria? I'm genuinely curious.

__

In my experience, for the most part success in pre-collegiate academia is overwhelmingly contingent on your willingness to follow directions and do a lot of busy work. There are exceptions of course, like a challenging math class or thought-provoking history class, but these are, as I said, the exception not the rule.

Most kids don't give a shit about learning - they care about getting good grades. And from what I'm reading in this speech, this is also an issue in Ivy League schools. This seems like a negative feedback loop. Maybe something needs to change?

Also, you say that we'd get very few "leaders" if we let professors pick the kids. Well the majority of these leaders, many of them from Ivy League schools, are dogmatic, stick-to-the-talking-points idiots, incapable of or unwilling to produce original thought. I think just what we need are more tinkerers.

Anyway, I was always under the impression it was primarily professors who sat on admission boards. But then again I never bought any of those "how to get into college" books.

> they aren't nearly as smart. They are the NCOs of the academic world.

You clearly don't have much experience with NCOs.

I was just about to say the same thing - usually it's the officers who are clueless, thinking that a year at RMA Sandhurst means they know more than a battle-hardened Sergeant or Sergeant-Major.

In any army in the world, call an NCO 'sir', and they'll respond: "Don't call me sir; I work for a living."

('Sir' is usually reserved for officers, and in UK & Commonwealth countries, Warrant Officers Class 1 & 2)