> The ones setting themselves apart with track are participating in Varsity at least a few years, doing well at State, and a likely courting at least D2 athletic scholarships
Sports (especially track and field) don't set you apart at all as an applicant for unless you're good enough to make the college's varsity team. That's the sole metric highly selective schools are using to assess athletic ability unless you have some extenuating circumstance that makes your participation in the sport especially meaningful.
I think his point was that any kid of any race other than Asian with identical stats would have been accepted.
And my point is that this is not true.
His scores are near the median for those cohorts, and only a tiny fraction of students with those scores are admitted. Test scores are literally the only non-average thing on his resume for college applicants in general, and among CMU CS/HM CS they don't set him apart from anyone admitted or even tons of other people rejected.
Now, if he received an NDT bid and/or made it deep into nationals? Placed in State and had D1 track scholarship potential? Special distinctions from the Scouts? Sure. Those might raise my eyebrow. But he has average scores _for the cohort_ and nothing else of note on his resume other than participation in a few after-school activities.
Schools like CMU CS and HM can demand both his scores and also excellence in other dimensions. They have tons of applicants with NDT bids in policy/PF/LD and similar or better scores. They have tons of applicants who are on Varsity track teams, even do well at state, and have similar or better scores.
Even more importantly, they have tons of applicants who do really interesting and unique things outside of the official college prep extra-curricular stuff -- run apps/websites with tons of users, OSS packages with lots of stars, various types of civil society involvement, and so on. Those students also have similar or better scores.
And they turn down a lot of those applicants who have the same scores as this student but are also top percentile at their extra-curricular activities.
Good test scores aren't enough to get into CMU CS/HM, and that's all this student has. It's not racism. It's merit.
Again, this discussion is about a real person and it's a shame his dad entered his resume into this discourse non-anonymously.
But the narrative is just wrong. The bar is absurdly higher than this dad thinks it is. Period.
Maybe it should be different--for example, I'm at a loss to understand how athletics might predict success in computer science programs (grit, maybe?)--and there's probably a reasonable argument that the four-factor (academic, extracurricular, athletic, personal) model creates more systematic biases than it avoids. But what you're saying is pretty accurate.
Grit, leadership, team work, the crucible of (a different type of) competition, tactics and strategy, etc. Again, not sports in general, but specifically being good enough at a sport to get a D1 or D2 scholarship, requires significant discipline and inter-personal skills.
(I also think tech folks under-appreciate that physical movement is a type of intelligence that might just correlate well with certain types of high-stress/low-information decision making... at least as well as IQ correlates with similar types of things... but that's an evidence-free conjecture on my part.)
> there's probably a reasonable argument that the four-factor (academic, extracurricular, athletic, personal) model creates more systematic biases than it avoids. But what you're saying is pretty accurate.
That's definitely true -- eg a student from outside the college-going class or without enough economic capital wouldn't be able to participate in niche sports and become elite by virtue of big fish/small point dynamics. And their parent wouldn't have friends who could give advice or open doors. But, do note that the student in the referenced paragraph is not a victim of that type of systematic bias. His father, a partner at IBM, is exactly the type of person who is positioned to provide those unfair advantages.
Aside from grades and AP scores, it's a lot of "showing up" dressed up as accomplishment. JV track explains itself, the debate stuff is the equivalent of getting third place in one track event at one regional meet, and Eagle Scout is impressive but IMO doesn't show anything that doing well in school doesn't already show.
Everyone applying to CMU CS or Harvey Mudd has high GPAs, high standardized test scores, and lots of 4s and 5s on AP tests. So the extra curricular stuff really does matter, because there are way fewer seats than people with good grades and test scores. And in this applicant's case, the ECs just are not there.
The applicants who are setting themselves apart via debate are consistently doing well at the best national tournaments in the most demanding and competitive formats for years; not getting 3rd place in Congressional at one regional tournament. The ones setting themselves apart with track are participating in Varsity at least a few years, doing well at State, and a likely courting at least D2 athletic scholarships. The ones who are setting themselves apart via scouting are going way beyond the minimum requirements for Eagle Scout.
Also, Northeastern and Amherst have fantastic CS programs and getting into CS programs like those at Harvey Mudd or CMU is probably harder than getting into ivies these days.