I worked in admissions for an Ivy League. We used a vibes based system based on how compelling a sob story you could concoct whilst staying on the good side of fraud. Ie you wanna aim for drug addict father black trans queer activist with autism etc whatever is on the NYT frontpage today. I know two companies whole line of business is just optimizing your sob story. Things are changing a bit now though, it did get a bit ridiculous around the years 0 - 4 AF (Anno Floyd). Core of the issue was always protecting legacy admissions and other grifts vs the deluge of Asian students with perfect test scores. I wish I was lying

Your comment sounds vibes-based

It sounds like yet another far-right racist spreading misinformation under a randomly generated username.

"Anno Floyd," fuck's sake, they have a severe brainworm infection to be mad at some guy murdered by police and the protesters upset by the situation. It is impossible to take a comment seriously with this.

>We used a vibes based system based on how compelling a sob story you could concoct whilst staying on the good side of fraud.

Besides lost meritocracy, that is accidentally filtering for ability and willingness to manipulate others emotionally. Which feels really scary.

Honestly I don’t believe a thing they’re saying. Just look at the demographics of any Ivy League school and you’ll see it can’t be true

My kid applied to Brown and others and the prep company we hired ($150/hr) spent more time going through the "sob story" the parent talked about than any other requirement (kids scores are to be fair quite decent already).

I’m not saying that it’s dumb money to go with a sob story college admission essay, I just don’t think they’re being truthful with their experience. It reads like someone lifted a comment from /r/conservative about what they think the admissions process is.

Somehow majority of Ivy League students don't have those sob stories and did not had for last years either?

Not American either, but in the US many schools use/used standardized admission tests (SAT/ACT) on top of things like HS GPA/grades.

There are many countries, especially in Europe, where entrance/admission tests are not a thing.

Yeah, in England only certain universities like Oxford and certain subjects like Mathematics have separate entrance exams.

That said, the Sixth Form exams are mostly standardised with only a few different exam boards for the entire country, so the Sixth Form grades end up being something akin to standardised tests anyway.

They look at high school transcripts and the application essays. I don't know how they decide based on those.

It varies by school. I went to a (low ranking) state engineering school and it was guaranteed entry if a prospect met the following criteria:

- Had high school diploma (or equivalent).

- Resident of the state for >6 months (student or one parent).

- ACT score of something like 21. With provisional admission granted to students with scores below, until they completed all first year engineering courses with a B or better.

So likely they just dropped the concept of provisional admission. All that did was open up classes for registration a week later to ensure other students were able to get their preferred class openings. Provisional had to take the scrap classes, like the four-hour, once a week Calc class on Friday night.

> how did admissions work without test scores?

They look at "life experience" factors. Grades, of course, but also extracurricular activities such as school clubs, volunteering, activism, socioeconomic background and so forth.

The aim was to include as many varieties of these factors as possible in the student population to boost diversity without directly referencing skin color (which would be illegal).

There's a lot of antipathy towards standardized tests as things that disadvantage kids who don't test well, despite it being much cheaper and less time intensive to prepare for the test than it is to join a bunch of clubs and spend your weekends volunteering.

It turns out that removing the standardized testing requirement led to a lot of students wasting their money on courses that they weren't at all prepared to take.

Excellent question. Sorry that's not allowed. DEI is the name of the game.

I'm curious as to what you're implying with the DEI comment. It is often used to imply that white people are being disadvantaged in favor of minorities. But I highly suggest you take look at the demographics of the standardized test scores. Heck, take a look at the demographics of any of the top schools in the country. Berkeley included. Many of the school groups, business, clubs, etc. wouldn't have any white people in them if it wasn't a DEI requirement. Source, my daughter is a junior at Berkeley.

Primarily your high school GPA, the average of your grades across 4 years of high school. Which arguably is a better indicator than a single test that you can test for.

The problem is if you have a high school with low standards you're getting A's when you didn't deserve them.