Throw Out the College Application System

Re:Throw Out the College Application System by khenson99 on Sunday October 05, 2014 @05:08PM (#8413464)

I go to Carnegie Mellon and I actually have a friend who works in the admissions office. She's told me that, being a really strong tech school, CMU often gets applications from people who are academically incredible, but may not contribute to campus life, extracurricular organizations, etc. This has led admissions to try to look harder at candidates who might not have gotten an 800 on their SAT math scores, but maybe a 760 with some strong non-academic resume items. Campus life at CMU is definitely lacking compared to other comparable universities, so I think a system like this might be really useful to a school like CMU which is trying to better understand the creative skills and emotional intelligence of potential students.

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Re:Throw Out the College Application System by james1071 on Sunday October 05, 2014 @07:38PM (#8413781)

That sounds like code for admitting more of 'the right sort of people'.

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Re:Throw Out the College Application System by GabrielF00 on Sunday October 05, 2014 @09:48PM (#8414015)

A lot of the tools that admissions offices use (essays, letters of recommendations) emerged because Harvard, Yale, and Princeton wanted to keep out (or limit the numbers of) the "wrong sort" of people, which, at the time, were Jews, homosexuals, and other such undesirables. Yale even went so far as to have its alumni interviewers comment on the bodies of male applicants. College administrators talked quite openly about the idea that having too many Jews would result in an inferior or degraded college culture.

My source here is Jerome Karabel's book called, naturally, The Chosen.

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Re:Throw Out the College Application System by Balgair on Monday October 06, 2014 @04:44PM (#8418179)

2 things:

Cornell, basically an engineering school at this point, has a big reputation for 'gorging out'. AKA jumping off one of the many bridges on campus. This negatively affects the admission rates (from what I hear and no, I have no citation for that) Campus life is a big driver for many schools these days. It's not all new gyms and tail-gating, it's also the rape and suicide stats.

2: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/504/h...

The intro here is a very good look into the lives of admissions officers. The students, the parents, and the schools themselves are all guilty of 'pushing' the idea of college.

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Re:Throw Out the College Application System by yincrash on Sunday October 05, 2014 @06:37PM (#8413672)

I went to CMU (2007), and I found campus life incredibly rich. I spent some time at GT previous to that, and I would say it was much more diverse than anything GT could have provided to me. What do you find is lacking?

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