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April 23, 2003

College Applications

There's a great article in the April 7th edition of the New Yorker (and I read this magazine ironically, I promise) on how college applications have become unpredictable.

The central thesis is that ivy league institutions, and most upper tiered colleges and universities, now accept students according to the ideal "class" as opposed to the ideal "student." What this means is that students are chosen according to their "lopsided" skills. That is, they try to generate a class that has a poet, a engineer, a future M.B.A., etc. etc. Instead of a student being graded according to their individual achievements, merit, and well-roundedness, they are chosen according to what niche they fit in for that class.

Further, the article argues that colleges and universities are also leaning more heavily towards early applicants. The thought process is that those students who apply early, are most likely to be "full paying" students and will not need any financial aid. Since most upper tiered institutions are "merit blind" (need and merit have no role to play in the acceptance process), by accepting more students early, this allows for them to avoid accepting potential need-based students later on.

Finally, there is are two interesting test-case scenarios of the application process of two students to Yale and Weslyan University. Both of them visited the campus' they applied to. The first one visted Weslyan on Zonker Harris Day, a day devoted to the celebration of smoking pot. The second one visited Yale and went to the Cunt Club; a club dedicated to vibrators and sex toys. Both applicants chose other schools.