Elite University Admissions

What university admissions choose to do is the university's own choice, particularly if the university is private, like all the Ivy Leagues are. If they want to accept lower quality applicants in the name of diversity, that is their choice. The highly talented students they reject can go elsewhere and raise the quality of the universities that do accept them. The brand of the undergraduate school is overrated anyway.

The criteria for entering top universities causes this behavior, just do like [citation needed] proposed: set a public set of pass/fail requirements for admissions, then do a lottery from the candidate pool that passed the criteria.

In my view, the top universities' admission process is just like how the VC select start-ups. The school's goal is to seek the maximum return just like any other investors. What will this student bring to the university as the return of the investment, it could be more chance to get donation from a potential entrepreneur, academic fame from a genius, or a beautiful story of a student coming from some difficult background. And also, this seems aligned with the long term success defined by the m

The number of people with good academic records and top SAT scores outnumber the total seats available at top schools. They also take into account extra-circulars, leadership experience, and other activities. This prevents people from just studying for tests and thinking they have an automatic admission. Personally, I'm glad they do or I imagine it would be a very dull environment if there was nothing but people with their head in the books all the time.

Yup. The thing is, they get so many applicants that they have no reason to care if they miss some good ones. The ones they end up taking are just as good. Any of the elite schools could throw out their entire admitted class, admit their next 2k choices, and no one would be able to tell the difference.The schools have a huge incentive to admit students who will succeed. They have no incentive to admit all such students. This results in the admissions process that we have today.

> To deny someone admission due to poor academics is to deprive the university of revenue.I understand and agree this would be the case for low ranked universities but the article supposedly refers to an Ivy League uni or at least something close. Don't these universities have fixed admission numbers along with the ability to pick from the best and brightest? They don't have to fight for students, students have to fight to get into the uni. In this case it just doesn't make

The prestige of these schools is a significant, if not the main part of their appeal. Admitting too many students would cheapen their name. It's an open secret that the admissions processes for the elite US schools is far from meritocratic. They do admit many top performers, since it's part of their image, but also prioritize children of the wealthy and powerful, children of alumni, and other prospects with traits good for their image. For example there was a recent scandal where these

You're still defining "qualifications" and GPA and SAT scores. This is a bias on your part that is no longer appropriate at the elite universities. These schools are not selecting for the smartest or the most studious. They are selecting future leaders. GPA and SAT scores are not in and of themselves good correlations to what they are looking for. You really need to accept this, or at least formulate an argument as to why this is inherently unfair. But your assumption is plainly wrong.

Yes, this is right.For one thing, it simply isn't possible to have truly "objective" criteria for admissions.If it were only based on standardized test scores, the bulk of the students that got in to the most elite schools would be ones who went to elite private high schools and perhaps had extra highly-paid tutoring or those who enjoyed the obsessive life-long dedication of a tiger-mom. That would skew the population to students from a narrow demographic along with a very s

Why shouldn't Harvard take all the best students?