[ghgdynb1]

I used to think that the “holistic” criteria elite US colleges use to select students was a failure of meritocracy. My view was that the non-objective metrics were excuses for colleges to let in students who wouldn’t grind but wanted prestige and had rich parents.

But if you tie a person’s social status to performance on a single test, you suffocate all the useful things people could be doing if they didn’t have to solely dedicate themselves to prep. So maybe we’re doing okay as-is.

[olladecarne]

I still think the "holistic" approach is flawed. The "holistic" criteria benefits upper-class students because lower and middle class kids are rarely trained from a young age to be involved in extra-curricular activities the way upper-class kids are. I experienced this first hand growing up, many future Ivy league students almost seemed to have been trained for it from the moment they were born. The parents had connections all over the place and their kids could study/work on all sorts of interesting hobbies. On the other hand the lower class people had no idea that this world existed and at best spent some time studying for the standardized exams if their parents were really invested in their future.

Basically, whatever thing you choose as the metric, people with more resources and information will be able to optimize for it better. However, the more difficult the metric becomes to achieve, the more it benefits those who already benefit from the resource and information asymmetry.

[chrisseaton]

> middle class kids are rarely trained from a young age to be involved in extra-curricular activities

I almost can't think of something more middle-class than an aggressive dedication to as many extra-curricular activities as possible. SUVs full of children being driven from baseball to ballet to swimming? Seems a common part of culture for the middle-class?

[908B64B197]

Whatever you build, it will inevitably get min/maxed.

Every admission system prides itself in being the best but they all ultimately end up getting gamified. Because there is too much at stake.

[majormajor]

The trick would be coming up with an exam you can't study for. But even "IQ test" style stuff hasn't been immune to this, and many attempts to do so fall victim to "select for people with upbringing like the test authors, so actually they did study their whole life, they just didn't realize that's what they were doing."

Job interviews would benefit from the same thing, to go by the self-reported amount of time wasted on leetcode around here.

[ZephyrBlu]

How would that help?

Rewarding people for simply being born with high IQ is the opposite of meritocratic.

[mochomocha]

As a counter-example, I have gone through a relatable experience though not in India but France (our "preparatory classes" system also has similar high competitiveness/high pressure characteristics, to prepare for a few deciding exams). It only lasts for 2 years, but the stakes are somewhat similar from what I understand from the article.

Having lived in the US for a decade now, one of the biggest culture gap I keep and that probably won't ever go away is how it's somewhat accepted here that "letting rich kids cheat/buy their way into Ivy League is not that bad, and look it pays for a new cafeteria".

[ghgdynb1]

I get it, and I actually agree that the culture you describe isn't a good look.

What I'm going for is more the idea that if you consider the best alternative I can think of to the "holistic" approach, you get selecting applicants purely based on entrance exam scores. In such a world you'd be punishing a kid who plays with Arduino out of interest. Any energy devoted towards something other than test prep is energy wasted.

In the American system, as I'm coming to see it, the kid who plays with Arduino is punished less. The test won't take you all the way anyways, and you even get a little "refund" on attention sunk into some types of activity which qualify as extracurricular.

[drstewart]

I just looked up some of French's richest people and where their kids went to school -- amazing how ALL of them were smart enough to go to the best schools in France, Switzerland, and the UK (École Polytechnique, ETH, LSE) considering how egalitarian it is!

What a truly stunning coincidence indeed.

[908B64B197]

> the biggest culture gap I keep and that probably won't ever go away is how it's somewhat accepted here that "letting rich kids cheat/buy their way into Ivy League is not that bad, and look it pays for a new cafeteria".

There's a percentage of admitted students at which it's interesting to admit based on donations. Especially if one large donation can make need-blind admission possible for N students. But do it too much and you'll become a school that's known as "pay to win".

> (our "preparatory classes" system also has similar high competitiveness/high pressure characteristics, to prepare for a few deciding exams

There's also a third hidden option. The Polytechnique in Montreal is notorious for this: admit too much, collect tuition and then have students transfer out when they can't handle the workload.

[smhost]

yeah, one of my professors would openly talk about how rich kids in grad school just pay other people to do their research for them. i don't think he meant to be demoralizing, but i remember thinking to myself 'so what the fuck am i doing here, then?'

[endisneigh]

elite colleges basically have to have positive sentiment. a purely meritocratic admissions process wouldn't be conducive to this, because "rich" people generally do things that increase the sentiment of their schools, like become president or start famous companies.

This is why Stanford and Harvard are far more popular and recognizable compared to Caltech and MIT even though the quality of the students is virtually identical.

if you work in admissions as a place like Harvard or Stanford they will tell you point blank they make those kinds of "sentiment" considerations. I'm personally not a fan, but I get it.

[majormajor]

I'm not sure I follow. MIT and Caltech are very niche, but inside that niche, seem to have a pretty clear reputational advantage over Harvard. (Stanford, on the other hand, has some more niche overlap in CS at least.) Sadly, it's not a niche that lends itself to "future President prestige." But is that really hurting either MIT or Caltech, or their grads?

[barry-cotter]

> elite colleges basically have to have positive sentiment. a purely meritocratic admissions process wouldn't be conducive to this, because "rich" people generally do things that increase the sentiment of their schools, like become president or start famous companies.

Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, the LSE, Sciences Pos, X, ÉNA are all counter examples. You can select purely on academics just fine.

[golergka]

That's not the only two options. You could have a system that is based on objective, non-holistic metrics, but does not put all the pressure on a single test, single point in a person's life.

Actually, most of adult working life is already like that: there's many potential job interviews, projects that you can compete to various level of success, etc. The "single test" typically only exists in systems of higher education.

[abc_lisper]

You also make the successful people entitled and failures on the test feel like a second grade person in that IIT system. While meritocracy is a valid thing, expecting that a 16 year old has enough maturity or suck it up ness to ace that test while not having enough opportunity Is bullshit

[yudlejoza]

False choice fallacy.

[akhilcacharya]

I'm becoming convinced by the idea that meritocracy itself is bad and a terrible way to organize society. But perhaps I'm biased by being a failure in the meritocratic system.

[savanaly]

It's hard for me to imagine someone not being meritocratic. You would really, in your deepest heart of hearts, be sincerely ambivalent about whether your, say, dangerous surgery was done by the best surgeon in the country vs the lousiest? And if we say yes we would prefer the more meritorious one for that job, why not extend it to virtually every job?

[da_big_ghey]

I am becoming convinced by the idea that democracy itself is a bad and a terrible way to organize government. But I am also at losses for a less bad way. In similarities, I am at losses for a less bad than meritocracy. I am listening to hear more other options but am not hear any less bad.

[ZephyrBlu]

I'm interested in hear about why you believe you're a failure in the meritocratic system.

I also have some doubts about meritocracy for a couple of reasons:

1) Although we can try very hard to be objective, at the end of the day everything is subjective

2) So called "merit" seems to be largely based on genetic traits (Intelligence, personality, physical, etc)