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Is It Time To Throw Out the College Application System?
An anonymous reader points out this opinion piece by professor Adam Grant that questions how useful the current college application system is and suggests some alternate methods to gather information about candidates. The college admissions system is broken. When students submit applications, colleges learn a great deal about their competence from grades and test scores, but remain in the dark about their creativity and character. Essays, recommendation letters and alumni interviews provide incomplete information about students' values, social and emotional skills, and capacities for developing and discovering new ideas. This leaves many colleges favoring achievement robots who excel at the memorization of rote knowledge, and overlooking talented C students. Those with less than perfect grades might go on to dream up blockbuster films like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg or become entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs.
Including those non-academic things in university applications is mainly an Anglo-American thing. Most continental European universities determine entrance solely on the basis of one's high school grades and entrance exams. While I graduated from an American high school, I moved to Europe and did my university studies there, and no "character references" or "demonstrated public service" were requested or even wanted. There was a sort of essay required for the entrance exam, yes, but it tested me on a basic reading list assigned by the university department I aimed to study in, it wasn't not a creative writing exercise like many American universities ask for.
Yes, I have looked at the problems. These are basic problems that apply to teaching tactics of math that scale. Such tactics come in very handy with dealing with problems of a larger scale. When this is applied to simple problems, these methods are considered bulky, even unnecessary.
Immediately, people are freaking out because simple math is all of a sudden, not so simple. This is a quality example of people complaining about something without seeing a much larger picture. This is no different than the, "OMG, the sky is falling because of environmental requirements will destroy the economy; Obama is the devil," crap that I saw on Facebook every day until a couple of months ago when I decided to stop frequenting there.
Perhaps if people would think of the long term benefits instead of the short term detriments, we as a society would be a bit more advanced than we are presently.
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C student here. 2.6 GPA in high school, as I recall. By the time I entered high school I had already completed all available math classes (and had to do an after school program to take BC calculus just so I could get enough HS credit to graduate). By the time I was done with HS, 3 years later. I had completed all the science classes offered, the advanced social studies curriculum, and the advanced English curriculum except senior English. I applied to several universities as an early entrant, and was naturally rejected by all the good ones so ended up at Maryland, where I eventually graduated with a 3.5 GPA.
Why the low HS GPA, then? Partially sheer volume of drudgework (which I often wouldn't do), partially being graded on handwriting when I did do it, and partially constantly getting suspended for various rule violations.
Lazy? Yeah I suppose not doing the intellectual equivalent of moving a dirt pile from one place to another and then back might be considered "lazy". But I really wouldn't blame anyone assigned the task to realize its worthlessness and avoid in in favor of more interesting pursuits.