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At one of my interview, a person from the admissions office handed this article to the group interviewing, I'm curious about others opinion.
You don't wanna know mine.
After reading the article I show the obvious similarities between the article and the present.
I CAN'T POST THE WHOLE ARTICLE BECAUSE OF CHARACTER LIMIT, SO PLEASE USE THE LINK.
=====================================================
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/051010crat_atlarge
GETTING IN
The social logic of Ivy League admissions.
by MALCOLM GLADWELL
Issue of 2005-10-10
Posted 2005-10-03
I applied to college one evening, after dinner, in the fall of my senior year in high school. College applicants in Ontario, in those days, were given a single sheet of paper which listed all the universities in the province. It was my job to rank them in order of preference. Then I had to mail the sheet of paper to a central college-admissions office. The whole process probably took ten minutes. My school sent in my grades separately. I vaguely remember filling out a supplementary two-page form listing my interests and activities. There were no S.A.T. scores to worry about, because in Canada we didnt have to take the S.A.T.s. I dont know whether anyone wrote me a recommendation. I certainly never asked anyone to. Why would I? It wasnt as if I were applying to a private club.
I put the University of Toronto first on my list, the University of Western Ontario second, and Queens University third. I was working off a set of brochures that Id sent away for. My parents contribution consisted of my fathers agreeing to drive me one afternoon to the University of Toronto campus, where we visited the residential college I was most interested in. I walked around. My father poked his head into the admissions office, chatted with the admissions director, andI imagineeither said a few short words about the talents of his son or (knowing my father) remarked on the loveliness of the delphiniums in the college flower beds. Then we had ice cream. I got in.
Am I a better or more successful person for having been accepted at the University of Toronto, as opposed to my second or third choice? It strikes me as a curious question. In Ontario, there wasnt a strict hierarchy of colleges. There were several good ones and several better ones and a number of programslike computer science at the University of Waterloothat were world-class. But since all colleges were part of the same public system and tuition everywhere was the same (about a thousand dollars a year, in those days), and a B average in high school pretty much guaranteed you a spot in college, there wasnt a sense that anything great was at stake in the choice of which college we attended. The issue was whether we attended college, andmost importanthow seriously we took the experience once we got there. I thought everyone felt this way. You can imagine my confusion, then, when I first met someone who had gone to Harvard.
There was, first of all, that strange initial reluctance to talk about the matter of college at alla glance downward, a shuffling of the feet, a mumbled mention of Cambridge. Did you go to Harvard? I would ask. I had just moved to the United States. I didnt know the rules. An uncomfortable nod would follow. Dont define me by my school, they seemed to be saying, which implied that their school actually could define them. And, of course, it did. Wherever there was one Harvard graduate, another lurked not far behind, ready to swap tales of late nights at the Hasty Pudding, or recount the intricacies of the college-application essay, or wonder out loud about the whereabouts of Prince So-and-So, who lived down the hall and whose family had a place in the South of France that you would not believe. In the novels they were writing, the precocious and sensitive protagonist always went to Harvard; if he was troubled, he dropped out of Harvard; in the end, he returned to Harvard to complete his senior thesis. Once, I attended a wedding of a Harvard alum in his fifties, at which the best man spoke of his college days with the groom as if neither could have accomplished anything of greater importance in the intervening thirty years. By the end, I half expected him to take off his shirt and proudly display the large crimson H tattooed on his chest. What is this Harvard of which you Americans speak so reverently?
In 1905, Harvard College adopted the College Entrance Examination Board tests as the principal basis for admission, which meant that virtually any academically gifted high-school senior who could afford a private college had a straightforward shot at attending. By 1908, the freshman class was seven per cent Jewish, nine per cent Catholic, and forty-five per cent from public schools, an astonishing transformation for a school that historically had been the preserve of the New England boarding-school complex known in the admissions world as St. Grottlesex.
As the sociologist Jerome Karabel writes in The Chosen (Houghton Mifflin; $28), his remarkable history of the admissions process at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, that meritocratic spirit soon led to a crisis. The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically.By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvards freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvards president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate . . . because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.
The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowells first ideaa quota limiting Jews to fifteen per cent of the student bodywas roundly criticized. Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked. Finally, Lowelland his counterparts at Yale and Princetonrealized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this moment that the history and nature of the Ivy League took a significant turn.
The admissions office at Harvard became much more interested in the details of an applicants personal life. Lowell told his admissions officers to elicit information about the character of candidates from persons who know the applicants well, and so the letter of reference became mandatory. Harvard started asking applicants to provide a photograph. Candidates had to write personal essays, demonstrating their aptitude for leadership, and list their extracurricular activities. Starting in the fall of 1922, Karabel writes, applicants were required to answer questions on Race and Color, Religious Preference, Maiden Name of Mother, Birthplace of Father, and What change, if any, has been made since birth in your own name or that of your father? (Explain fully).
You don't wanna know mine.
After reading the article I show the obvious similarities between the article and the present.
I CAN'T POST THE WHOLE ARTICLE BECAUSE OF CHARACTER LIMIT, SO PLEASE USE THE LINK.
=====================================================
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/051010crat_atlarge
GETTING IN
The social logic of Ivy League admissions.
by MALCOLM GLADWELL
Issue of 2005-10-10
Posted 2005-10-03
I applied to college one evening, after dinner, in the fall of my senior year in high school. College applicants in Ontario, in those days, were given a single sheet of paper which listed all the universities in the province. It was my job to rank them in order of preference. Then I had to mail the sheet of paper to a central college-admissions office. The whole process probably took ten minutes. My school sent in my grades separately. I vaguely remember filling out a supplementary two-page form listing my interests and activities. There were no S.A.T. scores to worry about, because in Canada we didnt have to take the S.A.T.s. I dont know whether anyone wrote me a recommendation. I certainly never asked anyone to. Why would I? It wasnt as if I were applying to a private club.
I put the University of Toronto first on my list, the University of Western Ontario second, and Queens University third. I was working off a set of brochures that Id sent away for. My parents contribution consisted of my fathers agreeing to drive me one afternoon to the University of Toronto campus, where we visited the residential college I was most interested in. I walked around. My father poked his head into the admissions office, chatted with the admissions director, andI imagineeither said a few short words about the talents of his son or (knowing my father) remarked on the loveliness of the delphiniums in the college flower beds. Then we had ice cream. I got in.
Am I a better or more successful person for having been accepted at the University of Toronto, as opposed to my second or third choice? It strikes me as a curious question. In Ontario, there wasnt a strict hierarchy of colleges. There were several good ones and several better ones and a number of programslike computer science at the University of Waterloothat were world-class. But since all colleges were part of the same public system and tuition everywhere was the same (about a thousand dollars a year, in those days), and a B average in high school pretty much guaranteed you a spot in college, there wasnt a sense that anything great was at stake in the choice of which college we attended. The issue was whether we attended college, andmost importanthow seriously we took the experience once we got there. I thought everyone felt this way. You can imagine my confusion, then, when I first met someone who had gone to Harvard.
There was, first of all, that strange initial reluctance to talk about the matter of college at alla glance downward, a shuffling of the feet, a mumbled mention of Cambridge. Did you go to Harvard? I would ask. I had just moved to the United States. I didnt know the rules. An uncomfortable nod would follow. Dont define me by my school, they seemed to be saying, which implied that their school actually could define them. And, of course, it did. Wherever there was one Harvard graduate, another lurked not far behind, ready to swap tales of late nights at the Hasty Pudding, or recount the intricacies of the college-application essay, or wonder out loud about the whereabouts of Prince So-and-So, who lived down the hall and whose family had a place in the South of France that you would not believe. In the novels they were writing, the precocious and sensitive protagonist always went to Harvard; if he was troubled, he dropped out of Harvard; in the end, he returned to Harvard to complete his senior thesis. Once, I attended a wedding of a Harvard alum in his fifties, at which the best man spoke of his college days with the groom as if neither could have accomplished anything of greater importance in the intervening thirty years. By the end, I half expected him to take off his shirt and proudly display the large crimson H tattooed on his chest. What is this Harvard of which you Americans speak so reverently?
In 1905, Harvard College adopted the College Entrance Examination Board tests as the principal basis for admission, which meant that virtually any academically gifted high-school senior who could afford a private college had a straightforward shot at attending. By 1908, the freshman class was seven per cent Jewish, nine per cent Catholic, and forty-five per cent from public schools, an astonishing transformation for a school that historically had been the preserve of the New England boarding-school complex known in the admissions world as St. Grottlesex.
As the sociologist Jerome Karabel writes in The Chosen (Houghton Mifflin; $28), his remarkable history of the admissions process at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, that meritocratic spirit soon led to a crisis. The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically.By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvards freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvards president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate . . . because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.
The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowells first ideaa quota limiting Jews to fifteen per cent of the student bodywas roundly criticized. Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked. Finally, Lowelland his counterparts at Yale and Princetonrealized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this moment that the history and nature of the Ivy League took a significant turn.
The admissions office at Harvard became much more interested in the details of an applicants personal life. Lowell told his admissions officers to elicit information about the character of candidates from persons who know the applicants well, and so the letter of reference became mandatory. Harvard started asking applicants to provide a photograph. Candidates had to write personal essays, demonstrating their aptitude for leadership, and list their extracurricular activities. Starting in the fall of 1922, Karabel writes, applicants were required to answer questions on Race and Color, Religious Preference, Maiden Name of Mother, Birthplace of Father, and What change, if any, has been made since birth in your own name or that of your father? (Explain fully).
Maybe I've just had a long day. Interesting 'article' though. It got me thinking. Thanks for posting. May I ask what school you interviewed at?
