Princeton's Admissions Policies Investigated
Reader Comments
Princeton and Perfect SATs
My daughter (non-Asian-American) also had perfect SAT scores and was in the top 1 % of her high school graduating class. She was not admitted at Yale and was wait-listed at Princeton. Discrimination? No. There are--realtively speaking--lots of kids who meet those criteria who did not get into their first choice schools. The baby boomlet is making admissions very difficult; admissions officers have to take into consideration other criteria as well as SAT and class standing.
Princeton and Perfect SATs
SATs are not the ultimate measure of academic or post-graduate ability. In fact, some highly competitive schools have dropped the requirement for SATs. Most first-rate colleges base admissions on quality of prior education, grades, SAT, extracurricular activities, recommendations, personal statement, and in some cases interview. Many factors could outweigh perfect SAT scores in such decisions, including the desire to create a student body with diverse interests and abilities. I doubt that any quality college would be willing to admit student just by the numbers. However, that might be an interesting experiment, to determine if such a class would perform better or worse than one selected by the current methods. I would not expect SAT scores to be a better criterion.
Reality Check
Read Daniel Golden's The Price of Admissions.
I am AA, and I was as qualified as countless other super-achieving teens of all races/ethnicities, and considered my admission to several top schools as a blessing. It is always is a bit of a crapshoot, but did certain activities/strengths outside the stereotypical AA mold (note to Some Chick of NY...is this what you mean by UNIQUE and VARIED) help? It would f-ing suck if being a math genius or musical prodigy actually worked against you in the college admissions game....aren't we supposed to admire achievement? Or does reality stink of another "Yellow Peril" hysteria?
If an enlightened, I-have-friends-of-all cultures (white) liberal felt his/her seat at the table were being threatened, then all bets are off.
Perfect Scores alone don't cut it
Having a perfect grades and scores on standardized tests are not enough to make it in to top-notch schools. College admission offices are more interested in the person and not just the scores alone. Being well-rounded is the key. Scores are great but admissions offices want to know, "What are you going to contribute to our campus academically and socially? What sets you apart from everyone else applying?" Being in the top 1% of a graduating class has no correlation to one's ability to be contribute positively to their enviornment, empower others around them, or exemplify the vision of the institution by being a source of leadership throughout the campus. Participation in athletics, arts, community service, or formal leadership are a few ways to develop the afformentioned characteristics. rades and scores show academic potential, but when the competition is as fierce as it is today, applicants need to shine in more ways than just academically.
A study body with diverse talents
I was an undergraduate at Harvard in the late 1990's, and I have to say that I was impressed with the student body that the admissions committee had managed to assemble. Not because they were all math geniuses---some of them really struggled with math---but because every single one of them was deeply passionate and accomplished at *something*. That something varied a lot from person to person and only sometimes was a purely academic skill. There were talented authors, world-class musicians, deep-thinking philosophers, expert debaters, and people who loved to work all night just to get out the next edition of the college newspaper. The college would have been a much less exciting and challenging place if all the students had just been defined by general and bland academic merit. In the increasingly competitive world of college admissions, high academic achievement has become a necessary but not nearly sufficient condition for admission.
What I am concerned with is not Jian Li's perhaps unique or not so unique extracurriculars. Instead, I am concerned with the strand of belief present in the response to this incident that seem to imply that Asian-American students are incapable of making valuable contributions to extracurricular activities. Unfortunately, there is still a presumption that Asian-American students are only defined by "general and bland academic merit". An incident like this only shines light on how far we still have to go to erase typecasting in American society. Racism has no place in America, and especially not in its elite institutions of learning.
Many students are driven by parents to be high achievers, and a subset of those don't have an internal purposeful goal of their own, beyond a compulsion to please the parents, Be Successful, and drive a status car. I'd rather have a student that is curious, self-motivated, and willing to try classes in which they are not guaranteed a top grade, than a student who aims to please and to game the class for the top grade, but who doesn't seem to have her/his own opinions or ideas.
Jenny from CA is right - passion, self-direction, and a bit of maturity are all qualities that can outweigh test scores and GPAs.
Some of these parent-directed students might benefit from a year of 40 hour week menial work to pay a share of the family's household expenses, or if parents can afford it, near-full-time volunteering in the community. Let the high school graduate decompress for a year and have free time to think and to do something the student has been too busy to do. A year can make a big difference in maturity and self-direction.
