I'm going to assume that by merit you mean relying purely on test scores and GPA with extracurriculars getting a tiny bit of attention.

People like me could NEVER have gotten into Yale if colleges accepted people only based on merit. Why? Because I graduated with a 3.4 UW GPA. Let me explain why I think I made it in

Honestly, out of the 20+ colleges I applied to (with 9 of them being ivy or equivalent), I don't think I deserved the 90% acceptance rate I recieved (UC Berkeley y couldn't u accept me?). I was able to get in for what I think is one thing and one thing only - the sympathy card. One which I tried to play down because I felt a bit guilty, however, I think it still showed.

I am a female first-generation low-income minority. It doesn't get more plain and simple than that. I'm 1/2 Thai, 1/4 Cherokee, and 1/4 White, so you better bet I check the Native American box, especially since with my GPA, I wasn't about to call myself Asian. To help pay the family bills, I worked a full-time 30–40 hour work weeks in addition to juggling at least multiple AP classes every year (I had 9 by the end of senior year)

I'm anonymous just because I'm afraid of getting lots of hate for “taking the spot of a qualified candidate”.

Simple, emulate the Swiss.

Here’s how college admission is handled in the Alps.

Mia comes home from seventh grade. (I’ve done the translation from German to English for you.)

“Hello, sweetheart, how was school today?”

“Oh, it was OK.”

“Just OK, didn’t anything fun or exciting happen?”

“Well, Ms. Bosch told me I wouldn’t be going to college.”

Yes, around age twelve, the Swiss make the first cut at who is going to be accepted at their highly subsidized unis.

Switzerland is organized as a federation, like the US. We have fifty states. They have twenty-six cantons.

Every Swiss canton is a little bit different in their system for identifying the “book smart” kids.

• In Geneva pupils need to achieve a grade total of 14 over Maths and two French subjects to get on the path to university.
• The grading is similar in Vaud with test marks from 1 to 6. If a student fails, they get another shot the following year.
• Zurich has a different system, equally challenging. Only 19.7% of Zurich-based children will qualify.

Their secondary school system has several tiers oriented towards different professional tracks. The top tier, leads to the Matura graduation, preparing its students for direct entry to university. Approximately twenty percent qualify to attain the Matura every year. (Each canton administers the Matura test with their own set of rules.)

As a US taxpayer, I’m perfectly fine with paying for college tuition.

However, I want the system administered at the state level and restricted to the “book smart” kids.

I like Florida’s Bright Futures program. A Florida Academic Scholar gets free tuition. One of the requirements, among other criteria, is an SAT score of 1290.

PS

In Switzerland:

• Forty percent of those who matriculate don’t drop out of uni.
• Forty-three percent of those who graduate don’t end up selling hot chocolate at the neighborhood Nestle shop.
• The eighty percent who aren’t “book smart” get training in well paying vocations.

There a lot of upside to this “merit” thing.

I am not certain HOW one defines “fully merit-based." Which counts more, grades, SAT, AP? By how much each?

At MIT several years ago we had an Applicant who almost died, and had both legs amputated because of his (successful) attempt to save 4 other injured persons. He went on to win a State tennis championship on his artificial legs. He arrived late for his interview. The story had to be dragged out of him. He was worried because one of his qualifiers (SAT? Grades? Whatever) was a fraction lower than our floor that year. (That value was NOT published, he guessed it but it was NOT confirmed to him.) The Interviewer called the Dean and DEMANDED the Applicant's admission. He graduated on Dean's List.

How does one “fully merit-base" that?

I have just retired from 15 years of MIT Interviewing. We are merit-based but with SOME flexibility. That is what I want.

So, here’s the rub.

Suppose an admissions decision is down to 2 candidates, A and B.

Candidate A has grades and test scores that are about 5% higher than B’s. A is from a lower middle class immigrant family that has sacrificed a lot to get A a good education. They also have extremely high expectations. Many on the admissions committee are concerned that A has minimal passion for school, and while A has good levels of participation in extracurricular activities, they show no obvious interest in any of them. A plans to be pre-med, but again, shows no particular passion for a career in medicine.

Candidate B is from a dysfunctional middle class family. B has had more luxuries in life than A, but it is obvious that B’s parents aren’t very invested in the outcome. B has had to spend a significant amount of time looking after younger siblings, but what free time they do have is spent on two extracurricular activities at which they excel and also show a lot of passion for. B also has clear academic interests that would be a good fit at the school in question.

Which of these candidates deserves admissions more? I don’t think there’s going to be consensus on that question. And that’s the issue with “purely merit based” admissions. You can base admission on something objective, like the tests they use in China, but it doesn’t guarantee that admissions are based on actual, meaningful merit.

At the end of the day, each school should be free to set their own standards for admission, and then left to deal with the consequences.

Well, I think the first thing that would happen is that a lot of universities would go broke! They would end up admitting a lot of students who can’t pay. Currently, very few universities are truly “need blind.” This means that if you have the means to pay you are more likely to be accepted.

If you don’t have the means to pay then the university offers you some combination of loans, scholarships, and grants so that you can make it happen. In practice, that means that at most universities, students without the ability to pay have to be much more impressive than students who can pay in order to earn an acceptance.

2 Reasons Why Need Blind Admissions Is A Farce | Need Blind College Admission | Ivy Coach College Admissions Blog

It would be a complete disaster.

The problem with a lot of things that we try to imitate from the American economy (like startups) is that you can’t copy the context.

Let’s look at context:

1. India has a population of 1.2 billion people, the United States is 300 million (Ratio 4:1)
2. Of this, there are approximately 150 million people between 18–24 in India, compared to 27 million in the US - we are a young country (Ratio 6:1)
3. Most young people pursue engineering and medicine in India, compared to arts, commerce, business, engineering, medicine - putting a larger applicant pool for engineering (Ratio 8:1?)
4. IITs have 500,000 serious applicants, Harvard has 39,000 (Ratio 12:1)

Now imagine with a less developed economy, more stressed educational infrastructure and less educational spend - going through 12x as many SoPs, profiles and recommendations. If Harvard has an application to acceptance cycle of 3 months, we would have it at 36 months - even if we assume the resources were the same. That implies you would get selected in an IIT three years after applying. Good luck with that.

Therefore, all this sounds great on paper, but is a nightmare actually.

Leaving aside execution problems, is the SoP process really that much better? There is a fantastic article that talks about how the Ivy League admission process is broken because:

1. It has a strong bias for privileged applicants
2. It is unpredictable and random
3. It is opaque and obfuscated

While we definitely need to think of a way to have more “holistic” students, we need to be able to fix the problem not at the end of the funnel (JEE selections) but through the funnel (holistic education). This is a much better (and much harder) solution to ensure that we as the future of this country are better individuals, rather than using an examination as an artificial forcing function to make us “well rounded”.

A couple of years back my son applied to both US and UK universities side by side, and so it was interesting to compare and contrast the two systems. The reality is that they are culturally, very, very different (as indeed are the universities).

In America, the key word is “diversity”. Not only does that include racial diversity (something that would be illegal in the UK), but it also includes a broader spread of skills and life experiences. It should also be added that at American universities sports is a really, really big thing - just unfathomably big to any other country in in the world. And their recruitment of students reflects their love of winning at sports.

In the UK, diversity is just not a thing. Collegiate sports is not really much of a thing either. Universities are there to do two things (i) research, and (ii) teach students. So they take a very simple monochromatic look at their applicants, and they take the ones who they think are the brightest and have the best potential to shine academically.

(1) Assuming everyone graduated and got degrees, think of it like currency inflation. It’s already happening. If everyone has a degree, the more worthless they become, and the more qualifications you would need to indicate your competence… leading to even more degree seeking and even more inflation.

OR

(2) Solely from an idealistic human capital perspective, everyone would become so skilled and so productive. Our economy would have the biggest injection of talented people into its workforce ever! And we would experience unprecedented prosperity and growth in no time at all!

OR

(3) Higher education resources would be maxed out, stretched, and over-utilized. Given our current higher education infrastructure, university presidents would be IMMEDIATELY regretting their decisions to admit everyone because classrooms would be packed to the brim, enough lecturers probably weren’t hired in time (and would likely need to be outsourced from different countries)… and so untrained teaching assistants would have to do all the grading. Laboratory equipment would be insufficient, and research space would be almost totally gone. The rest of the economy would collapse because no one would be working enough, since they’re all full time students, and we’d probably just totally fail as a nation.

Hypothetically speaking …

I strongly suspect they’d simply refuse to admit any students at all that year.

Elite universities maintain their reputations, in part, by being fussy. They know that if they admitted a class consisting entirely of “B” and “C” students, they’d damage their reputations for having highly selective admissions. These universities also know, because they’ve seen something similar happen to other universities that dropped their admissions standards when they expanded too fast, that it can take decades for a university to overcome that kind of reputational damage.

They’d be better off, in the long run, accepting no students at all.

These institutions aren’t tuition-dependent. They have large endowments that give them a cushion against a short-term dip in the amount of tuition they receive.

They’d issue a press release saying, in effect, “Nobody met our standards this year,” and then sit back and wait for the next year’s admissions cycle. The next year, everybody would be clamoring for admission to a university that was so finicky it had an acceptance rate of 0%.

Of course, it’s not going to happen in real life. Harvard received 57,000 applications this year. At least 40,000 of those applicants were academically qualified for one of the 2,000 seats available in the freshman class.

There are many courses where there is no way to test practical knowledge but through a test.

I’m taking a class on the culture of contemporary France. How would my knowledge be tested practically? Would I have to pretend to be French and be graded on my accuracy?

No. We take a test to see what we’ve learned.

Now, plenty of my classes do have a practical test instead of a written one.

My scenic design class final is to build a wood flat. My theatre education final is to teach a theatre activity to my class. My acting final is to perform a scene.

In these classes, the only logical evaluation of knowledge is practical; I have to be able to do these things, so that’s what they test me on.

These classes also only have 15–20 students.

My Contemporary France course has around 40, which is small. Another lecture I have has around 70.

How would you test all of these students practically? You would have to reduce class sizes, which would likely up the cost and would still be horribly time-consuming.

So I would say that we can’t go to just a practical test for everything, but even if we did, that would reduce class sizes and put an extra strain on professors by having them evaluate every student’s practical application instead of being able to have TAs and others help grade tests.

And ultimately, I’m not sure how doing so would help anything.

I don’t think anything would change.

The trades that require practical tests seem to already be doing them; those that don’t, aren’t. There would be no benefit in requiring that they do.

I can only speak for how the University of California did it in the 1990s. Yes, this is a limited sample; other state universities might differ somewhat, and private universities even more so. But it might provide some light on the question. UC’s admissions criteria were under the microscope because the state was trying to stop affirmative action, and this did not sit well with many—but the upshot was that the admissions policy was very openly discussed.

The UC system is supposed to take, I believe, the top 6% of California high school graduates. And about half the places at UC-Berkeley were given solely on the basis of a combination of SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores and GPA (grade point average). I forget the details, but it was something like: you could have a 1600 SAT (at that time, the highest possible score) and a 3.0 GPA (with 4.0 being the highest), or a 1580 SAT and a 3.05 GPA, or a 1560 SAT and a 3.1 GPA, and so on. Those are not the exact values, but both scores were weighted in such a way that a lower value for one could be compensated for with a higher value on the other. Exactly where the cutoff lay could vary from one year to another, depending on how many applications they got.

So about half the students got in that way. Why not all? First of all, because that would give you highly unbalanced enrollments. You could end up with 20,000 students who all want to be doctors (or who are being ordered by their parents to be doctors, which I saw on many occasions as a teaching assistant), and nobody who wanted to be a journalist or psychologist or something like that. Universities try to balance their enrollments across departments, because you want to have a wide range of active and healthy departments, especially at a comprehensive university like UC-Berkeley.

The other reason is that. . . . dirty little secret. . . SATs and GPAs are not very good predictors of how well you’ll do in university. I remember giving failing grades to students who had had great scores coming in—plenty of them. I flunked a couple of valedictorians! Some of them had been able to skate through high school with good grades, simply by kissing appropriate butts and gaming the system. Others were genuinely smart, but had just never been really challenged before, and didn’t know how to handle what a university requires of you. Others were good at brute force memorization and had aced the SAT, but weren’t so good at the more flexible thinking modes. Others had problems with English comprehension that didn’t become apparent until they had actually enrolled (not many, but I saw it happen). Others were just burned out, or weren’t psychologically ready to live away from home, or had personal problems that spiraled out of control, or weren’t self-motivated enough to push themselves if Mom wasn’t there. And on the flip side, there were students who’d barely snuck into UCB, but who suddenly came alive when they realized the opportunities they had. I see this at the humble school where I teach now: every so often, you’ll have a complete goof-off who suddenly plugs into the big powerline and realizes holy shit, this learning business is cool!, and they’ll amaze you and themselves with what they can do. So simply taking only the high scorers is not actually going to guarantee a high-quality student body.

(If I disappear from Quora for a while, it’ll be because the College Board’s goon squads are hunting me down, now that I’ve given away their secret.)

So that’s when the Admissions Office starts checking student essays and giving interviews and things like that—looking for students whose grade+SAT combination is not quite above the cutoff (although still very solid), but who play the oboe well, or do public service, or lead community initiatives, or play a mean game of water polo (very big at UC-Berkeley), or win the Science Fair, or overcome big hurdles to get as far as they’ve gotten.

(Note for those interested: Before 1995, race could be a factor in admissions at UC, but it was never the only one; it was one among many. The number of students who got in because they were underrepresented minorities and who could not have gotten in if they weren’t was. . . nonzero, but surprisingly small—smaller than the number of students who got in because they were legacy admissions, i.e. children of alumni. One of the dark secrets of university admissions is that you’re likelier to get in if the university thinks they can hit your parents up for money. It’s affirmative action for the rich.)

So at least at the time I was there, UC-Berkeley admitted students on a mixture of criteria; some got in only on test scores, others (who still had good test scores, be it said) got in on more “holistic” grounds. Again, this is old information, and things may be different now, and they probably are different in other states. But I wouldn’t think the admissions process at most comprehensive state universities is grossly different from what I’ve outlined.

• Medical: In India, if you are sick, you just go to the doctor's clinic, pay the fee, get some medicines or prescriptions and come back. In US, if you don't have a proper medical insurance you are screwed. Therefore, most Universities enforce students to take a basic medical insurance coverage upon enrollment. When you go to a clinic or a hospital, you need to answer whether you are a new patient, fill up certain legal health forms to protect your privacy, understand whether the doctor is in-network or out-of-network, whether you are paying the full amount or just the copay, understand the big fat bill that comes after a few months. Also note that the 'Dental' and 'Vision' insurance may be not be covered as part of your medical insurance policy and you may have to purchase them as add-ons or as a separate policy.
• Public transportation: In India, you have better, affordable public transportation. In US, most states have poor public transportation and many people prefer to drive their own cars. Before, you can decide to buy your own car, you need to get a driving license, which is comparatively difficult to get than in India.
• Food: You will try the new Subway sandwiches, Burittos, Hot dogs, Tacos and Burgers for a while. Sooner or later your craving for Indian food will begin. In India, even if you don't know how to cook, you can get affordable Indian food at nearby restaurants, hostel canteens, or even get it prepared by your favorite cook, who comes home daily. That luxury would be taken away from you, once you land in US. Learn to cook; it is a valuable skill to learn and would be useful throughout your life to be an independent person and to stay healthy.
• Time management: In India, Parents pay your tuition and hostel bills, someone prepares food for you, gets your clothes ironed, cleans your room. You can start studying for your exams day before your test and still manage to get good grades. In US, you would have to juggle many things: pay your own rent and utilities, may have to work part time to fund your studies, do your own cooking, laundry and house cleaning. You will have to start preparing for your assignments as soon as it is given, otherwise a two week deadline will show up uninformed the next day. You should not copy it from your friend, as it would be considered cheating and against the honor code (hearing it for the first time?). You should not pull off something from Internet without a proper reference, as it would be considered as plagiarism.
• Weather: Most parts of India are warm and sunny. You don't have to tune to your Weather station or look at the Weather app before you start your day. You may even do the exact opposite of what it says. But, when you come to US, you would start relying on the meteorologists to prepare your day: Please watch for an icy road ahead, you could wear your favorite coat when you go for a cup of coffee at Starbucks or please hide yourself inside your apartment, as a category-5 hurricane is fast approaching. Weather sometimes can play a big role in your mood, health etc.
• Credit history: Indians are big on savings and a few years back credit cards were frowned upon. Once you come to US, you need to borrow and pay back money on time to prove your credit worthiness. You need to build credit history, without which it might be difficult to get a new mobile connection, a car, a home or a personal loan. Plastic card offers and identity protection plans will chase you. As long as you pay your bills on time and watch for any abnormalities in your account, you are good. Indeed, I would suggest spending everything on your credit card, which will help you keep track of every dollar you spend, will provide better shopping offers, additional warranty, car rental insurance etc. But, if you misuse it, it could become your worst nightmare.
• Lack of roadside small shops: In India, your mother would call you to go and get some milk and some vegetables from a local grocery store near your house. You would walk, take a bicycle or a scooter and rush back within minutes. In US, depending on your city, you may or may not find such stores. You may have to take your car or borrow it from someone or go for a 20-30 minutes bus ride to find a big store like Walmart, KMart, HEB or Target. Once you go there you would find the milk section filled with Whole milk, 1% milk, 2% milk, Soy milk, Almond milk etc. Multiple choices sometime make our life appear complex.
• Networking with people: You might be good at academics, but that alone is insufficient when it comes to securing internships, assistantships, student worker positions or a full-time job offer. Many on-campus jobs are not rocket science. You need to be at the right place and time to secure certain positions, for which you need to know people who could inform you about such opportunities. Participate in career fair info sessions, poster presentations, conferences, local meetups and connect with people who share your ideas. Genuinely help people to build lasting relationships that would help in your career.
• Obey laws: You might be surprised to get a ticket from a cop for not stopping your bike at the STOP sign (even when there is no one around) within the campus. Mostly you cannot bribe your way out and if you try, you might end up in jail. You should not work overtime than the allowed legal hours; otherwise, you might get deported. Whenever you travel, carry at least a copy of your legal documents that allow you to stay and study in the US. If you get into some legal trouble, watch out for what you say, as it might work against you. That's why the cops say "You have the right to remain silent". Seek help from school authorities when you get into such issues.

If you mean some sort of across-the-board minimum qualifications, that's some Harrison Bergeron nonsense. Thomas Walsh and I often disagree, but he's right that you can't be anything you want. My career in the NBA? Nonstarter. A person's potential is often less obvious than some believe, but there are limits.

If you mean, each school establishes a baseline, filters out candidates that don't meet the baseline, and then randomly selects a pool of admitted students, this wouldn't change anything; the schools would establish rubrics consistent with what they do now.

I suspect that these sorts of questions come from people who believe that they are more talented, and have more potential, than they have demonstrated. For those people, I recommend not worrying about institutions prestige. Instead, go where you were admitted and do the absolute best job you can. The outcome is likely to be the same. The most successful people I know did not go to Ivy League universities, or MIT, etc., and the people I know who did go to those institutions are successful, but not more so than those of us who went to more prosaic institutions.

Who decides what merit is? Shouldn’t that be the institution?

Reasons people think that US institutions don’t admit on merit:

1. Money - colleges and universities need money to run, so being unable to contribute financially is an issue. All colleges and universities will make exceptions (offer scholarships and need-based aid) to students who demonstrate academic prowess.
2. Non-academic ability - why people are confused by this is a mystery. Academic and professional success are not built exclusively from intellectual prowess. In addition, test performance has much to do with social environment and wealth.
3. Athletics - very few universities admit large numbers of athletes preferentially, and when they do, it’s primarily about issue #1: good sports teams lead to bigger alumni donations.
4. “I didn’t get in where I thought I should” - I mean this sincerely: life is tough. This is frustrating, but it’s part of life. The best thing you can do is move on and realize that your alma mater will not restrict your life.

Here’s the thing about “merit” (especially when we’re talking about simple grades and test scores): It’s not as equal as you might think it is. It sounds great, but it doesn’t always work. To use a well-used comic:

If your family is rich, you can spend 100% of your time and energy studying. Everything else is taken care for you. This is my background; that’s how I know.

If your family is poor, you’re probably struggling to get the next meal. You might need to help your parents with household chores. If you have younger sibling(s), you need to take care of them while your parents work—because obviously you won’t be able to afford a nanny. In short, despite your best efforts, you physically cannot dedicate 100% of your time and energy into studying. (And for those of you thinking: Why don’t you just study harder? Then let me tell you that at some point, you will reach a point of diminishing return or even negative because you’re too tired to properly study.) This is how some of my friends grew up and, to a lesser extent, my mom.

Is it no surprise then that income level correlates with test results? Take a look at SAT results:

Correlation does not imply causation—except that in this case there is a clear and logical chain of events that explains it.

Sure, there are those who come from poor and broken family and against all odds made it to big name schools like MIT or Stanford, but we’re talking about your average person here.

If admissions is purely on merit (as in SAT scores), what we’re going to see is that top universities are going to be almost exclusively inhabited by rich students. Statistics will guarantee that there will be a handful of those who succeeded despite their background, but they will remain the minority.

This is not good on so many levels. Ever hear people complaining about how the colleges and academia is out of touch with “real world issues”? It will only get worse because rich people often have no idea what it’s like to be poor (even when they are well-intentioned) and seriously underestimated how bad it can get. If they’re ever short on pocket money, they just need to call mommy.

My own institution, for example, while being one of the top schools for engineering (and, particularly, computer science) has a pretty diverse student body. Of course, there are very rich students here and there, but many of them are on student loans and easily belong to the middle class using whatever definition you want to use. I like that, and in the words of one of my friends, “people (here) are genuine”, unlike his experience with some high-ranking schools that almost exclusively cater to the rich that he went to.

And, of course, in America, earnings are closely tied to racial/ethnic background, as some stereotypes and actual data would tell you. What merit-based admission would achieve is unintended segregation. Maybe not the Jim Crow-era kind and nowhere that severe, but along the same lines.

While my university can easily shoot up in ranking, being the top engineering school in Illinois as of now, the students are going to be less diverse. Nothing wrong with being rich, but meeting people who are struggling to get to college, it keeps me “real”. Otherwise, the discussion I wrote about here is going to be—pardon the pun—academic. Now, I can attach names, faces, and voice to these examples. And I seriously hope that my school will never become a “rich kids’ club”.

So, how can a merit-based system be designed to work fairly?

First of all, you basically need the… S-word. Socialism.

(Maybe overdoing it a little, but bear with me)

Basically, the state will take care of your children and level the playing field as much as they can. Poorer families get all the help they need to the point that their kids can focus solely on studying. No work, no chores… by law. The federal government will provide daycare services and a trained service worker or nurse to look after your children when you’re away at work, plus a balanced and healthy meal three times a day for them, all completely free of charge. Who’s going to pay for it? Our taxes, of course! Especially those at the top income bracket.

Now, this is obviously a step too far for some Americans, who believe that doing this will inevitably lead to godless atheist totalitarian communist dystopia and eternal damnation. They will not take away my children!!!

Our great and benevolent leader has generously paid for our books! Thank you comrade eternal president!

I basically have zero issue with leveling the field. If America can afford a bunch of nuclear submarines that can launch ICBMs, it can afford doing a bit of charity to the poorest citizens. Arguably, a well-educated population (along with the STEM college graduates that come from the program) can ensure America’s national security and long-term prosperity better than a handful of hidden nuclear missiles sailing around the oceans can ever hope to do.

(For those of you who think the federal government is too incompetent and corrupt to be trusted, you haven’t seen what an actual dysfunctional government looks like (for current reference, look at Sri Lanka (as of June 2022)). All things considered, the federal government is not that bad, even if it can use some serious improvements)

But I digress; this is basically impossible in the current political climate.

So, we’re stuck with the current “band-aid solution” of affirmative action; making it easier for certain groups to get in (and, occasionally, harder for other groups to get in) in order to get more, different faces on campus.

Is it good? No. It’s like messing around with the scales; it fixes the apparent problem but not the actual cause. (I’m not saying that all minorities in good schools are only there through affirmative action and they have it “too easy”, but it certainly is a factor).

But what’s the alternative? “Letting it go” and make schools less equal? The only real fix is trying to overhaul the entire system, but that’s not what many people actually want to do. It’s expensive. It takes a long time before the results show. It’s not something politicians can “weaponize” for the polls because it will take more than their term (or even their remaining lifetime). So, here we are.

If everyone starts at the exact same level, I’m sure the college campuses will be even more diverse because fundamentally, everyone is the same. But the world is never perfect, so equal is not always equal.

I think that’s a false dichotomy. There is no theoretical reason why you can’t have both (or neither). They are neither inconsistent nor co-dependent.

However, I have always slightly looked askance at the way university admissions are conducted in the US compared to how they are done in other countries. Legacy preferences, recruited athletes, URM preferences - it is almost like institutions which are dedicated to academia wish to minimise the amount of consideration they give to, you know, academic aptitude. I appreciate that the United States has a unique problem in that unlike most other countries they do not have a centralised exam system enabling you to compare the academic results of students in one state (or school!) against students in another.

But still: American college admissions are just plain weird.

To understand the policy and it’s impact let’s first understand the types of international students who immigrate to the USA for their higher education :

• The first group are the sons and daughters of monarchs, politicians, business leaders, etc., who enroll in the Ivy Leagues. These are known as ‘leadership’ admissions. By admitting these students the US universities get to influence the future of their respective nations/businesses. This number is less than 1% of all admits.
• The second group is the top researchers and scholars from various countries that are admitted via scholarships like the Fulbright Program, etc. Many of the students go on to do pioneering research in their respective fields. This number is around 10% of all admits.
• The last group is the middle class folk who immigrate in search of better opportunities the education offers. This group accounts for 90% of all admits. They pay the exorbitant international fees and work part time to pay their living expenses. In the immidiate years after graduation they serve as the cheap workforce and around 80% return to their home countries within 10 years.

The first group is important to ensure that the US universities are looked up to all around the world. When the most privileged in you country wish to attend Harvard, then you are in awe of Harvard.

The second group go on to win top awards in their fields of research and occupy top posts in universities, research institutions and bureaucracies. They are the true brand ambassadors of these universities and ensure that the top talent aspire to attend them.

The last group is the cash cow. They ensure that every program in every university is filled and the universities are economical for Americans without an undue burden on the state. By the sheer numbers they take the American culture and value when they return home and keep America alive all over the world.

So all in all depending on how and when the numbers get axed, the universities will loose money first, talent next and the awe last. In any case the higher ranked universities will be the last to loose.

Quite negatively. International students are not eligible for need based financial assistance except from a very few universities. Harvard is one such example of this. Whilst most international students do receive some form of merit based aid, most end up paying the full cost of attendance. It is because of this that U.S. universities are able to provide so much financial assistance to domestic students. Without the gargantuan sums of money paid by foreign students, most universities will tend to lose profitability and they will account for this slashing aid and opportunities from domestic students.

Other than this, international students are basically a reminder to Americans that a whole unexplored world exists out there. They each bring a piece of their unique cultures with them making American campuses more lively and diverse. Without them, U.S. universities would lose their appeal and American students will not receive the cultural exchange that is necessary to succeed in today’s world where globalization has led to the transfer of knowledge, technology, language and tradition across people from every nook and corner of the globe.

Furthermore, most, if not all international students come to U.S. universities to pursue the American Dream. They generally tend to work extra hard and will compete with the local students driving up competition and therefore, everyone comes out of classes a bit smarter than before. Many international students are highly skilled and eventually end up becoming American citizens. International students also have a greater rate of creating start-ups that tend to employ Americans.

So overall, if admissions to international students are stopped, the whole of America will suffer.

The idea that the US is incapable of merit based admissions is ridiculous. We just don’t want to.

The problem is the outcomes that leads to.

You see, college admissions used to be merit based. But the problem was that white kids with institutionalized advantages would get the best scores. The would fill the colleges. They would then get the best jobs. And then THEIR kids would have EVEN MORE advantages. Most people of colour (especially black people) had very little means to break this cycle.

Judging everyone on grades / test scores is okay if two conditions are met:

1. That’s the only thing you care about in terms of college success. Reality is that most colleges want to produce leaders. So things like extracurriculars matter as well. But this is the relatively easy part - we’re still talking about merit, just not sure of how to define it.
2. We all grew up in an episode of survivor, and then were left fending for our own grades. Of course, this isn’t what happened. Some of us lived in better neighborhoods. Some of didn’t have to work as kids just to be able to eat. Some of us had access to the best test prep courses money can buy. Some of us had parents who went to college, and thus were able to guide us through every step of the process.

If college is about serving some social purpose, like social mobility, etc …, then OBVIOUSLY you want to SLIGHTLY control for these institutionalized disadvantages. Look, for every white kid complaining about how they’re disadvantaged in college admissions, they are simply forgetting how RIDICULOUSLY advantaged they were by simply being born to the right parents. American higher education still RIDICULOUSLY under-represents blacks and hispanics; like in most cases by a factor 5–10x. To suggest that a TINY effort shouldn’t be made to correct for this, an imbalance caused by society itself, is simply immoral.

Now the other problem is FAVOURING ridiculously rich people through three means:

1. Legacy admissions: American colleges, both public and private, and left to largely fend for themselves. Their biggest source of endowment contributions is alumni donations. So yes, as a fact of life, they slightly favour children of their alumni. Some public university systems have banned this.
2. Very Large Donor children: For reasons similar to #1, yes, if your parents donated $15 million to the university, your chances will be boosted ridiculously at private colleges. That $15 million would provide full financial aid to about 4–5 people needing it, so yes, by accepting de-facto bribes like this, these universities increase access to higher education. This is just another fact of life, and unless taxpayers want to MASSIVELY pay more taxes funding both public and private universities, they’ll have to live with this injustice.
3. Fraud on the university by it’s employees: This is what was discovered recently. Remember, the universities in question were the victims. This is illegal due to something called honest services fraud - while a private university as an institution has every right to take money to admit someone, an employee of the university does not.

Because the system does favour some ridiculously rich people, and people from underrepresented minorities, etc …, it is true that people of upper-middle-class backgrounds, especially Asians feel hard-done. But in most of these cases, like I said, it’s just the human tendencies to forget the ridiculous lottery they won by just being born. There’s absolutely no reason social institutions should perpetuate those proverbial cosmic lotteries throughout one’s life.

DOING SO WOULD BE IMMORAL.

A2A

Being in States for four months now and after completing my first semester as a Master's student, these are the general problems/struggle Indian students (in general every international student) face

• Rigorous Course Load

Yes, you read it right. With taking 30 credits and 28 credits in two of my semester in my undergraduate studies, I had never imagined how just 12 credits of coursework could take a toll on me. You wish you could have an extra hour or two after everyday's work. Challenge yourself with a rigorous course load and high-level classes. Sometimes it also depends on type of classes you select - Weekly Assignments, Special Assignments, Mid-Terms, Extra-Credit Assignments, Projects......

Assignments are not simple and straightforward. Thy require great effort and time to complete them. Assignments are rigorous so as to make sure students have successfully absorbed course material. Tests are easier as compared to assignments, which is natural after spending so much time on these assignments.

TAKEAWAYS - Pre-plan your courses which you would like to complete in your duration of stay and try to make a balance with your choice (keeping in mind, you need to select courses appropriately so that it opens internships / job opportunities).

I prefer taking only Tuesday and Thursday classes. This helps me to better manage my week. (This is my opinion, may differ from person to person)

• Time Management

Prioritizing your tasks is the key for a successful graduate studies. It is difficult to get a transition from "Chalta hai attitude" to getting things done when they matters the most. The dilemma to choose between the competing demands that seem to have been slipped through the mail slot with the letter of acceptance from graduate school: course work, research or teaching assistantships, lab supervision, projects, conference presentations and comprehensive exams all vie with the stuff of life—maintaining relationships, cooking, shopping for groceries, doing laundry, mopping the floors, cleaning the toilet, getting a few hours of sleep, eating an occasional meal and even, once in a while, going for a coffee with a friend, or sometimes even to do just nothing.

TAKEAWAYS: Many graduate students really work very hard, but many a times they fail to understand it is important to work smarter and not harder. Learn to say 'NO'. Make time for things you enjoy to keep up a work-life balance. The best way to do this is to plan, plan and plan.

I prefer using google calendar and different color index to check important tasks and to keep track of my progress.

• Collaboration

The ego of I am the best has to be lessened. Yes, agreed everyone is best in his or her own way. To have a successful grad career, this is the important tool you need to master at. Many of us are reluctant to discuss our problems with professors and friends. One thing which I really appreciate about US people is they are very understanding and helpful and they are not mean.

TAKEAWAY: Ask for help when in need and lend support when others need it. People who succeed only when working alone will struggle in college and beyond, as the majority of careers require collaboration.

• Language (or read as Thick Indian Accent)

From the http://usineglish.com the following is the summary of how Indian English is difficult for Americans to understand

It takes sometimes to get adjusted. One thing I learned is to speak slowly and clearly. Many people complained me during my last visit about my thick Indian accent and they would not understand what I wanted to convey. I used to repeat most of my sentences twice to correctly convey my messages It is okay to take your time, but it is important to make sure people understand what you say.

A simple example shows how we lack in our communication skills. During a professor's office hour session:

One of my friend called the professor and told him that "I have a doubt", the Professor being seen many Indian students politely corrected him to tell I have a question and not a doubt. And also went on to say that this sentences are generally seen with many Indian students. I have a doubt conveys a message that there is flaw in professor's teaching. So it is good to keep a check on the usage.

TAKEAWAY: Be a good listener and try to adopt the usage which you see around. Most importantly learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them

• Money and Limited Scholarships for international students

Many students are not lucky enough to get financial aid. It is important to keep a right balance with financial needs. There are some jobs which are called as ‘blue collar jobs’ which can offer you an opportunity to work part-time and can earn money for your pocket-money and enjoyment. At the same time, it is important to spend your money in a right way.

For an instance, it is unnecessary to spend monthly 20-30$ on your phone bills. In the age of internet, why do you need free international calling etc etc.. I just pay 3 $ a month (with 30 minutes usage) and chose a simple plan for emergency purposes. Campus has great Wi-Fi facilities, so does the apartment. I prefer online calling and it works very well. It has been very good experience so far for a semester now and I am glad that my phone bills are almost 50% of what it used to be when I was in India.

Another issue is people prefer buying groceries from a nearby store in campus which are generally expensive. I stay with two friends, and we have planned and managed a cycle and everyone of us visits just once or twice in a month to Wal-Mart, Aldi (about 5 miles away) and we get all our grocery stuffs from there. It takes about two hours per-visit and saves us around $50 per month. Rather than wasting time on other useless stuffs, we prefer taking a break from our marathon work load and get groceries :P

• Failure (often refusal) to adapt to different opportunities

We are very much adamant with what we want to do in life. It is a good thing, but it is better to have a flexible mindset to unfold many unseen opportunities that could be more revolutionary than you had thought. Life is not that easy to always fetch you your top priority choices. To make the best of the graduate school always be ready to bend some of your own rules to broaden your outreach.

Just for fun :P

• Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle

Being spoon fed over the years in India and when you suddenly start cooking your own food and with lack of time due to course load, you tend to skip many meals and try to survive on cereal bars. Be healthy. This may sound like strange advice, but with all the stress and worrying about papers and projects and such, many students don’t eat healthy, exercise, or take time to relax. Needless to say, it does not benefit anyone to be unhealthy, but a graduate student needs all their energy, motivation, and focus to be on their goal-doing the very best you can in all you do! Thus, I recommend going to the gym, eating your 3 meals a day, and getting your very much-needed rest. Also to keep an eye on free food ;)

• Weather

• Other Trivial Struggles
• Figuring out American Date Format
• Getting used to American Measurement System

Hope this helps for incoming graduate students :)

Thanks for reading and thank you Nikhil Sinha for A2A.

And Like Every Grad Student I am pondering about my new year resolution :P

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The issue is not that college admissions are not merit based: they are! The issue is what we choose to consider as merit. In most countries, athletic ability does not count as merit. However in all countries, wealth does count as merit. It may not be explicitly weighted, but it is absolutely a critical factor, and you can see it in countries like the UK and Switzerland, which have deep, deep class boundaries. In those countries, education is not seen as a force for mobility from one socioeconomic class to another, largely because it isn’t. Very few students from lower socioeconomic status levels are admitted; if your parents didn’t go to college or university, you are unlikely to. In the US, we have admissions and aid systems that account for factors like knowledge differentials, and that’s a good thing and a good form of merit. I’m proud to live in a country that sees education as a tool for social change in addition to a wealth privilege and economic engine.

The two systems are far more divergent than that.

The UK system is brilliant for its purpose. Before applying for university, a student continues to study a limited number of subjects, usually only four (EDIT: Per Danny Wright in a comment, the norm is now three). They do this around the time that US students are finishing up high school, and they do it for two years. Toward the end, they take exams on those specific subjects. As a result, the exams are not just measures of intellectual bandwidth; they’re knowledge-area-specific, and tell the university whether or not Cecil or Gwendolyn can succeed in what Americans call a major, and the Brits call a course.

The US system doesn’t work like that for a variety of reasons. One reason is that we have 50 separate secondary (high school) educational systems and standards. Another is that we don’t have a class system that tracks a majority of students into different types of secondary schools, either based on SES or achievement or potential or whatever. Students take exams (ACT or SAT), and that, combined with GPA, are the most critical factors in admission. Some schools add layers around that, usually because they have lots of bright applicants and need something to distinguish among them.

The US system works, albeit imperfectly. The UK system works, albeit imperfectly. However, you can’t readily mix and match parts of the system, and more than you can take an engine out of one car and mate it with the transmission of another car.

You offer two scenarios here.

If we go back to where the ability to pay tuition is the sole criteria for admission, that looks like college up through the 1970s, when state colleges were very affordable, but top colleges were very expensive in comparison. Unfortunately, tax cuts at the state level have made college much less affordable except at the community college level.

If you go for admission via entrance exam, then you have the system that exists in other countries such as France, Japan, and South Korea (probably others too). Massive cramming and tutoring for the national admission exam, and the top scores get to pick their colleges. I believe there are studies that have found this causes extreme stress among the applicants, but does not measurably improve the ultimate results of the college graduates compared to non-competitive systems.

Few things. First, the quality of college sports would decrease a LOT. Intelligent people in general are not your top level athletic talents. Peyton Manning who was one of the best quarterbacks of his generation both collegiate and NFL career only got a 1030 on his SAT. LeBron James only had a 870 on his SAT, even though he opted for the NBA instead of college. Dwayne Wade did pretty bad on his ACTs, that his dream college of Michigan decided not to pursue him because of that, hence D-Wade ended up in Marquette. So overall, college sports would decline a lot.

Second, for a short period of time, the meritocracy would be celebrated, until two factors upset this meritocracy paradise. One: as we have seen with the corruption scandal, these type of things would end up being more widespread. With less things being considered in a college application process, it becomes more defined how the college determines whether or not to accept you. The result is that people will realize that the sole way to get into the college you want is based on your academic standing, meaning people who have means to do so will likely engage in greater efforts to cheat their way into college. Two, socioeconomic status is highly linked to academic results. People who come from families with a higher socioeconomic status universally perform better than their peers who come from families with a lower socioeconomic status. While there are exceptions, the general numbers do not lie. This means that the lower socioeconomic status families will protest greatly to this decision-making by the colleges.

Third, this will start to impact society as a whole. High school students will be pushed to be more focused on their academics, and less on extracurriculars including sports. So a decline would occur on sports as a whole for the entire country. The perception of value of people will similarly be shifted to one where the more intelligent a person is, the higher perceived status and value they have in society. More people would become sapiophiles.

Let’s assume that “elite” means the top 25 universities in the US News ranking. These schools are currently geared for a small niche of students, say the top 5 or 10 percent in from a decent US high school. That is, they would be horrible places to send most students, but let’s stay with the hypothetical. And assume that the methods of instruction and curriculum of these elites do not change.

For an example, take Harvard’s CS50, intro to computer science. It covers the equivalent of 3 or 4 terms of what you’d expect from a community college, but in 12 weeks, and requires no background in CS. To emphasize the point, it goes really fast.

In our lottery, our top 5 or 10 percent of students could keep up, and maybe some of the hard working B students. Most of the other students would not be able to submit the first homework assignment by the due date and would drop the course. Some might try to sweat their way through, and get a D or F.

So CS50 would have a DFW rate of at least 75%.

Thanks for the A2A.

You are talking about a cut and dried world with only two categories” “top prestigious schools” and the “affordable ones where scholarships don't exist”. Define “top college”? Top 10? Top 20? Sure. But then the competition becomes extremely heated for the next caste: Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, U Michigan.

But wait. Carnegie Mellon is tied for #1 in computer science with three other colleges. So is it part of the “pay group” or the “affordable group”?

What about when competition gets heated at the next level? BU, BC, etc. 8,000 applicants for 450 seats in Purdue's CS program this year. Should that 6–7% acceptance rate put them in the “pay group”?

So yeah, on top of the idea these colleges aren't interested in going socialist, your idea isn't going to work.

That depends.

The top schools tend to compete with each other on having the best student bodies. Part of that is making sure that nobody has to turn them down based on money. So if you can get into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, etc. then ALL of the aid is merit-blind, and is solely based on financial need. Further these are all “full-need” schools that guarantee to meet your full financial need for 4 years without loans.

In 2019, 82% of the Princeton graduating class graduated with no student debt. The average debt for that 18% who took out loans, was $9000, which is very, very serviceable on a Princeton graduate’s salary. At Yale, it was 86% who graduated debt-free.

The schools directly below the top level don’t have the level of financial support to make this possible. Harvard gave out $761M in student financial aid for fiscal year 2020 (according to the Harvard annual financial report). That is more than the operating budget for many other schools.

So at the level below this, they look to compete by attracting students to attend these schools that might otherwise go to Harvard or MIT. They tend to offer very generous merit-based scholarships. For example, the Georgia Tech Stamps President’s Scholars Program offers a very generous program to attract those who might have chosen MIT, but get a much more comfortable ride at Georgia Tech. However, these schools often offer some merit-blind scholarships as well, but these vary dramatically from school to school.