An article that traces the admissions policies at some of the most prominent US universities.
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051010crat_atlarge
Interesting Observations:
1) Some of the policies that they have had in the past are almost as ridiculous as the system we have in India today. They have got themselves into all kinds of muck. Tough to guess.
2) Pure academic merit isn't the best way to screen candidates who are going to be successful in real life.
3) It makes a distinction between the selection effect and the treatment effect. Does going to a particular institution make you successful because of what you learnt there or because of the very fact that you could get in.
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5 comments:
A damn interesting read. I like the part where he described it as a well-crafted fantasy or illusion about how it feels like to be *elite*.
Hmm without actually reading the article itself, I can say from my experience in an industry that belonging to an 'elite' college only serves as an entry point criterion. At the end of the day a lot more competencies are put to test than mere academic excellence. It does not really matter once you are inside the organisation whether you came from 'Gyanba Moze engineering college' or BITS Pilani or for that matter if you had a KT in your seventh semester or you were topper in the third year.
[nag] hmm...a lot of things are interesting..for example...a lot of harvard alumni become successful..they take in the kids to do 2 things:
- get people who are well connected and successful
- keep brand loyalty. harvard has a corpus of about 5.4 billion. it manages a fund with that money that makes a couple of hundred million a year. all because of the amazing alumni
[anon] thats true. it's more about how you are. my belief is, people from elite colleges tend to be good because they could get in in the first place. not so much because of what the education instills in them.
I'll have to disagree with Kirthi and Ramani here. Oh well, I've already disagreed with Kirthi on this point so I'm only disagreeing with Ramani.
The younger you are, the more malleable you are. You are who you are because of the net effect of the influence in your life and the lessons you've learnt.
Being in a premier institution makes a huge difference in the opportunity to learn. Whether or not you are capable of making use of it is a different matter. In other words, coming from an IIT doesn't automatically make you better than others. But it does give you a better chance to be better than others.
[prashanth] Yes, going to IIT does give you a great chance to be better than others. The amount I learn academically,
the amount of fun I had playing sports and getting into all kinds of stuff would have been impossible to replicate anywhere else.
But, I feel that people from IIT go onto to do so well, is mostly because how immensely talented they are. IIT is just a gatherpoint for these talented people, give them a great education and let them go get the world. Maybe, without IIT , many wouldn't have had the opportunity. But, I think 70% is due to how talented they are, and the rest due to the education they received. It's a shade a grey. I think it's difficult to quantify it exactly. Even if you are mediocre and somehow got in, if you are careful in IIT, you could end up doing quite well for yourself. So, it's a combination of individual talen * opporuntites provided.
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