[ghgdynb1]

I used to think that the “holistic” criteria elite US colleges use to select students was a failure of meritocracy. My view was that the non-objective metrics were excuses for colleges to let in students who wouldn’t grind but wanted prestige and had rich parents.

But if you tie a person’s social status to performance on a single test, you suffocate all the useful things people could be doing if they didn’t have to solely dedicate themselves to prep. So maybe we’re doing okay as-is.

[olladecarne]

I still think the "holistic" approach is flawed. The "holistic" criteria benefits upper-class students because lower and middle class kids are rarely trained from a young age to be involved in extra-curricular activities the way upper-class kids are. I experienced this first hand growing up, many future Ivy league students almost seemed to have been trained for it from the moment they were born. The parents had connections all over the place and their kids could study/work on all sorts of interesting hobbies. On the other hand the lower class people had no idea that this world existed and at best spent some time studying for the standardized exams if their parents were really invested in their future.

Basically, whatever thing you choose as the metric, people with more resources and information will be able to optimize for it better. However, the more difficult the metric becomes to achieve, the more it benefits those who already benefit from the resource and information asymmetry.

[chrisseaton]

> middle class kids are rarely trained from a young age to be involved in extra-curricular activities

I almost can't think of something more middle-class than an aggressive dedication to as many extra-curricular activities as possible. SUVs full of children being driven from baseball to ballet to swimming? Seems a common part of culture for the middle-class?

[MandieD]

More like upper-middle, because those activities aren’t cheap. Ballet: lessons, costumes and shoes (make it onto pointe? New shoes every few weeks) Swimming: new suits every few weeks when the chlorine starts eating through and travel to swim meets. Baseball: if you want to really compete, you’re going to be on a travel team.

And those SUVs require parents (usually moms) with the free time to do all that driving and managing.

[908B64B197]

Whatever you build, it will inevitably get min/maxed.

Every admission system prides itself in being the best but they all ultimately end up getting gamified. Because there is too much at stake.

[majormajor]

The trick would be coming up with an exam you can't study for. But even "IQ test" style stuff hasn't been immune to this, and many attempts to do so fall victim to "select for people with upbringing like the test authors, so actually they did study their whole life, they just didn't realize that's what they were doing."

Job interviews would benefit from the same thing, to go by the self-reported amount of time wasted on leetcode around here.

[ZephyrBlu]

How would that help?

Rewarding people for simply being born with high IQ is the opposite of meritocratic.

[majormajor]

In theory, the purpose of the admissions test (or job interview) is to find people capable of doing the work, so they won't wash out from the hard, demanding programs. But none of these tests are rewarding people for doing useful or directly applicable work in the first place. So ideally you'd want a test that didn't require wasted zero-sum-game studying marathons, but would also correspond to the type of work involved... again, I don't think IQ tests are this. But such a thing would be useful, if it could be devised. If you still look at grades in addition to the standardized tests, like in the US, you'll wash out the not-willing-to-put-in-any-effort crowd like that.

To steal another idea from the job interview discussions: what you want might be entry-level intro survey type classes that are broadly open to lots of people (maybe online) but have a high bar for completion to gain full admission, and focus on some of the hands-on aspects of the field in question. "Lower bar + weed out courses" is used in a lot of places that couldn't get away with the high bar of MIT or such.

Alternately, I often suspect the best solution would be fully randomized admissions. Does it make sense to stratify by institution, so that you have one single gate into university, instead of looking at the output of four years of work across mostly-evenly-distributed places? Where you can more legitimately assume that what someone gets out of their time will be the result of what they personally put into it?

[blasdel]

Randomized admissions were the implicit thesis of the satire we get the word from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

[gumby]

Really depends on your definition of "merit" (which is frequently misunderstood the same way evolutionary "fitness" is often misunderstood).

Read Young's original book coining the term: it was both a satire and dystopian lament. Far from a term of approval!

Certainly many people -- perhaps most -- believe that "IQ" (loosely defined) is in fact the proper definition of meritocracy.

(In case it's not obviously I definitely disagree)

[ZephyrBlu]

If many people loosely equate IQ to merit then that is worrying to me.

It's all well and good if you're smart because it increases your advantage two-fold. But it basically screws over everyone else.

[thomasahle]

It might be meritocratic by some definitions, but it's hardly egalitarian or humanistic.

[mochomocha]

As a counter-example, I have gone through a relatable experience though not in India but France (our "preparatory classes" system also has similar high competitiveness/high pressure characteristics, to prepare for a few deciding exams). It only lasts for 2 years, but the stakes are somewhat similar from what I understand from the article.

Having lived in the US for a decade now, one of the biggest culture gap I keep and that probably won't ever go away is how it's somewhat accepted here that "letting rich kids cheat/buy their way into Ivy League is not that bad, and look it pays for a new cafeteria".

[ghgdynb1]

I get it, and I actually agree that the culture you describe isn't a good look.

What I'm going for is more the idea that if you consider the best alternative I can think of to the "holistic" approach, you get selecting applicants purely based on entrance exam scores. In such a world you'd be punishing a kid who plays with Arduino out of interest. Any energy devoted towards something other than test prep is energy wasted.

In the American system, as I'm coming to see it, the kid who plays with Arduino is punished less. The test won't take you all the way anyways, and you even get a little "refund" on attention sunk into some types of activity which qualify as extracurricular.

[908B64B197]

> In such a world you'd be punishing a kid who plays with Arduino out of interest. Any energy devoted towards something other than test prep is energy wasted.

For course selection too. You'll have students picking out classes because they are known to be easy and not because they are curious about it. Because they have to keep their GPA at a certain level.

[mochomocha]

Yes... It's a balance. I don't think tests-only admissions are the panacea either to be clear. The key problem is how to introduce some level of subjectivity in the admission process without creating doors wide open for corruption or cottage industries to "prep your application" with semi-fake accomplishments demonstrating your "soft skills".

[dkdk8283]

All gatekeepers are subject to corruption. This is a human issue.

[drstewart]

I just looked up some of French's richest people and where their kids went to school -- amazing how ALL of them were smart enough to go to the best schools in France, Switzerland, and the UK (École Polytechnique, ETH, LSE) considering how egalitarian it is!

What a truly stunning coincidence indeed.

[908B64B197]

> the biggest culture gap I keep and that probably won't ever go away is how it's somewhat accepted here that "letting rich kids cheat/buy their way into Ivy League is not that bad, and look it pays for a new cafeteria".

There's a percentage of admitted students at which it's interesting to admit based on donations. Especially if one large donation can make need-blind admission possible for N students. But do it too much and you'll become a school that's known as "pay to win".

> (our "preparatory classes" system also has similar high competitiveness/high pressure characteristics, to prepare for a few deciding exams

There's also a third hidden option. The Polytechnique in Montreal is notorious for this: admit too much, collect tuition and then have students transfer out when they can't handle the workload.

[smhost]

yeah, one of my professors would openly talk about how rich kids in grad school just pay other people to do their research for them. i don't think he meant to be demoralizing, but i remember thinking to myself 'so what the fuck am i doing here, then?'

[hnick]

> so what the fuck am i doing here, then?

Learning how the world works, apparently :(

[endisneigh]

elite colleges basically have to have positive sentiment. a purely meritocratic admissions process wouldn't be conducive to this, because "rich" people generally do things that increase the sentiment of their schools, like become president or start famous companies.

This is why Stanford and Harvard are far more popular and recognizable compared to Caltech and MIT even though the quality of the students is virtually identical.

if you work in admissions as a place like Harvard or Stanford they will tell you point blank they make those kinds of "sentiment" considerations. I'm personally not a fan, but I get it.

[majormajor]

I'm not sure I follow. MIT and Caltech are very niche, but inside that niche, seem to have a pretty clear reputational advantage over Harvard. (Stanford, on the other hand, has some more niche overlap in CS at least.) Sadly, it's not a niche that lends itself to "future President prestige." But is that really hurting either MIT or Caltech, or their grads?

[caddemon]

Yeah, and honestly "niche" is a strong word. Sure nobody is going to MIT for theater, but they have a great reputation across most STEM fields as well as in subjects like econ, business, philosophy, etc. When I think of niche I think more of a place like Juliard.

I also think it's even arguable that MIT has more prestige than Harvard - of course this will depend how you're defining prestige, but people definitely assume high intelligence when they hear a student goes to MIT in a way they don't for Harvard. Which I have to imagine is at least somewhat explainable by the admissions differences.

Caltech is a much smaller school and is maybe a better example of a school that's underrated by people who don't know better? But for any reasons that prestige would actually matter I doubt Caltech students have any problems either.

[selimthegrim]

Compared to Stanford and MIT, Caltech is not getting the same caliber student since the late 70s-early 80s (and definitely since the mid 2000s) when looking at international Olympiad winners, etc

[908B64B197]

> Caltech is not getting the same caliber student since the late 70s-early 80s (and definitely since the mid 2000s)

Citation Needed.

[selimthegrim]

I’m a Caltech alum. It’s common knowledge.

[barry-cotter]

> elite colleges basically have to have positive sentiment. a purely meritocratic admissions process wouldn't be conducive to this, because "rich" people generally do things that increase the sentiment of their schools, like become president or start famous companies.

Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, the LSE, Sciences Pos, X, ÉNA are all counter examples. You can select purely on academics just fine.

[dan-robertson]

I don’t know what you consider academics but I went to a university in your list and they definitely had plenty of things other than what I’d consider academics to select on. Firstly they had basic biographical information (eg your name, which school you went to, I think your age). Secondly they had interviews where they could use whatever impression they liked. Thirdly they had discretion in the offer they made to you (ie “we’ll give you a place if you get these grades”) and discretion in which of the students not meeting their offers they chose to accept (“you didn’t meet your offer but we deliberately give out too many too-difficult offers and we’ve decided we prefer you out of the candidates who didn’t make it”).

Obviously the people involved in the process were generally ethically minded but if this thread shows anything, it’s that two people may do quite different things while each trying to act ethically.

[golergka]

That's not the only two options. You could have a system that is based on objective, non-holistic metrics, but does not put all the pressure on a single test, single point in a person's life.

Actually, most of adult working life is already like that: there's many potential job interviews, projects that you can compete to various level of success, etc. The "single test" typically only exists in systems of higher education.

[abc_lisper]

You also make the successful people entitled and failures on the test feel like a second grade person in that IIT system. While meritocracy is a valid thing, expecting that a 16 year old has enough maturity or suck it up ness to ace that test while not having enough opportunity Is bullshit

[yudlejoza]

False choice fallacy.

[akhilcacharya]

I'm becoming convinced by the idea that meritocracy itself is bad and a terrible way to organize society. But perhaps I'm biased by being a failure in the meritocratic system.

[savanaly]

It's hard for me to imagine someone not being meritocratic. You would really, in your deepest heart of hearts, be sincerely ambivalent about whether your, say, dangerous surgery was done by the best surgeon in the country vs the lousiest? And if we say yes we would prefer the more meritorious one for that job, why not extend it to virtually every job?

[alex_smart]

Have you not heard of the caste system? We in India created an entire social order and religion based on keeping high quality jobs for a certain group of people based on identity and lineage. And karma was the justification given to lower caste people for why they got such a bad deal in the current life.

And this might be getting a little personal, but just read that person's username. Acharya is a common Brahmin title, so I'm not very surprised that he thinks this way.

[akhilcacharya]

Honestly, anybody that passes a certain bar is probably fine for me. We already have that with medical licensing, board exams, residency matching, etc. If anything we could probably loosen the bar, since residency spots are artificially scarce because of the residency cap.

To be perfectly clear, I don't dispute ability exists - I just don't think that should be the ideal organizing philosophy for society.

[da_big_ghey]

I am becoming convinced by the idea that democracy itself is a bad and a terrible way to organize government. But I am also at losses for a less bad way. In similarities, I am at losses for a less bad than meritocracy. I am listening to hear more other options but am not hear any less bad.

[Aliabid94]

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" as Churchill supposedly said

[ZephyrBlu]

I'm interested in hear about why you believe you're a failure in the meritocratic system.

I also have some doubts about meritocracy for a couple of reasons:

1) Although we can try very hard to be objective, at the end of the day everything is subjective

2) So called "merit" seems to be largely based on genetic traits (Intelligence, personality, physical, etc)

[caddemon]

Regarding 2, why is it better to select on non-genetic traits? Those traits would be determined by the environment, which doesn't feel any more fair to me to judge on, and in general seems like something we try to avoid (i.e. we do not want rich kids to do well purely because they grew up with better resources).

I'm genuinely asking because I have no clue what people want "merit" to mean. I always assumed the entire point was to remove environmental factors (to varying degrees).

[ZephyrBlu]

I don't think merit should focus on traits, I think merit should focus on effort. Though the problem with that is that traits can be a multiplier for effort.

I don't know what merit should really mean though. It seems like there will always be some sort of hierarchy in society, so I guess defining what constitutes merit is a pick-your-poison kind of situation.

[caddemon]

That's fair enough, I think effort should be an important piece. I just suspect that's got a large genetic component too.

[akhilcacharya]

That's around my line of thinking, pure meritocracy is both too subjective and far too harsh to the people who aren't in the lucky egg club, especially in increasingly global winner take all games (an inevitable consequence of globalization).

I'm a failure by meritocracy by nature of losing at all of the tests we use to judge success and merit - test scores, elite school admission, elite institutions etc.

[abc_lisper]

What do you do now?

[sfashset]

he's a SDE at Amazon

[abc_lisper]

Why the feeling of failure then ? There is nothing there that is not in your company now. You are not a graded apple to be sold at a store. If you are intelligent you will recognize these are human constructs, and nature/problems don’t recognize your degree - they are available for everyone