[austincheney]

So many university recruiters at that level just suggest a minimum application criteria after which a lottery is applied to select acceptable applicants. A truly randomized lottery would ensure no bias in student selection.

If you have, let’s say, 3000 open positions and 15,000 applications of which all are academically qualified does it really matter who they pick for admission? It’s not like there is going to be any real world performance difference between candidate 1200 and 12000 if they are valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs.

[kansface]

Being the valedictorian of a class of 12 brings less information than a class of 1K. Its the same story for the rigor of the classes themselves between different schools/states/countries and the actual classes taken by any given student. Getting As in all AP classes carries more information than all As in easy courses. Its really nice to have an aptitude test to select the students you think have the best shot of succeeding or the brightest kids. An aptitude test is also an avenue to select bright kids who went to really bad schools or didn't do well in school for some reason.

You can't throw away information and expect a better outcome.

[thaumasiotes]

> It’s not like there is going to be any real world performance difference between candidate 1200 and 12000 if they are valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs.

It's fun to say things!

On the other hand, it's not like people haven't thought of this before. https://sci-hub.se/10.1037/0021-9010.86.4.718

[austincheney]

Is 180 IQ the baseline of admission into schools like Harvard or MIT? No, its not. Apples and oranges.

Most biased comments about college admission always get hung up on one of two irrelevant qualities:

* illusory perceptions that childhood genius far outside even their selective populations somehow equate to real world adult performance

* a selection bias that schools must supremely optimize some precise quality during admissions that they don't nurture or measure

Instead of you just look at the data, remove all the emotional nonsense, and assign everybody a number with a set of performance metrics most of what people care about are things the schools care nothing about and ultimately don't matter.

[paconbork]

That was a really interesting paper, thank you for posting it

[pooper]

> valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs

Not trying to say you are wrong and not trying to claim any kind of authority as I have zero insider knowledge of college admissions process but just thinking out loud as a student, there can be a world of difference between an A from one teacher to an A from another teacher from the same school. Now if we extrapolate it across schools throughout the nation (we have not even gotten into international students), there is a wide gulf.

I like your solution though and this is probably very easily feasible without much protest assuming we reserve a small portion of the seats for donors and/or "legacy". Although, probably would be better just auctioning off those seats to the highest bidder now that I think about it. We will still treat everyone equally after students are admitted (and all auctions are nonrefundable) but we don't have to leave money on the table with an auction system for a small portion of the available seats.

[the_jeremy]

If you're optimizing for having prestigious alumni, then it definitely does matter. I saw an article by a high school student who earned 35k on GitHub's bug bounty program. I was a valedictorian with a 4.0 GPA, and I will never do something like that.

[option]

people go to great universities because of the environment and friends and peers they will network with. Great lectures from top professors can be found online for almost free these days.

Making admissions non-competitive will ruin top schools.

[austincheney]

> Making admissions non-competitive will ruin top schools.

I never suggested that.