[mchannon]

I think you do need to sacrifice some rigor to reach a level of perfect balance, or at least sacrifice the appearance of rigor. So let's agree to differ on that one.

I think we would agree about most aspects of college admissions being flawed.

[ghaff]

Flawed is probably technically correct. But you're basically optimizing for a good blend of student body and I think admission committees don't get things "right" but who knows what that even means? They probably mostly do well enough given there are lots of opinions on what the targets should be.

It's pretty clear to me that you don't want to just admit the highest SAT scores, the best athletes, or the best musicians (unless maybe you're Juilliard).