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If I could design an elite college admissions system, here’s what I’d do:
I like the idea of an admissions essay. With two caveats:
It must not involve any mention of the author, their life or their personal experiences. Every writer takes inspiration from their own stories, but thinly veiled personal narratives would be explicitly discouraged.
Applicants are advised that essays about niche topics unfamiliar to admissions officers are strongly preferred.
The essays would be 950 words, with a 10 word margin, to encourage some discipline. Students would be encouraged to write about something officers hadn’t heard much (or anything) about, which would encourage original research. The essays would serve as strong indicators of verbal IQ, which is much more important for making it into the elite than spatial IQ.
Write an essay about a bizarre facet of local politics in a tiny village. Cover a weird crime nobody has ever written about. Tell me about a strange academic debate that occurred in a single third-rate Armenian university in the dying days of communism. This would drastically improve the jobs of admissions staff. It would also encourage genuine diversity of interests and even background to some extent.
The best essayists, who at Harvard, Yale and Stanford I would expect to rival the better staff writers at a Vanity Fair or equivalent, would be invited to interview.
The interview would involve three components.
The first would be a small talk stage where a handful of candidates would be put in a room with each other and some faculty. Their behavior would be observed. The ability to build rapport is critical. Some bias around attractiveness would creep in here, but this is a good thing, because the elite should be largely fit and beautiful.
The second would be a viva or panel where the interviewers would meticulously question the candidate about their essay, its inspiration and sources, the research and writing process, and the core nature of their point or argument. This element would test a student’s ability to defend themselves, to debate and to argue. It would also verify that their admissions essay was likely their own work, and that they are an intelligent and competent individual.
In the third component, a candidate would be handed another essay (by another candidate or pre-prepared by admissions, I’m undecided) that they had never read before. With five minutes of preparation, and before the same panel of academics and admissions staff, they would have to discuss the essay, defend any arguments therein, and rationalize any stylistic or other choices, plus defend (without evidence) the essay from criticism. This crucial stage would test a candidate’s ability to bullshit convincingly, the most important elite skill there is.
A score would be assigned based on the above three components, with each receiving equal weighting, and that score would determine admissions decisions.
What are your ideas for new college admissions systems (beyond the boring ‘just base it on the SAT’)?
Absolutely abhor everything about this idea. Wastes everyones time and money when you could just hand the kids a verbal iq test and achieve the exact same outcome without all this prissy tea party cucumber sandwhich Model UN nonsense. Oh wait something something beautiful. Use their instagram profiles as a proxy too while you are at it. The more photos they have in Europe (while on vacation on daddys money) and the sexier they are the higher the score.
In my ideal world we wouldnt be in this signalling shitfest that we are in with college degrees. 4 precious years each across millions of people wont be wasted... on not working amd forgetting it all anyways. Yes, I am homo economicus.
In my ideal world, American colleges would be overrun with Asians. Because they deserve it. They are smarter and more hard working. It is a crime against humanity to shaft their futures and potential livelihoods for social engineering. Yes, I believe fairness and equality of opportunity is of much importance. Much more than equality of outcome or having sexy elites. You fuck with meritocracy at your peril.
In my ideal world Harvard wouldnt exist. Every university would be like Georgia Tech. Easy to get into, hard to stay in. Yes, I think university should be for teaching technical skills that actually increase humam capital. Yes I do think STEM is more useful for mankind.
In my ideal world people would prove their technical and verbal chops with their work. They wouldnt be able to rest on their Harvard laurels, they should have skin in the game. Oh yeah you are soo good at people skills? Okay go make that 2 million dollar deal, prove it.
https://www.themotte.org/post/565/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/117177?context=8#context
In my ideal world, everything would be run by people who embody the ethos of the first kind of American described in the post above and the second kind (like you) would be banished to underworld.
STEM gave us:
Nuclear weapons
Lockdowns, contact tracing, and vaccine passes
Rapidly increased spread of social epidemics like transsexuality
AIs that can scan all your private communications and report you for wrongthink and precrime
We need people who challenge the uncritical worship of STEM. The university should be the institution where that happens.
STEM did not give us lockdowns or vaccine passes -- that was bullshitting. It gave us rapidly increased spread of social epidemics (and real ones) as a side effect of better technology. And it gave us nukes and AIs (including ones put to evil use) and contact tracing. It also gave us damn near everything that separates us from the apes.
We already have that kind of smart feller, and they're already at universities. They don't seem to be all that useful. The only one of those anyone outside such rarified atmospheres paid much attention to died in a prison cell recently.
Quarantines did exist in the pre-modern world. But I think the Covid lockdowns were of a uniquely large scale, and of a uniquely pervasive character, such that they only could have existed with the aid of modern technology. I don't think Covid would have played out the way it did without the internet (for WFH and Zoom calls), phone apps, and social media.
Well, maybe. But what conclusions are we supposed to draw from that?
If you think that the institutionalized critique of STEM supremacism and neoliberal market ideology ("homo economicus", as @f3zinker puts it) is genuinely vital, as I do, then I don't see why you should be dissuaded by contingent failures and defects of the university system. Sometimes things don't work out. That's the way it goes. But that doesn't mean you give up. That just means you try harder next time!
If you think it's impossible for the university to have any positive impact in this area at all, then that would be different. But I don't see why we should accept that. Do you think it's just impossible for the university to have any impact on culture or politics? A number of rightists claim that contemporary progressivism can trace its roots back to the "postmodern neo-Marxism" of the Frankfurt school - i.e. it's an ideology that started in universities and percolated outward. What do you think of those claims?
If you just DON'T think that a humanistic critique of STEM is important, or if you think it's outright pernicious, then of course you would be in favor of just turning universities into trade schools. But then, that would just be grounded in your preexisting political commitments, not in any empirical facts about the university itself.
Prisons and slave camps have existed for a very long time. You don't need modern tech for lockdowns.
That generalized handwringing over science and technology is useless.
"Critique of STEM supremacism" is useless because the alternatives tend to be woo (used to be religious, now usually is not explicitly so), navel-gazing, hand-wringing, self-flagellation, or something along those lines. Critique of neoliberal market ideology tends to converge on communism, which was the most destructive ideology to grace the 20th century. The arguments for these things tend to be nothing but sentiment, sophistry, lies, and misdirection.
Calling something "humanistic" is assuming the conclusion; the idea is that somehow STEM is in opposition to humans. (If you claim the original definition of humanism -- that is, as opposed to supernaturalism -- then STEM is a part of it. But usually "humanistic" in this sense is just the opposite, a woo term excluding STEM from proper human pursuits)
It's not a question of "alternatives," its a recognition that STEM disciplines are still full of people, with the same conflicts of interest, corruptions, status-games, cliquishness, and all the rest. STEM doesn't get you an "objective" view of society because the map is still not the territory, and to the degree that it gets you an objective view of the physical universe you still have to convince all the other non-STEM people that you're right or else they'll just coordinate meanness against you using the same old dark arts as always while you're demonstrating the perfection of your equations alone at a blackboard.
That doesn't make "Critique of STEM supremicism" better or more useful; that makes it (as would be expected) harmful (to STEM people).
No, it makes it a "momento mori"-type reminder of fallibility. But I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree here.
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