University admissions are broken, and everyone knows.
Working in a series of conferences on my career has taught me that ideal students are independent thinkers who yearn for the challenge and are willing to be bold.
But the admission process rewards privilege and punishes authenticity. The courage is punished. The originality is flattened.
Admission trials, above all, have become a position exercise with falsehood.
Students agonize about “personal statements” because they feel pressure to lie or at least stretch the truth. Readers, meanwhile, can’t help asking: “Did this student really write this essay?”
Chatgpt is omnipresent.
But the most likely source is another person. Paved consultants, parents too enthusiastic and high -price counselors have turned the “personal statement” into a team project, one that is both resources and character.
Here is the awkward truth: the personal statement has always been vulnerable to manipulation.
Even if, with the help of the Trump administration, the breed finally goes back as a factor in undergraduate admissions, this problem will not be solved.
Admission officers could use personal statements such as a fire test for political loyalty. “Is this student on our side?” By their very nature, the so -called “holistic” admissions inevitably allow bad actors to place their provarbial thumbs on the scale.
Let’s take New York Zach Yadegari, whose artificial intelligence startup generated $ 30 million in revenues. Despite its 4.0 GPA and its 34 ACT score, 15 elite universities rejected it.
His personal statement frankly questioned the value of the university: a fatal honesty in a system that rewards compliance in independence.
Or Kaitlyn youngest in Texas, with its classes of 1550 SAT, 3.95 GPA and 11 AP, which received rejected from nine elite schools in 2022.
His advisor was baffled: “I don’t know what else could have done.”
Its apparent defect: to be a white middle class woman of a public high school interested in business.
Why not lie a little? Play the game? Does the story tell that most universities seem to want to listen?
But what does it say about our society if the price of admission to the upper cortex or the upper middle class is dishonesty?
In Kurt Vonnegut Jr., “we are what we intend to be, so we must be careful with what we intend to be.”
Students forced to think in terms of oppressor and oppressed will inevitably begin to internalize that reductive vision of what it means to be human.
Playing together with the extreme left ideology is not an inactive game.
The rest of the world listens to campus protests and wonders what happened.
Legislators, trusts, donors and parents observe horror like students who are agitated by radical causes, such as police breakdown or boycotting Israel.
The students themselves, meanwhile, do not seem to understand what they are saying.
This type of brain washing is expected of a system that begins to expel applicants to demonstrate that they are willing and capable of internalizing progressive propaganda.
The sad reality is that academic excellence is far from the most important group of many elite institutions, perhaps anywhere more than in admissions.
In early 1900, university admission depended on working well in a standardized exam. But in 1926, Harvard president changed to the holistic review, largely (in his own words) to “reduce the number of Jews.”
The practice is unusual; To this day, most countries organize admissions to their national universities based on standardized exams.
Where more holistic processes have introduced, modeled in what has become the American standard, the results have corruption scandals, as well as in the general tendency on transparency and reproduction of inequality.
Applicants from the University of Austin tend to be fed up with identity policy and seek an alternative.
Their personal statements are merciful free from victims and saving complexes.
But we still face the same night issue as any other university does. “This student wrote this essay?”
A recent Foundry10 study suggests that approximately 30% of university applicants use AI to help them with their personal statements.
Chatgpt is the only group cause. Throughout the country, many students still subcontract their admission essays in the old form: when seeking help or even the direct ghost writing of a father, a guidance advisor or guidance advisor paid by the professional admission consultant.
The result is a wildly unequal playing field.
The same problem, unfortunately, tends to be true for the letters of recommendation and participation in extracurricular.
Statistically speaking, these components of a standard holistic application tend to reveal not so much the individual impulse and character of the students as their access to opportunities: that is, the relative wealth and emotional stability of their parents.
But what if we don’t care about that? When we evaluate applications at the University of Austin, what we know is not the social class of a applicant, but its ability to handle our demanding curriculum.
“If we only had any way to divinate a student’s suitability for elite education,” Steven Pinker wrote. It turns out that we do what Pinker calls “this magic measurement stick”: “It is called standardized tests.”
The army has the ASVAB. We have the SAT, ACT and CLT.
These tests are not perfect: better versions would cause the higher regions of intelligence to be more legible.
But they are better predictors than nebulous or GPA trials. And are widely available.
The main author Raj Chetty and his colleagues in a recent study conclude that “there is a substantial number of low and medium -sized students with strong successful captains in success, students with high SAT/ACT scores: which is not the Fort of Iibpy Noty no.”
These are the students to whom the holistic review, almost as if the design excludes.
And these are students that we want.
Standardized tests can reveal disparities between groups. But a commitment to excellence requires judging people as individuals, not as representatives or no racial or identity group.
Without a clear reference point, the conferences are guessing who is prepared for the university and, as a result, of the predetermined value to students of rich schools with polished applications and access to consultants and tutors.
Austin University is a startup. And a benefit of being a startup is that we can pivot quickly.
Then, for the sake of efficiency and equity, we are launching an experiment: a new and more simplified admission process.
Students with a SAT ≥ 1460, ACT ≥ 33 or CLT ≥ 105 will be automatically admitted, waiting for a “integrity control”.
Students with scores below this threshold will be classified by their scores and guests to present up to three sentences that list three achievements.
In any case, we do not accept personal presentations or essays, extracurriculars or GPA.
“What about the character?” Our new model is less like organizing one marriage and more as a selection for special forces. Anyone who meets the bar should try.
We do not inflate the grades. We expect more than usual wear.
However, those who stay with the program will receive the necessary structure to become effective leaders and make the maximum extraordinary opportunities.
“What about the adjustment?” This question could be appropriate for a specialized postgraduate degree. But for a degree?
The more we dig in the university admissions game, the more it seems to us that when most universities speak of “what they mean is” conformity. ”
“Can you sit still? Do you follow the orders? Do you support the current?”
At Austin University, we don’t want “excellent sheep.”
We are not training students to be the next “man of organization.”
We want self -porters with appetite for risk.
These students of students are allergic to the desk and are not always willing to spend their secondary schools carefully preparing a CV.
They like the idea that what really matters is their general intelligence (“G”) and their willingness to do a serious job.
Therefore, we hope that our new meaningless approach to admissions will find attractive.
Patrick Gray is the Dean of Arts and Letters at the University of Austin. The opinions expressed here are their own and should not be built as an official university statement.