Interviews, transcripts, (optional) test scores, letter of recommendation, a set of common essays across all schools, and an optional supplemental section or portfolio to showcase any personal achievements not covered by the other standard categories.
Oh wait! That exists — it’s called the Common App, and it’s what most private colleges today use, from the Ivies to elite tiny liberal arts colleges with the largest share of students from the 0.1% that you’ve never heard of, like Pomona College.
Transcripts aren't useful across different high schools. Rich kids have more connections for rec letters. Rich kids get professional essay help, and lying kids make up a good story. Kids and parents with lots of time/money/connections on their hands get a portfolio of community service etc built up. I knew these kids in high school with resumes like veteran philanthropists, and it worked.
I think the only good one out of those is the interview.
Essays are incredibly biased though! Do you really think that for some reason essays actually have to be written by the person applying, and can't be gamed with money? That an overworked public school teacher is going to write a better letter of recommendation than a private school teacher? That a rich kid is going to have worse extracurriculars, portfolio or achievements?
The Common App is great, but it's not magically less open to bias than standardized test scores.
> That an overworked public school teacher is going to write a better letter of recommendation than a private school teacher?
LOL. My understanding is the really good prep school college counsellors golf with one or more high-up folks in elite university admissions offices, and get the inside scoop on exactly what they and their peers in other universities are looking for in any given year, such that they can even tune an essay or letter of reference for a given school based on that non-public information and advise students which schools to focus their application efforts on, based on their background & activities.
Not only that, but the person reading the essay is also biased and will select for students who align with their bias. It is a terrible admission metric.
It’s naive to think schools don’t have a system in place for this: separating piles into buckets of test score, ordering by grade, marking a certain number from each bucket as worth another look, then ordering by essay, marking a certain from each group, and repeat on any other metric.
Many schools, selective or not, actually do this whole process — multiple times, with each admissions agent doing a separate order of criteria, to ensure everyone’s application gets read at least twice. The idea being that those with the most “let’s give them another look” across the board are the most notable. Then from that shortlist the debates comparing each applicant, usually sorted by geographic proximity to each other, begin (at Harvard, if you’re from Texas you’re not really competing against New Yorkers for a spot, you’re competing against other Texans for the XX number of Texan spots they usually admit a year).
I did a short stint as a student worker in the admissions office of a very selective college in California (<5% admission rate, but not one many could name off the top of their head), and this is more or less how it worked
They use it because it allows them to ignore standardized test scores and just do admissions based on their own preferences. They used less merit-based metrics because they don't WANT a meritocracy.
Question. Which tells you more about a student:
1. An essay that was probably written by chatGPT then edited by the students parents
2. A test taken in a supervised, controlled, timed environment
> I believe the whole concept of “meritocracy” for purpose of admissions is a lie— choosing the criteria to measure against is itself a subjective act.
Let me ask you. Do you also believe that requiring a display of proficiency in mathematics to get into the best schools is inherently discriminatory? What about requiring a demonstration of the capability to understand and complete basic subject matter material in the fields or reading, writing, or scientific literacy?
There’s no shortage of people who meet any of that criteria!
The whole point of a selective college is they have to select from a pool of already qualified applicants. There is no objective measure to measure against when you’re splitting hairs. Even were you to limit it to “objective” requirements like test score and GPA, how do you decide between two students for one spot when both have the exact same scores?
There is no shortage of perfect scores applying to Harvard. And yet a majority, or even a plurality, of any given class of admits didn’t have perfect scores.
Oh wait! That exists — it’s called the Common App, and it’s what most private colleges today use, from the Ivies to elite tiny liberal arts colleges with the largest share of students from the 0.1% that you’ve never heard of, like Pomona College.