"The meritocracy isn't working," writes David Brooks in The Atlantic. Ambitious parents "ferry their kids from one supervised skill-building, résumé-enhancing activity to another . . . trying to hone their kids into little avatars of success," while schools prep the "good test-takers" to compete for high-status colleges.
Winners of the status race tend to be hard-working, self-centered elitists, who will go into finance, Brooks believes, rather than curious, creative, cooperators. Most are the children of the affluent and highly educated. (A professor's son, Brooks attended private schools and the University of Chicago.)
He wants to "humanize" the status race by evaluating applicants on noncognitive traits, which he concedes are fuzzy and hard to measure. Ivy aspirants would be judged on curiosity, social intelligence, a sense of mission and perhaps emotional or mental "agility."
How? I have no idea how this could be done. Remember that Harvard's interviewers classified Asian-American applicants as boring nerds, canceling out their high test scores. Do we want to go back to when Ivy students were supposed to be "clubbable" WASPs?
Rewarding "creativity" won't level the playing field, responds Alina Sivorinovsky Wickham. The parents now prepping their kids for standardized tests will prep them for whatever creativity measures elite colleges employ. Leaders of public and private New York City schools tell visitors they "encourage students' creativity, self-direction, and independent work (in the name of 'packaging' them attractively for college admissions)," Wickham writes. Students admit that "all that independent creativity and self-direction was prompted and suggested and curated and molded (and sometimes even partially done) by adults."
Years ago, affluent parents began helping their teenagers start a nonprofit to impress colleges. That became old hat, so they looked for research projects their teens could do. You want intellectual passion? They can fake that. Adversity overcome? "Neurodiversity!"
I suspect that Ivy-mania is strong among people Brooks knows personally, but is not the norm even for college-educated parents.
More Northerners are applying to Southern schools, especially public universities with good football teams and school spirit. College counselors say many teens want to avoid "on-campus political polarization" at Northeastern universities, reports the Daily Beast. They like the idea of "football Saturdays."
Students planning STEM careers don't think an Ivy degree matters, reports The Free Press. Jewish students think Dixie will be friendlier.
By the way, 9 percent of Harvard undergraduates attended one of 21 U.S. schools, according to the Harvard Crimson. Twelve are private schools and four are selective public schools. "Four — Scarsdale High School in Scarsdale, New York; Lexington High School in Lexington, Mass.; Brookline High School in Brookline, Mass.; and Belmont High School in Belmont, Mass. — are based in uniquely affluent, highly-educated suburbs," reports the Crimson, while "the remaining school is Cambridge Rindge and Latin, the only public high school in Cambridge, located minutes from Harvard Yard."
It's David Brooks, Mister I like the crease of his trousers guy. Treat him as The Anti-Oracle and run away from whatever he recommends.
A solution for the merit versus fuzzy qualities would be to admit students to a major and if they want to change majors, they can reapply. The STEM students would be admitted to those majors based upon test scores, grades, and science projects. Those who want to major in English can submit writing samples. Those who want to be pre-law can submit their activities on the debate team. Universities as different as Cal-Poly SLO to Johns Hopkins use versions of this system.