7/27/11 The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Admissions Directors’ Power Grabs and Declining Meritocracy,"
by Richard Vedder
    I spent three weeks this summer on a boat in the middle of nowhere in Russia, doing a good bit of reading about college life in America. I became convinced that admissions offices have successfully used the prevailing prejudices of the academy in a way that has greatly increased their power and reduced the objectivity and, from my perspective, fairness, in university admission policies.
    After reading books like Andy Ferguson’s great Crazy U, and an as yet unpublished book by Bonnie Snyder (The New College Reality), I believe the following is approximately true of admissions policies at highly selective admissions schools:
    1) Students who admissions directors know have little or no chance of being accepted are still encouraged to apply, despite the time, expense, and inevitable sense of rejection associated with the effort. This is done mainly to improve the perceived selectivity of the institution so as to enhance college rankings, even if it is costly and deceptive to those involved;
    2) Some admissions offices are moving to end mandatory tests such as the SAT not for the stated reasons (i.e. claims that the tests are racially or culturally biased), but rather because reducing objective metrics on each student increases the power of admissions officers to select on the basis of personal subjective criteria;
    3) Increasingly, academic merit and performance is downplayed, while considerations like race, geographic location, success in extracurricular activities, etc., are stressed;
    4) Whereas in the past, subjective criteria were used to exclude Jews, blacks, and even those attending public high schools from admission, the new rules will be used to exclude able and well qualified members of other groups (e.g. Asians and even whites). At the most prestigious schools, being a “nerd” (i.e. a highly studious individual and scholar) is increasingly a negative. Scholarly preference is becoming less important at the very top schools in terms of admission. Social skills, skin color, athletic aptitude, even sexual preference, are becoming more so, and I think that is a shame.
    Standardize metrics probably cannot totally determine admissions, although they do so at universities in most of the rest of the world, without notably ill effects. Some evaluation of difficult to quantify personal characteristics in principle makes some sense. But in a world where prevailing fads sometimes lead to distorted decision making and detract from applying the same standards to all, a very strong case can be made to increase, not decrease, that standardization. Moreover, allowing admission directors more subjective control over admissions inevitably will lead to some use of corruption (e.g. I know of one case where an applicant was allegedly approached by an admissions officer for sexual favors, and another for an all-out monetary bribe), although I would hasten to add I think most admissions officers are honorable, decent people.
    What is sad about this is America used to be about merit—the best get ahead, the less good fall behind. I think that is what made America great, and moving to a more subjective, less merit-based set of criteria for admissions is another sign of the weakening of America. We are replacing meritocracy with a politically correct version of aristocracy, and that is a shame. To be sure, you have to be bright and a good student to get into the best of schools, but the fact that tuition fees are lower than what would be necessary to equate demand and supply means that somehow we must allocate scarce slots. While the use of money to do this allocation, and thus make the top schools almost exclusively the playground of the rich, can be condemned on egalitarian grounds, so can the use of subjective allocation by admissions officers using whatever criteria the prejudice of the moment favors.
    Richard Vedder is director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and professor of economics at Ohio University.


The Bigots for the Left who perpetrate reverse discrimination  against Asian Americans.   Read the overwhelming evidence at Statistics on Reverse Discrimination 

When universities in California, Texas and Washington were barred from considering race, admissions of Asian American applicants jumped.

Federal agencies and federal contractors keep records of how many applicants from each race apply, how many offers are made to applicants of each race, and the racial composition of the resulting workforce.  This prevents discrimination against Asian Americans.  

However, these colleges refuse to release statistics on how many Asian Americans apply, their average test scores and GPAs, how many Asian Americans are accepted and the same statistics for all applicants.

They are trying to hide their blatant discrimination against Asian Americans.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.  


According to The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite 
Colleges - and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Dan Golden, former Education Editor of the Wall Street Journal, colleges are making Asian applicants the new Jews and holding them to much higher standards than other students.

National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (www.naicu.edu)
2/8/08 NAICU Washington Update
Likewise, after vigorous opposition from higher education, the Rules Committee disallowed an amendment by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) that would have required tracking of students admitted under affirmative action policies sanctioned by the Supreme Court.

National Association for College Admission Counseling

Tom Parker
Dean of Admissions (current)
Amherst College

Richard E. Steele
Dean of Admissions (current)
Bowdoin College

James Miller (current)
Dean of Admission
Michael Goldberger
Director of College Admissions (1997? - 2005)
Brown University 

Jessica Marinaccio (current)
Eric J. Furda
Director of Undergraduate Admissions
Columbia University

Doris Davis
Associate Provost for Admissions (current)
Cornell University

Maria Laskaris (current)
Karl Furstenberg
Dean of Admissions
Dartmouth College

Christoph Guttentag
Director of Undergraduate Admissions (current)
Jean Scott (1980 - 1986)
Duke University

Charles A. Deacon
Dean of Admissions (current)
Georgetown University

William R. Fitzsimmons
Dean of Admissions (current)
Marlyn McGrath Lewis
Director of Admissions (current)
Laura G. Fisher
Director of Admissions  (1985)
Fred Glimp (1970s)
Harvard College

Joe Polisi
President
Juilliard
6/15/05 60 Minutes: The Sound of Music,
"In 1991 70% of Juilliards students came from Asian descent."  
Now it is down to 11% (see Colleges: 2005).

Stuart Schmill
Dean of Admissions (2008 present)
Marilee Jones
Dean of Admissions
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    From Dan Goldens book The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling 
Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates
    Similarly, MIT dean of admissions Marilee Jones rationalized the institute's rejection of a Korean-American applicant by resorting to stereotypes. Although she wasn't able to look up his application because records for his year had been destroyed, "it's possible that Henry Park looked like a thousand other Korean kids with the exact same profile of grades and activities and temperament," she emailed me in 2003. "My guess is that he just wasn't involved or interesting enough to surface to the top." She added that she could understand why a university would take a celebrity child, legacy, or development admit over "yet another textureless math grind." College administrators who made such remarks about black or Jewish students might soon find themselves higher education outcasts."
    4/27/07 Wall Street Journal: MIT Admissions Dean Lied On Rsum in 1979, Quits,
By Keith J. Winstein and Daniel Golden 
    Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was forced to resign today after the school confirmed an anonymous tip that she had lied about graduating from college herself.
    She attended college for one year, as a part-time student at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1974, but never received the bachelor's or master's degrees that she claimed from RPI. Nor did she receive a degree she claimed from Albany Medical College, the university found.  Registrars at RPI and Albany confirmed that Ms. Jones didn't receive degrees there.

Robert Clagett
Dean of Admissions (current)
John E. Hanson
Director of Admissions
Middlebury College

Bruce J. Poch
VP and Dean of Admissions (current)
Pomona College

Janet Rapelye
Dean of Admission (current)
Fred A. Hargadon (former)
Princeton University

Julie Browning
Dean of Undergraduate Enrollment (current)
Richard N. Stabell (former)
Rice University

Richard Shaw 
Dean of Admission and Financial Aid (2006 - present)
Bob Patterson
Director of Admission (2010 - present)
Shawn Abbott
Director of Admission (2008 - 2010)
4/2/08 Stanford Daily: Room to remain for transfers- Stanford to accept transfer applicants 
despite halting of  process at Harvard, Princeton ,
Director of Admission Shawn Abbott said a racial breakdown of the admitted class at 
Stanford - a record-low 9.5 percent of the 25,298 applicants - could not be provided to the 
public.  "We never release any racial breakdowns of the admitted freshman class," he said.
"It has been the University's long-standing policy not to do this."
[Translation: "We are Bigots for the Left.  We are discriminating against Asian Americans 
and we dont want to release statistics which would make our illegal actions obvious.]
Anna Marie Porras
Director of Admissions
Robin G. Mamlet
Dean of Admission and Financial Aid (2000 - 2005)
Robert Kinnally
Dean of Admissions (____  - 2000)
Jean Fetter
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions (1985)
Stanford University

Jim Bock
Dean of Admissions (2001 - current)
Robin G. Mamlet
Dean of Admissions (1996 - 2000)
Swarthmore College 

Lee Coffin
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions (current)
David Cuttino (2003)
Tufts University

Richard C. Atkinson
President
Susan Wilbur
Undergraduate Admissions Director (2007)
University of California
2001: Proposed abandoning the SAT in order to increase the racial and 
ethnic "diversity" of UC's many campuses.

Mae Brown
Director of Undergraduate Admissions
University of California San Diego

Theodore O'Neill
Admissions Director
University of Chicago
9/28/07 Wall Street Journal: The College Try May Not Get You Into College,
by Naomi Schaefer Riley
A few months ago, black presidential hopeful Barack Obama, a former U of C lecturer, told George Stephanopoulos that he didn't think his daughters should be treated differently in the college admissions process from any other "advantaged" kids. But Mr. O'Neill disagrees. He would give the Obama girls "a break" anyway: "Those children, for all their privileges, will have interesting things to say about American society based on what I'm assuming their experiences are." [translation: I want to discriminate against Asian Americans in favor of African Americans who dont even want affirmative action.  I'm a Bigot for the Left.  I know what is good for you even if you don't want it.]

Eric Kaplan
Interim Dean of Undergraduate Admissions (2008- ____)
Lee Stetson
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions (1978-2008)
University of Pennsylvania

John A. Berg
Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Admissions (1994-current)
Nanette Tarbouni
Director of Undergraduate Admissions (current)
Washington Univ. (St. Louis )

Dick Nesbitt
Director of Admission (current)
Williams College

Jeffrey Brenzel (current)
Richard H. Shaw
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions (_____ - 2005)
Yale University