College Admissions and Discrimination

This is a very interesting and entertaining article on the history of the college admissions process, forwarded to me by a high school classmate. (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge)

It discusses how non-objective criteria have been used historically for discriminatory purposes. It starts with a discussion of how Harvard initially relied rather heavily on the College Boards, but backed away when it found it was inadvertently admitting too many Jews. In place of the "objective" test-based criteria, it instituted letters of reference, admissions interviews and complex application processes, weighting highly the features of "desirable" candidates.

The article seems to be arguing for a return to straight rankings for college admissions. I'm not sure I'd totally agree with this approach. It seems to me that the right goal is Diversity in college admissions. Which is not well served by lots of testing. The "Desirable" students that an elitist school wants to screen for often come from families who can afford plenty of test prep.