Formal education is something we go through only once in our life time. And the schools that we completed our degrees in, are going to help us or haunt us for the rest of our lives. Its no wonder that people clamour to get into the top schools, often for no reason other than they are the so-called top schools. Its a pity, really. For, to me, a fit is much better than a brand name. Every individual should have her or his own top choice. Not one thats picked off someone else’s list.
But what I am going to talk about today, is not about choosing schools. Its about how schools choose graduates. Or rather,how schools don’t choose some graduates. Check out this rather interesting article in the New Yorker, on admission practices in Harvard. The article is rather long and you wouldn’t necessarily have the time or patience to go through that. Lets assume you have the patience to go through mine ;o) So lets just look at some excerpts.
Did you know that the practice of asking for personal essays and recommendations as part of admissions, was started mainly to restrict the number of Jews who got into Harvard?
The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically..
The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior..
There seems to be cases where students were admitted because they seemed “manly” or being rejected because they were “frothy” or “shy” or “short with big ears”. Once the Jewish crisis passed, Harvard and other elite schools did not give up the subjective admissions practice, but rather they continue with it to the present day. And its a good way to ensure a desirable mix. Desirable, in whose views? - lets leave that as an open question. The article concludes with
If Harvard had too many Asians, it wouldn’t be Harvard, just as Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard with too many Jews or pansies or parlor pinks or shy types or short people with big ears
Be that as it may, there are other matters that bother me than the schools’ admission system. So many people seem to think an elite school is the know-all and end-all for a great future. I could not have said it any better than Gladwell when he said, “Élite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience—an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an élite..”
Theres another reason why I am not a fan of elitism when it comes to schools. It breeds arrogance. Often, unfounded arrogance. Not always, but in many cases. If you watched the recent episode of Apprentice (I promise, I have no secret mission to promote this show) last Thursday, did you hear Toral’s speech? Her claim to stay in the team was that she was intelligent? And why so? Because she attended Wharton. Now, I have no problem with that. But that she uses that one reason to feel superior to the rest, and to actively criticise the others, while being totally incompetent in the task at hand, is just plain shameful. I started watching this season rooting for her, but after this episode, I definitely am hoping she gets fired.
Arrogance or not, theres only so much of importance that can be given to a school. Good schools become great when they are a congregation of good candidates and excellent faculty. To that extent, its not a bad idea to choose a good school. But to shell out, or to expect a student to shell out, a fews tens of thousands more just because of that, is plain ridiculous. Don’t you think its time schools went back to being institutions of learning, and not just marketing machines to make money or just a stepping stone for students whose aim is not learning in itself, but just a high paying job?
Lets learn for the sake of learning, shall we?
