Your Thoughts on the College Admissions Process
A note from Alexandra: Thank you to the many of you who wrote in last weekend, sharing your college admissions experiences and proposing ways to improve the process. I've included a selection of your responses, which have been lightly edited for length and clarity, below. As always, feel free to send me your thoughts, suggestions and favorite reads from the section at Op-reads@nytimes.com. | | Create a lottery system: "Everyone who qualifies (by SAT/ACT score, grades or other quantifiables determined by the institutions together) gets into the drawing for the 'elite' schools (which can afford scholarships for those accepted). Yes, it means that college athletics might be affected, but perhaps positively, as excellent players will be distributed across the spectrum. It could hurt more creative students (who might choose to attend professional schools instead). But a transfer system after the first or second year — at which point college grades and athletic ability would be verifiable — could balance some of the negatives." — Patricia Lothrop, 71, Bellmore, N.Y. | | Embark on a battle: Akin to what some amusement parks provide for patrons who want to cut in line and don't mind paying extra to do it, perhaps the college acceptance experience could have two basic lines of access. The typical merit-based group and the 'fastpass' group. Set aside a clear number of admission tickets for each group. Let the merit-based students compete on a 'level' playing field in their own game and let those with some extra cash battle it out for their spots." — David Kim, 49, Temecula, Calif. | | Boost the price: "I don't have any problem if colleges wanted to set up a legal program where the hyper-wealthy, who have children who wouldn't get in otherwise, could pay an inflated rate. It could be five times the standard rate, maybe 10 times. Parents would have to pay a nonrefundable full four years of tuition, room and board, etc. Each school could allocate a certain number of spots — perhaps 10? Once that is in place, stricter oversight should be set up and schools should be hit with huge penalties if they violate the program. Once accepted into the school, the student will fall under all standard rules of that college. If they fail to meet minimum standards, they can be kicked out, and as mentioned above, no refunds on the prepaid tuition." — Jim Piper, 58, Ashby, Mass. | | Re-examine meritocracy: "I would want to be sure that gifts to universities, at least at some levels and for certain purposes, could allow for granting reasonable enrollment advantages to descendants of the donors. On the whole, such gifts may often benefit higher education beyond the value of the meritocracy principle: A $150 million gift may allow for the construction of student living facilities, thus increasing the number of young people who can be educated at the university to an extent far greater than the relative handful of the donor's descendants who may benefit from the gift; a gift of that amount to a university fund that serves the merit-qualified but underprivileged poor can have the same effect. We should be careful of the fallacy that all wealth is in some way tainted and never deserving of any privilege, or fail to give more thought to the use value of gifts." — Ronald L Maksym, 85, Northport, Wash. | | |
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