[quote]You want more poor kids, designate 10% of the incoming class for families at or below the poverty line. Have a fucking lottery if need be. It would be much more honest than most other proposals will ever be.
Stupidest idea, EVAH.
People forget that one of the reasons to look at past academic accomplishment and test scores is to calibrate whether that student has the potential to be successful in a rigorous academic environment. And no, it is an absolute falsehood that classes at a state school and Harvard are equally difficult or even classes at smaller liberal arts schools are no more difficult than diploma mills.
I went to a big name school for undergrad. Then, I decided I wanted to test the waters for business school, but had never taken more than Econ 1 as a freshman, so worked full-time and took 1-2 classes a term for 3 years (spring, fall, summer). I essentially took the courseload for an undergrad business degree from a state school - the usual finance, accounting, econ, marketing, organizational behavior. These were regular courses which they offered, not "extension" or "night school" courses. I easily got straight As without breaking a sweat. It was no more difficult than high school had been.
The point of my self-serving, pat-on-the-back story is that you don't do anyone a favor by admitting someone who is academically not prepared to succeed. Getting admitted is merely the first, small step. Knowing how to study, knowing how to take effective class notes, having sufficient academic background to know and understand references in history, literature, economics, and politics to make the current lesson meaningful or at least make coherent sense matters.
Legacy applicants have a lot more of a leg-up than family and money. It's a lifetime of expectations, experiences, and exposure to a world and a way of viewing yourself and your place in the world. Sure, some of those people end up as colossal failures and are terrible people. But, I'd argue those people would have been colossal failures and terrible people no matter where they went.
Finally, we're not talking about the top 10% of students. Those students would be the top 10% no matter where they went - Harvard, Stanford, or Hillbilly University. The difference is in the next couple deciles of students.
