What's this Western education system of which you speak? Among Western nations the US is unique in how much emphasis it puts on extracurriculars and character. We know why that is too. The system arose as a smoke screen around Jewish quotas. The overwhelming majority of universities admit students on the basis of results of blind marked exams and nothing else. I'm by no means an expert but the usual examples given of exceptions, Oxford, Cambridge and ENA are looking for academic brilliance, not aristocratic polish ("well roundedness").
Western systems vary a lot in their degree of specialisation too. By 16, after the GCSEs the UK is done with being a generalist. Pick 3 or 4 A-Levels of your choice and if you feel like doing Math, Further Math and Physics or three sciences and Maths no one will stop you in the name of "well roundedness".
Many of the colleges people are actually attending in the U.S. are the same, and offer automatic admission if you hit some threshold of GPA, class rank or test scores. A couple examples:
These hand-wringing conversations about fair admissions mostly apply only to the elite top X schools. Those places receive tons of applications from academically top-tier students. The are looking for "something else" to make you stand out from the crowd.
Note the whole system would collapse if they only let in academically gifted people. Because only a small fraction of those gifted people would have the connections and wealth that is the core networking value these institutions provide.
Thats why simple systems like a lottery for everyone that's qualified aren't adopted. And the people trying to get in dont want them to be adopted, they dont want the system to be fair or socially useful, they want access for their kids to the exclusive club, with just enough window dressing to make it seem like something else.
Even if this cynical take is 100% true, so what? The ivies are private institutions, and have no obligation to admit people based on whatever criteria you, or I, or the general public consider fair.
Meanwhile, admission to an elite school is neither necessary nor sufficient to a happy, successful life. A couple of the best software engineers I've ever worked with - guys who got 3-4 promotions by age 30 - went to schools I'd never heard of until I met them.
This isn't really true. The ivies are bound by the rules that govern private institutions that receive federal funding. For example, they are not free to disregard Title 9 or Obama's "Dear Colleague" letter without jeopardizing their federal funding. Very recently a bill was introduced with pretty bipartisan support to require all universities that take federal funding to cease favoring legacy admissions. The federal gov't can't force these universities to do this, but they can withhold all federal funding, and that is a very powerful coercive mechanism.
I agree with you strongly that elite schools are not necessary in software engineering, but they make a huge difference in fields like Law.
Well, once you stop trying to get people into exclusive clubs, you start asking crazy questions like "why don't we just educate everybody to a high level rather than place arbitrary cutoffs based on century old social clubs to maintain an artificially restricted elite?"
> Well, once you stop trying to get people into exclusive clubs, you start asking crazy questions like "why don't we just educate everybody to a high level rather than place arbitrary cutoffs based on century old social clubs to maintain an artificially restricted elite?"
Pro tip... if you want to be educated well through instruction, don't go to an elite school. The instruction in most of the classes really sucks (with some notable exceptions that are often available for free or cheap online).
Small liberal arts schools tend to do a much better job of educating through instruction.
Because those institutions produce a disproportionate share of the most powerful people in US society, so the kinds of people they do or don't let in tend to have a strong effect on the kind of society we live in.
I support a lottery type system 100%, it would be a sane way to calm the current pressure. I don't think it would collapse the system at all. It would effectively create a pipeline of smart qualified kids into the existing networks of the schools. The lottery kids would be successful after college, and continue to reinforce the network. The only difference would be the network would look more Asian/Indian.
The Redditors on /r/cambridge routinely tell American applicants that the whole "extra-curriculars" thing is only relevant if whatever you did demonstrates enthusiasm for or ability in your subject, both of which you will need to survive. Ability for the obvious reason, enthusiasm because you will get the shock of it no longer being effortless and meeting peers who are better at it than you.
For me, the "HR interview" was "what would you say to convince me of your enthusiasm for physics?" (as in, I was explicitly asked that very question) not "tell me about how your adventures pogo-sticking up the Khyber on your gap yah made you a well-rounded person" (and the "technical interview" asked you do actually do some physics).
As someone who couldn't have afforded a gap yah and would probably have been too frail to go on one, I'm pretty happy about that.
The thing that I'm told they will do is look at your school and weight things like GCSE results and A level results accordingly (as in, if you are at a bad school, they'll make allowances for that). https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/jan/10/how-cambri... is interesting from that point of view.
Western systems vary a lot in their degree of specialisation too. By 16, after the GCSEs the UK is done with being a generalist. Pick 3 or 4 A-Levels of your choice and if you feel like doing Math, Further Math and Physics or three sciences and Maths no one will stop you in the name of "well roundedness".