[..] A little unrelated, but I really liked this site post [..]…

However, I find the reasoning behind the idea to have an article-based discussion interview to be a bit perplexing. Although it’s true that a student’s reading, thinking, and communicative skills definitely qualify as important criteria for college admissions, I feel as if this might be the most “gameable” part.

I’m not sure that this is as “gameable” as you think. If you’ve grown up reading, talking with people, pondering interesting thoughts, and having interesting discussions: this will come through. I don’t know how much of that can be learned at the last minute…

I think you overestimate high school students. Right now, I’m a grad student, and I read these suggestions and think, oh, well, I could handle that. And then I remember when I was a junior in high school, looking at colleges. I always knew that I would go to college, but I didn’t know where. I ended up going to a Big Ten school for my undergrad, a university of 40,000+ students. I certainly wasn’t planning for my particular university. I didn’t even know what my major was going to be until the end of my sophomore year. And I ended up graduating with a 3.75 GPA. Eagerness to go to a university doesn’t equal success in said university. If you expect kids to know what they’re going to do in college and *how* they plan to do it, you either have to really lower your standards for your new assessments, or you’re going to end up with a very specific population: upper/middle class students who have been pushed to plan for college since junior high, and who may in fact be social outcasts at their high school, because since when do high school kids not spend the majority of their time on high school related matters.

However, I find the reasoning behind the idea to have an article-based discussion interview to be a bit perplexing. Although it’s true that a student’s reading, thinking, and communicative skills definitely qualify as important criteria for college admissions, I feel as if this might be the most “gameable” part. Whose to say that a student cannot just simply practice reading articles of similar content or length to prepare for an interview about it? I’m not sure how effective this requirement is in excluding from admissions those hard-working “grind” students who may just simply focus on acquiring this sort of article-reading/interviewing skill.

I know plenty of engineer and comp sci majors who have problems with interpersonal skills.

Fair enough. I guess this would work better for a school that predominantly focused on liberal arts majors…

But aren’t we supposed to go to university to learn?

I was hoping that the “course reports” would suss out students ability and interest in learning.

I know plenty of engineer and comp sci majors who have problems with interpersonal skills. Many talented people are not able to present themselves well in an interview for whatever reason (shy, introverted, rough day, etc). Personally for me, I had to work on these essential communication skills. But in all honesty I think every system will have its bugs.