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Comment by yandie | Hacker News Reader

I feel that the overall university admission process is broken. No matter how we evaluate people, we are prone to biases, and things like diversity and affirmative actions (whether you disagree with it or not) add another layer of complexity to the process.

I like the idea from the powerball revolution epsiode of Revisionist History (http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/44-the-powerball-revo...). Why not have some filter to get the top students in to a pool, then randomly select them? I mean there are more qualified students than there are slots, so it's only "fair" if each of them get the same chance. No politics - just a pure number game at that point. You can argue the filter could create a disadvantage to poor students etc..., but you can adjust that in ways that the initial pool of potential applicants will be even.

Of course when I mention the concept of randomly selecting a candidate, it makes people real uncomfortable :)

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i make the same argument for hiring. once you've done some basic filtering, you're likely better off hiring at random than trying to "pick the best", as alluring as that is, because your biases will select against intellectual and creative diversity.

economies of scale work to your advantage here as well. when hiring 1 person, you feel immense pressure to hire correctly. but when hiring for 10 similar roles, you can, for instance, hire 11 people at random from a qualified pool and find the best fits along the way (often even for the 'extra' hire, who might fit in an entirely different role).

> I feel that the overall university admission process is broken.

I agree and think the brokenness is in the limited number of opportunities. Why are Harvard and other Ivies the only ones that matter on your resume? Once a society limits the number of opportunities to reach the upper echelons, it is bound to set off scramble among all the parents, since everyone wants the best for their children.

For some reasons, this is not only an American thing. I believe elite institutions in other countries as equally (or even more) selective.

Branding and advertising.

Like having google on your resume.

It's not logical. If someone left google after a year.. it sounds like it wasn't a great fit for either but others will take it as a proxy for your greatness and select that person over someone who stayed longer at a less known entity.

Ivies matter on your resume because they are exclusive and everyone can't go there. You can't let everyone go to an elite institution because then they wouldn't be elite anymore.

I disagree that there are 'biases' no matter what. If students are evaluated purely by merit, without regard to that categories typically associated with biases (race, gender, etc.), then by definition the process is unbiased.

I think it’s really hard to evaluate “merit” in an unbiased way. Just because you’re not explicitly using those categories you list doesn’t mean they’re not creeping in to your other metrics.

Well, no school wants to have selected some of the best, they want to select the best.

What does "the best" really mean? At the end of the day I assume they want to optimize for future success. In that case we humans have been proven to be not very good at that in many other areas.

And why can't you select a the best students and then randomly select among them? I don't believe that a 3.8 student will certainly perform worse than a 3.85 student, for example.

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