Opinion | Why Harvard and other elite universities should avoid a Tinder approach to student admissions
OiYan Poon says universities select students based on a range of criteria that takes into account their intended major, career interests and personal contexts, rather than just their test scores
Impulsively swiping left or right on a dating app is just as limited in information and depth as only using test scores and high school grade point averages (GPAs) when selecting new students from a massive pool of super-talented applicants for admission at an elite university.
The United States is filled with people who have different perspectives, values and experiences and who come from many unique places. The white immigrant and working-class Massachusetts suburb where I grew up is not the same as the predominantly white, rural Southern Illinois sundown town where my husband is from.
I am loud and quick to fight; he is strongly diplomatic. We’re both Asian-American, but our family contexts are different. My in-laws’ economic situation allowed them to send all three children to boarding schools. I attended my community’s under-resourced public high school.
Both sets of Asian immigrant parents, like other minority parents, cared deeply about education, but financial and social capital positioned us differently for elite college access. Nature and nurture shaped our interests, values and talents differently.