Law Schools Gaming the Admissions Process
"I feel as though my application fees have been stolen."
Basically the same thing happened to me two years ago when I was a humble law school applicant. I interpreted it in the same way - that schools were rejecting me because they figured I'd attend a higher-ranked institution - but was much less upset than the student in question seems to be.
This gaming - and that's obviously what's going on - doesn't bother me for the same reason that affirmative action in admissions doesn't bother me, even though I think colorblindness is an important principle: I've never thought admissions processes were fair. I don't imagine that, if we could just eliminate gaming, or affirmative action, or legacy preferences, or whatever, that we could achieve some kind of "pure" admissions system. There are too many qualified applicants for too few spots. Fallible humans still have to run it. And so on.
One more element of unfairness doesn't hurt anybody, especially since the victims are going elsewhere anyway.
(via Volokh)
Basically the same thing happened to me two years ago when I was a humble law school applicant. I interpreted it in the same way - that schools were rejecting me because they figured I'd attend a higher-ranked institution - but was much less upset than the student in question seems to be.
This gaming - and that's obviously what's going on - doesn't bother me for the same reason that affirmative action in admissions doesn't bother me, even though I think colorblindness is an important principle: I've never thought admissions processes were fair. I don't imagine that, if we could just eliminate gaming, or affirmative action, or legacy preferences, or whatever, that we could achieve some kind of "pure" admissions system. There are too many qualified applicants for too few spots. Fallible humans still have to run it. And so on.
One more element of unfairness doesn't hurt anybody, especially since the victims are going elsewhere anyway.
(via Volokh)
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