Let me ask you something.
You really think you deserve that college you really want to get into?
That competitive one?
You think they owe you a spot?
Get out of here.
And hello everyone.
This is The Pop Out.
My name is Albert Shin.
I will be talking today about college and why it's not a true meritocracy.
You know there's a lot of conversations that have been going on with a lot of Supreme Court
cases talking about affirmative action and questions about what is or isn't fair when
it comes to college admission.
And I thought this would be a good place to start because I wanted students to get into
the right headspace.
I wanted parents to get into the right headspace.
Because I think there's an assumption in America at least where we have this idea that college
somehow is something you earn.
It's a competition.
You get the best grades that you can.
You do the best you can.
You perform.
You achieve all kinds of accolades.
And then with that you get the prize and the prize is getting into a competitive college.
So we have this notion that college is like a meritocracy where it's a competition for
who's the best and the best are the ones that are deserving of getting into college.
And when the best don't get into the top notch colleges then we think that there's something
unfair about the system.
Unfair about something in the admission process.
You know unfair weight given to one student over another for some arbitrary reason.
So I want to start here because this whole conversation is I think completely misconstrued.
College is not a meritocracy.
College never has been a meritocracy.
I don't even know one college where they would if they're being honest would say hey we are
true meritocracy.
And I think in order to talk about why it's not a meritocracy we need to go back to what
it means for something to be a meritocracy.
So the basic idea of merit of you is that you deserve what it is that you get.
So whatever you get you earned it by something you did.
Inherent in the notion of meritocracy is that there's some fairness within the process.
Everyone is judged on the exact same standard.
It is not arbitrary.
It's not about who likes who or who has a certain feeling about somebody.
It's not about who has connections but rather it's on the merit of what it is that a person
accomplished did demonstrated skills that they have.
And so the assumption here is that there is some set of qualities that we can use as a
metric as a standard for figuring out who is deserving more than another.
Because let's be honest if you're talking about especially the most competitive universities
you know you can't just let everybody in.
There's not enough room.
There's not enough resources.
So what do you have to do?
You have to start picking and choosing.
And so how do you pick and choose?
The thought the traditional thought goes we pick based off of who is most qualified.
This might be the word you often hear.
The more qualified you are the better your chances of getting into college.
So to take an example let's think about a race for example like a true competition.
In a race let's say the 100 meter dash.
The rules of the game are set.
There are certain things that you can and can't do.
You can't use performance enhancement drugs.
You can't do something sneaky and break the legs of the other runners.
You need to follow certain rules and guidelines.
And within those guidelines then you have a race where there's a set set of rules about
how the race is going to operate and how it's going to be judged.
And then whoever is the fastest within those accepted rules is the one that's deserving
of let's say the gold medal.
That is what we consider to be a meritocracy.
Now note something here.
From the very beginning there's an assumption again that there is some accepted set of standards.
And this is where I'm going to start.
College does not across the board does not have some sort of accepted standard for what
constitutes being deserving of college.
So this is number one.
Number one college is not a meritocracy in the sense that there's not even a set of rules
that everyone agrees on.
Let's think about this.
SAT scores, grades.
All the colleges agree that these are metrics but there's no accepted standard across the
board that these standards, sorry this particular metric is the thing that should determine
whether or not somebody is deserving of college.
In fact most colleges from what I have learned rather use SATs, GPAs, so on as merely proxies.
In other words they're using it as some sort of indicator to figure out whether or not
A, that a student is hardworking, B, that a student is responsible and can accomplish
tasks, C, that they actually have the basic ability to read and write and you know perform
calculations and so on that prepared them for college academics.
Those are the things that they're concerned with.
They're not concerned with the grades themselves.
The grades don't determine your worth.
The grades are merely an indicator and what you'll notice is all these metrics are just
indicators of what kind of person you are.
Are you a responsible person?
Are you somebody who can accomplish tasks?
Are you on top of your homework and scheduling and so on?
Can we trust that you're going to complete all your classes?
Can we trust that you have the ability to keep up with what is an accepted standard
for academic rigor at the college that you're going to be going to?
But of course there are a ton of other metrics that colleges use.
They look for leadership skills.
They're looking for, what is it, athletic ability.
They're looking for teamwork skills, your ability to communicate well, your passion
for giving to the community or for developing a particular skill.
Let's say in the fine arts or some unique thing that you bring to the college.
There's a ton of different metrics that they could be measuring on and there's no way for
any, across different colleges, for them to agree to say, hey, okay, these are the five,
six things that we're going to measure it on if the person hits XYZ metrics and they're
in the top whatever percentile in each of these metrics, then they are accepted.
That has never been the way the colleges work.
That has never, ever, ever been the way that colleges work.
No.
So, I don't know where people got this idea that somehow if you work hard enough, you
deserve to get into a competitive college.
That's just never been the case.
And I want to start with number one, it's because there's not even a set of standards
that constitutes what it means for a student to be deserving of getting into college or
a particular college.
Now, I will say this.
There are colleges where they will set a standard for within the college.
I have seen that.
And even there, there's a lot of variation, right?
Depends on the program that you're applying to.
Sometimes it depends on whether you're applying for engineering or if you're applying for
psychology or if you're applying for English.
Maybe there's some different things that they're looking for.
And that makes sense, right?
If you are going to be going into engineering, it makes a lot more sense that they care significantly
about your math and science abilities, that you demonstrate your ability to go ahead and
perform those kinds of tests and learn in those areas.
So they're going to be looking more heavily at those areas.
This makes a lot of sense, right?
But again, the standards will vary, right?
It'll vary from school to school.
It often varies from within the school, right?
Various from within the school as well.
Okay.
All right.
Second thing to note, it is not a meritocracy in the sense that there's no accepted rules
to the game, right?
In other words, what constitutes fairness in the college application process?
None of the colleges agree.
None of the colleges agree, right?
What do I mean by that?
Look, okay.
What would be fair if you have two students who are applying for a college, competitive
college, and their grades are, let's say, more or less the same, but one student did
better on the SATs, right?
And it turns out that the one that did better on the SATs, they also, unbeknownst to the
college, they also spent three years training for the SATs.
There's all these summer SAT academies.
They took them every summer while doing a bunch of other stuff, but they really worked
hard for their SAT scores.
But the other student didn't go to an SAT academy because SAT academies are expensive,
right?
SAT courses can cost thousands of dollars, and if you talk about over a span of like
three, four years, that's a lot of money.
So because the student didn't get the kind of education, didn't get the training, didn't
get the additional resources, they somehow are, right, like, what does that count for?
Like, what are the rules to this game here, right?
Do they get special points for doing as well as they did even without the help?
Or are the rules such that it doesn't matter, like, whether or not you got help, right?
Let me give you another example, right?
A lot of students get into college because of their sports accolades, right?
Okay, so what if a student couldn't, you know, really love the particular sport and wanted
to develop their skills in it, but they lived in a neighborhood where there was no organized
sports and so they could not develop the skills in the way that they wanted to, right?
They did a bunch of other stuff indicating that they were very good.
If they had the opportunity, they would have done great, but because they lived in, let's
say, some rural neighborhood that did not have enough students, did not have enough,
like, competition and so on, that, you know, oh no, they just couldn't develop these skills.
They couldn't compete, or at least maybe they were very, very good, but maybe they don't
have any special awards, right?
And so, you know, it doesn't look as nice on their application, right?
What do we do in those cases?
Do we say that the rules say, well, it doesn't matter that you didn't have these opportunities,
right?
It's whatever accolades, accolades are accolades, right?
Awards are awards and you didn't get any.
Or do we say, hey, you are very good, you did much more, let's say, than another student
did with the same opportunities that, you know, with less opportunities.
You did the most you could and in fact you did far more than would be expected.
So we should go ahead and put that into consideration, right?
There, there's no rules to this, right?
Now here's the thing that I think a lot of people don't really consider, right?
If you're talking about competitive, like really competitive, like Ivy League schools,
right?
A lot of the students that actually get into these Ivy League schools, they've been bred
for Ivy League schools.
We're talking at a young age, they were shipped off to some boarding school with a funnel
system into some of these Ivy Leagues, right?
They get like, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, hundreds of students into Ivy Leagues every year and
they do so because there's some elite private boarding school and the students are just,
you know, just basically trained to tailor their application for these schools, okay?
Most of you don't have access to this, right?
Is this acceptable practice?
Like if you're like somebody, a referee, kind of setting the rules to this game, what in
the world are you going to do as you set the rules to this game?
Are you going to just let this slide?
You're going to be like, oh, you know what, some people just have more resources and they
have more information about where to send their kids and yada, yada, yada.
So you know, whatever.
What matters is whatever comes in when the application comes in, whatever you put in
your application.
Are we just going to leave it at that or are we going to, you know, try to adjust for the
fact that some people had access to more and that seemed to have helped their application
significantly, but it just doesn't seem particularly fair, right?
It doesn't seem like a fair game.
Feels like a game where it's all stacked against you, right?
I mean, what I'm pointing out is this, right?
Well, we're going to come back to affirmative action specifically and the issues I've had
with the public discourse on this, but there's never been a time where the playing field
has been even or there's been rules that have been used to enforce some sort of fairness
that would be necessary if we're talking about merit, if we're talking about whether or not
you deserve it, right?
A lot of the students who get into some of these competitive universities, you know,
they did work hard.
I'm not knocking on their hard work, right?
But the question isn't whether or not they worked hard for where they got to.
The question is, what is the actual standard?
What are the rules we're going to use, right?
That we play this game?
What rules are we going to use in this game to figure out?
Well, you know, even though they worked really hard, you know, somebody else worked just
as hard with less opportunities and they did more with the opportunities they had.
I mean, is that how we're going to referee this game or are we going to referee the game
where it's going to be, well, whoever scores the most points is just the winner, period.
It doesn't matter, you know, if somebody had more of an advantage than somebody had more
of an advantage.
What's clear, though, is that I think as you think more about these, the fact that there
isn't some rule that all these colleges are abiding by, it becomes very clear that it's
not as if like there is.
How do you say this?
Colleges don't even seem to be thinking strictly in terms of this is an actual competition
where we're trying to get the most deserving students, right?
It's not what I'm pointing out is that doesn't seem to be what's happening at least currently.
And I would probably say from my experience, the last 20 years of college admissions.
Which brings me to my third point.
I think all of these all of this talk is really missing what colleges themselves are doing
and how they're actually viewing themselves and how they're viewing the students as a
part of their community.
What exactly are colleges up to?
They're up to several things.
So if there's any sense of quote unquote merit involved, I don't think there is.
But if you want to say that there's some sort of standard that you need to meet, it would
simply be the standard of demonstrating that you're prepared for the work ahead in that
college.
Colleges don't want to accept students that they don't think are going to be able to keep
up.
In other words, they only want to accept students that can meet their academic rigor, right?
Their standard for academic rigor.
So this is like again a baseline, right?
You need to be able to keep up with college work.
Now most competitive colleges, I'm talking even like Ivy Leeds, the ones that are most
reputable and so on.
There are way too many students who would be qualified.
You don't need straight A's to demonstrate that you could handle college work, right?
Students who are like an A minus average probably can handle most if not all of the college
work, right?
I mean, you know, to graduate you don't necessarily need straight A's in college, right?
So in other words, you could handle college work.
You could be like a C average grade, right?
Throughout your college career get a degree and so on.
You could succeed in college just fine even if you're like an A minus B student in high
school, okay?
So the bare minimum a lot of students are going to qualify for.
Like there's nothing special about the students who get into the more competitive schools
in that they're not like somehow, you know, held to some higher standard in the college.
I would say probably the top 50 national universities all have more or less very similar standards.
In my experience of having gone to all these different colleges and met students from all
over, like it's just a variation.
You might get more of students of higher quality at certain universities than others, but on
average they're going to be around in the same vicinity, okay?
In fact, if you take standards like the SAT scores and GPAs and so on, it turns out that
they're good indicators maybe of your first semester grades, but beyond that it pretty
much evens out, right?
That learning curve is really fast for the students who are a little bit behind.
They learn real fast and so then it kind of evens out by the time the second year rolls
around.
So there's not a huge difference in the students.
They want students who could succeed.
They don't want students who are going to fail at their university.
So first things first, you got students who could handle the work.
Look, that's the minimum.
That's what they want, right?
What else are they looking for?
Now here is where it gets a little tricky, okay?
At least the bigger universities, right, where they have research institutions, research
programs in a wealth of different disciplines, they have limited resources in all these different
departments.
They cannot bring in everybody who wants to do the same thing, right?
The university itself is engaged in a lot of different projects, have a lot of faculty
in a wide variety of fields, expertise in a lot of different places, programs in a lot
of different things from business to psychology to economics to, I mean I'm just rattling
stuff off, but right?
Most of the national universities, bigger universities, they have a whole lot of different
programs and that's by design.
And when they're accepting students, they're wanting to accept different types of students
because they're trying to cater to a range of different thinkers, different personalities,
different approaches, and they're trying to elicit and develop these talents in a way
that they can make the university actually look good, right?
That's really what they're looking for.
They want to make the university look good.
University is a business.
They want to maintain their reputation.
They don't want to be associated with people who don't accomplish anything with their lives.
They want to develop students who go out and do wonderful things and then bring shine onto
their universities.
They might have a mission for the greater community, depends on the university, depends
on the program.
They want to develop researchers.
They're wanting all kinds of things, right?
Because they have so many different goals, they're going to pick a student body that
reflects the diversity that exists within their own university.
So this is where I want to talk about diversity, not in the sense of ethnicity or gender or
anything like that.
I'm talking about diversity in the sense that you can't accept only econ majors at a university.
That's just not possible, right?
What are you going to do?
You're going to accept some econ majors.
You're going to accept some people who are more interested in the humanities.
You're going to accept some students who are interested in the arts, right?
You're going to pick from a range of different types of students, okay?
And what are the standards for accepting these students?
Well, again, it's going to vary.
It's going to vary quite a bit, right?
I mean, if you're thinking like, oh, okay, for an art student, what are the standards
we want to hold an art student to?
What does it mean for an art student to succeed in this university?
It looks very different than what an engineer needs in order to succeed.
That's going to be very different.
That's going to be very different, okay?
But on top of that, if you think the universities are in some sense of business and trying to
make sure that they make a good name for themselves and maintain a good reputation, what exactly
are they also going to be looking for?
Well, they're going to be looking for reputation, right?
There's a reason that the president's children have a much better chance at getting into
some of these competitive schools.
Why is that?
Well, it's because you're going to have the president's kids come into your university,
right?
Does this make sense?
I mean, look, this is not a secret.
This is not a secret.
If you're a celebrity, if you have a celeb, or if you are a billionaire, if you're like
Elon Musk's kids are not going to have trouble getting into any of these universities, right?
Why is that?
Well, for a lot of different reasons.
One, it's name recognition.
Assuming, I mean, we'll talk about my hatred for Elon Musk at some other point, but assuming
that they're not going to bring any negative publicity to the university, right?
They're going to want the association with people who are quote unquote successful in
the public eye.
All right?
But on top of that, the thought goes, it's really nice for the university to be able
to lean on some of their alumni, the people who graduated from the university, to hit
them up for fundraising so that they could get a bunch of money for that new building
they're going to build or that new research facility they want.
Right?
I'm not saying that this is a primary consideration, but don't be surprised if that thought crosses
the mind or is a factor somewhere at some point.
Right?
This is part of the reason for what we're going to talk about at some point in more
detail, legacy admission.
Right?
I mean, the idea goes, look, we can, one of the reasons is we could trust the kids of
the ones that have already come through university that we're happy with.
But the other reason is, well, the association allows for that network, that social network
that allows us to tap into funding or other kind of social connections that could get
the university things that they really, really want.
Right?
So again, the colleges are not here treating themselves like a meritocracy.
I don't know if the colleges, I mean, again, I don't go around to every single college
and then interview them and then do some background research on every single one of them, but
I'm pretty confident that most of these colleges themselves are not thinking of themselves
in a strictly meritocracy, using their label, sort of way.
Their thought is probably more, there are probably a bunch of students who will succeed.
There are a bunch of students who probably worked hard enough and showed enough on their
resume that they should be able to do well at the school.
There are a lot of students who would be successful at our university.
And in fact, if we could, we would want to accept more students.
However, they got to pick and choose.
This is just limitations of physics.
There's a limitation of time, space, money, resources.
So they're going to have to pick and choose.
And when they pick and choose, guess what they're going to do?
They're going to pick and choose who they want to pick and choose.
They're going to want different types of students for different reasons.
They want they don't want everyone to be an econ major.
They don't want everyone to be a polysci major.
They don't want everyone to be interested in the same stuff.
They want students who shine in different ways to come to the university.
And each of those ways in which they shine vary quite a bit.
Right.
Which is part of the reason I say like this is one of the reasons there's just not going
to be any clear standard.
OK.
Does this make sense?
Hope it does.
OK.
So again, I'm trying to get you into the right my right mind state because if you start thinking
like oh but I was like a valedictorian and oh I got like a perfect score in the SATs
like why am I not getting into any of these top my top choice schools?
Well, there's a reason for it.
Right.
A because that just only indicates that you could handle the college work.
It doesn't tell us much more.
Right.
If I'm in the you know in the admission committee and B what you bring to the table it might
be like look that's all great.
We would love to have you.
But because of limited space we have to pick and choose.
And you know there's some of these other students who they could do the work just as well.
They didn't get as good of a GPA or an SAT score but we know that they'll be successful
nonetheless and they bring something else to the table that we really want.
Right.
So that would be a good addition to our community.
Okay.
So again they're not thinking about it in the way that you might be thinking about it.
Okay.
So what then is the lesson here?
Okay.
So to kind of sum all this up what exactly is a lesson we should be taking from this?
Okay.
You can argue about the standards for who gets accepted and who doesn't.
You could play that comparison game and then you know I've seen this in high school where
they get into like a big bickering match or jealousy like oh this student is the who's
got a worst grade or wasn't as you know on the top of the class.
They got into a better university like how could they like this is not fair.
Okay.
You can argue about the standards all you want.
I don't think it's going to work.
I don't think any college will ever agree to some sort of standardized way of accepting
students.
It's just not going to happen.
Okay.
But you could still you know scream at the wind if you really want to.
All right.
Second, well you can at least try to even out the playing field.
Right.
So if you think that it's unfair that legacy students get a one-up on others and we'll
talk about this more in detail in future podcasts.
Right.
But if you think that wealth playing such a major role or where you live your location
like you know the city you live in the high school you happen to go to.
I mean nobody chooses very few students choose their high school.
Right.
Most students there in a high school within district they might have a choice within that
district but they're not much more.
Right.
You can't choose these things.
Right.
So like look things I can't control I should not be judged on.
I should be judged on what I did with what I had available to me.
Okay.
Fair enough.
That's not the way things are done now.
So if you want to try to even out the playing field and complain complain about that we'll
talk about it in a future podcast.
I will give you the steps on how to do that.
All right.
I will give you the steps on how to do that and how to even out the playing field at least
a bit more.
Okay.
It'll never be perfect but we could actually at least make it a little bit more fair.
Okay.
I can tell you exactly what to push for.
Right.
So if you want to talk about like lawsuits and things you could bring to the Supreme
Court to demand a little bit more fairness and college admissions I have some tips for
you.
Okay.
But it will involve right acknowledging that it isn't really very even right now that some
people do have a significant advantage and you need to argue that that unfairness is
an unacceptable feature of college admission.
Again it's a tough road.
Good luck to you on that.
Okay.
I think the third lesson is probably the more important one.
Okay.
I want you to stop caring so much about the reputation of the college you get into.
I want you to stop this narrative this BS that one college is significantly better than
another.
Okay.
I'm going to be talking about this a lot and this is why I start off with this as a theme
for the podcast.
Right.
Because I want students parents all to get into the right mindset.
Okay.
Here's the reality.
The reality is if you get into one of the top 50 colleges in the United States and you
make the most of your opportunities there you will be successful in life most likely.
Right.
You will be fairly successful.
Barring like I don't know drug addiction gambling addiction.
I don't know you commit a crime.
I don't know.
I don't know why.
Right.
Like whatever it is.
But you'll most likely be perfectly fine with any of the top 50 colleges.
I think people you could probably extend it to the top 100 colleges to be honest.
Right.
Now does this mean that you know college what college you go to doesn't really matter.
No that's not what I mean.
We'll talk about it some more detail in the future.
But you know college is not as important as people make it out to be.
You need to calm the hell down when you freak out about whether or not you get into your
dream college.
OK.
In fact you might get into your dream college and absolutely hate it.
It is possible.
And you know when that often happens from my experience it often happens when you decided
your dream school based off of what somebody else told you or based off of rankings.
OK.
Ridiculous.
OK.
College is not the be all end all.
Now I want to pinpoint it here and we'll come back to it another time.
But unless you want to be the president of the United States or Supreme Court justice
then we'll have to have a separate conversation.
But it might be for slightly different reasons.
But with the exception of those if you want to be successful in business in life in I
don't know whatever it is that you want to endeavor as an artist or as a you know a writer
or whatever else you want to do your success depends so much less on college than you think
on exactly which college you get into.
OK.
So stop worrying so much.
OK.
It is a luck game to some degree.
You can improve your odds right.
It's like if you play some sort of informed game of poker or or blackjack or something
you can improve your odds by making better decisions.
But to some degree it's going to come down to luck.
It depends on what the college in particular that you want to go to what they're looking
for doesn't match up with what you provide.
How does it compare to some of the other students that are applying at the same time.
Look I do not want to be in the position of an of an admissions officer who have to decide
these things.
It is not easy for them.
I feel for them because if you I mean you probably know your own application maybe the
application of some of the students around you.
But if you saw all the different applications that come across the table for a particular
university you would not want to be in that position of having to decide these minute
differences where it's like it's not quite clear which one we would want more.
And for what reason.
All right.
It is not an easy task.
And some of that for you whether or not you get in is going to depend on luck.
It's going to depend on who applied in the way you know with the kind of interest that
they did at the year that you applied is going to depend on a whole lot of luck.
So calm down.
OK.
So what matters more is what you do with your time in college.
To make the most out of that time.
So let's get our head into the right space.
OK.
As we as we talk more about this in the future podcast I want it to be clear that rankings
and reputation will matter.
I just want to stress it doesn't matter as much as you think.
And I'm saying this because I think what's more important is your emotional health.
And I want you to be in the right state of mind as you're applying to colleges and not
invest so much of your identity into the college.
It is an unhealthy attitude.
It is going to be destructive to you.
And parents if you're pushing this on your kids I resent you for it.
OK.
They don't deserve this.
They deserve to be happy and to be successful in whatever they endeavor to do.
OK.
And they will be more successful if they're not stressing out about the name of the college.
OK.
People can be successful in all walks of life.
The college will mean less and less as you get further on in life.
And that becomes very very clear the moment you step out of that college.
You will find that your college degree doesn't mean as much as you thought it did.
It might have been meaningful for you but that's not the case for everybody else.
OK.
All right.
So let's all change the culture.
Stop stressing so much about you know college admissions about what specific college you
get into and just simply be excited for the new opportunities ahead.
We'll talk about what that looks like in the future.
See you next time.