Telling the Truth About "Holistic" Admissions

George Leef

In today's Pope Center Clarion Call, I write about a recent, surprisingly frank piece in the New York Times in which the author discussed her experience as an applications reader for UC Berkeley. She saw through the deceptive fog of euphemisms (such as "stressors") to understand that the school uses "holistic" evaluation to get more of the "diverse" students it wants and reject more of the high-ability students it thinks it gets enough of.

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