{"id":16759,"date":"2016-04-25T09:37:17","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T13:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16759"},"modified":"2016-04-25T09:37:17","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T13:37:17","slug":"college-application-bingo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16759","title":{"rendered":"college application Bingo"},"content":{"rendered":"

We spent last week visiting prospective colleges with\u00a0my daughter, which is why I was offline. The information sessions and tours are very well done but they do tend to blur because of\u00a0institutional isomorphism<\/a>. If you’re getting sleepy on your umpteenth tour, try playing this Bingo game:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

An\u00a0admissions officer who wanted to command our attention\u00a0could try saying this<\/em> instead …<\/p>\n

“We have simplified our admissions\u00a0criteria to two numbers: your combined SAT score and your family’s net worth. If the multiple of those figures exceeds 16 billion, you are in. If it is between 160 million and 16 billion, you’re on the wait list, and we will work our way down until the budget is balanced. Below that, we’ll bank your application fee.<\/p>\n

“Because we use these two very different metrics, we admit a diverse student body. Some students are rich but not too bright. Others\u00a0have awesome standardized test scores but are merely middle class. Once they enroll, these two groups are completely isolated and mutually disdainful. We’d love to find some students who could bridge our two subcultures\u00a0and promote interaction,\u00a0but we can’t seem to get any rich geniuses to attend.<\/p>\n

“You pay up front for each semester, so it’s in our interest for you to drop out. Most courses are vast lectures with arbitrarily difficult exams meant to weed out the untalented or the merely unfortunate. Since a small number of oppressed junior\u00a0professors teach huge numbers of students, the rest of the faculty is\u00a0free to wander around at will.<\/p>\n

“Majors are assigned randomly on the first day of freshman year, and all credits\u00a0must be in the major. Students are encouraged to study abroad, at other US colleges, or indeed anywhere they like, as long as they continue to pay our tuition in full, on time, and in cash. Extensive information about our loan program, interest rates, late fees, and\u00a0penalties are contained in the prospectus, pp.\u00a01-73.<\/p>\n

“You may\u00a0find that you learn and grow the most by\u00a0exchanging ideas with your peers in informal settings. Go for it.\u00a0We don’t really need to hear about it.<\/p>\n

“We care about our host community. You can find out the name of it from\u00a0Google Maps. The townies live on the other side of that\u00a0barbed wire perimeter.<\/p>\n

“Choosing a college is a very personal matter,\u00a0as\u00a0each student is\u00a0utterly unique and unprecedentedly wonderful. For our faculty and administrators, however, you\u00a0are basically an undifferentiated mass. You pay us and leave us alone; we don’t bother you. It’s all part of our extremely special and deeply considered educational philosophy, which has sustained us for 375 years and made\u00a0our brand the envy of the world. Thanks so much and please leave your tips in the dish\u00a0on your way out.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We spent last week visiting prospective colleges with\u00a0my daughter, which is why I was offline. The information sessions and tours are very well done but they do tend to blur because of\u00a0institutional isomorphism. If you’re getting sleepy on your umpteenth tour, try playing this Bingo game: An\u00a0admissions officer who wanted to command our attention\u00a0could try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academia","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16759"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16795,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759\/revisions\/16795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}