Destroying American Excellence

In a piece in today's NY Times some Business School instructor suggests we abandon the current method of selecting college students and using Psychologist interviews. The writer suggests:

Sending student applicants to assessment centers would solve at least three problems for college admissions. First, colleges have traditionally relied on recommendation letters from different teachers and interviews with different alumni who evaluate students in different situations. These idiosyncrasies create a great deal of noise: Reports reveal as much about the teachers, interviewers and situations as they do about the students. In an assessment center, students answer standardized questions and are rated by multiple evaluators on a common standard.

Now I cannot think of any student at MIT who would pass such an exam. It was tried during the early 70s, some form of getting in touch with yourself. Now we promote faculty based on performance and not on getting in touch with themselves. No Psychologist could have a conversation with a student interested in applying. There is no point of connection. Imagine some brilliant math or computer science applicant sitting in front of some at best average Psychologist. One has to be a bit awry to even contemplate this.

Also the cost of such a screening would in extraordinary. Yet all too often writers of pieces like this do not seem to recognize this.

Frankly of all the suggestions I have heard over decades this is by far the most absurd in my opinion. But I suspect that they will never stop.