Didn't Ace the SAT? Design a Microbe Transplant Instead

Ariel Kaminer:

High school seniors with poor grades and even worse SAT scores, you may be just what one of the nation's most prestigious liberal arts colleges is looking for.

You need not be president of the debate club or captain of the track team. No glowing teacher recommendations are required. You just need to be smart, curious and motivated, and prove it with words -- 10,000 words, in the form of four, 2,500-word research papers.

The research topics are formidable and include the cardinal virtue of ren in Confucius's "The Analects," "the origin of chirality (or handedness) in a prebiotic life," Ezra Pound's view of "The Canterbury Tales," and how to design a research trial using microbes transplanted from the human biome. If professors deem the papers to be worthy of a B+ or better by the college's standards, you are in.

The college is Bard, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., and it says the new option, which has not previously been announced but is to begin this fall, is an attempt to return the application process to its fundamental goal: rewarding the best candidates, rather than just those who are best able to market themselves to admissions committees.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 30, 2013 12:13 AM
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