In Defense of the Impossible

I wholeheartedly agree with President Eisgruber that with nine times as many qualified applicants as available spaces on campus, there is not and cannot be a set formula for candidate selection. Every person applying is just that, a person, with unique perspectives, motivations, accomplishments, and backgrounds. The admissions committee consists of persons, with unique perspectives, motivations, accomplishments, and backgrounds. Their task to collectively select an incoming class has an inherently personal component of value that cannot be translated into mathematical data. I shudder to think what turning the selection process over to ChatGPT and other AI software would produce in light of both the many biases in the information used to train them and the well-established fact that they can deliberately produce falsity.