tales from the academy

I had lunch today with some colleagues, where one told an admittedly-possibly-apocryphal story about a graduate program admissions committee at an Ivy League university. The committee had received about twice as many applications as what anyone on the committee felt they could be troubled with. So, in front of the other committee members, the chair of the committee shuffled the stack of applications a few times, and then picked up the top half of the stack and threw it in the trash. "The applicants in the top half are unlucky," the chair said, "and we wouldn't want anyone here who is unlucky."