Commentary: College admissions is not a meritocracy -- it should be

There are two open secrets in college admissions. First, admissions is not a meritocracy based on academic achievement. Second, the factors used in “holistic” admissions (essays, teacher recommendations, etc.) do not predict a student’s success in or after college. “Holistic” admissions originated a century ago to perpetuate exclusion, and these unpredictive criteria continue to harm students today.

In 1922, the president of Harvard, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, proposed a 15% admissions cap on Jewish students. Through admissions based on grades and entrance exam scores, the Jewish student community had grown swiftly, between 1900 and 1922, from 7% to 21%. The faculty, to their credit, rejected Lowell’s proposal as un-American. Undeterred, Lowell pivoted Harvard to “holistic” or “whole-person” admissions: This antisemitic social engineering used letters of recommendation, personal interviews and legacy preferences to downgrade the applications of Jewish applicants, effectively suppressing their admission.

Over 100 years later, college admissions still uses “holistic” admissions to put a finger on the scales in ways most people would likely say are un-American.

For instance, students from the top 1% comprise 16% of students at Ivy-plus colleges (the Ivies plus the University of Chicago, Duke, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and are more than twice as likely to attend compared with middle-class students with the same SAT/ACT scores. This wealth advantage is achieved through “holistic” nonacademic criteria: legacy preferences, Ivy League sport recruitment (for squash, fencing, crew, etc.), and subjective nonacademic ratings based on essays, extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations. If holistic admissions were abolished (and admissions were based solely on grades, curricular rigor and test scores), the percentage of students with parents in the top 1% of income would drop by more than a third.

Yet colleges use “holistic” admissions not only to get wealthy students in, but also to keep out high-achieving students from designated ethnic groups. Court records and large-scale studies indicate that elite colleges’ race-aware and holistic admissions systems have operated as a negative factor for Asian American applicants, contributing to lower admission/attendance odds than similarly qualified white applicants. As recently as 2023, Harvard was systematically assigning the lowest “personal rating” scores to Asian American applicants.

I have seen the latter happen countless times with my own students: absolutely stellar Asian American students with nearly perfect grades, test scores, essays and extracurricular activities denied when my students of other ethnic backgrounds with very good but less than stellar applications are admitted to the same schools. It’s unlikely that most of these are accidental outcomes. They are by design.

There is, however, “holistic” admissions everyone should support: equal opportunity for all. When students from a disadvantaged background demonstrate the ability to succeed at top universities, they should be admitted ahead of those born into greater privilege, and society should support them with need-based scholarships.

But colleges still need to exercise caution because socially engineering positive outcomes can easily go awry. Colleges cannot focus solely on “access” and neglect the end goal: “access to success.” All admitted students must demonstrate the ability to succeed. Admitting underprepared students, especially those already disadvantaged, harms them.

For instance, since 2020, when the University of California schools went test-blind, the percentage of students placed into remedial math at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) has gone from 1% to 12% of the incoming class. Of those placed in Math 2 (whose math placement tests showed they were not proficient in elementary or middle school math), 25% had unweighted 4.0 GPAs in high school math. Grade inflation is rampant, and despite their perfect grades in math throughout all of high school, they did not know high school, middle school or even elementary school math — but, in the absence of standardized entrance exam scores, were admitted to UCSD.

And these underprepared admitted students suffer the consequences. For example, majors in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) who initially place into a remedial math class at UCSD are much less likely to succeed in their required math classes and are thus forced to switch majors, wasting time and money. Worse, they are denied the higher earning potential of a STEM profession. In fact, from 2017 to 2023, few, if any, students who placed into remedial math at UCSD graduated as engineering majors.

The harm extends beyond college. Pushing unprepared students through high school and college diminishes the value of the degrees that students and families have sacrificed years and tens of thousands of dollars to attain. With no ability to trust that college students have basic skills, a majority of employers now use their own standardized exams to prescreen applicants. Some elite employers have even begun asking applicants for SAT/ACT scores.

The system is broken.

University boards and administrators must take action. The data is clear: SAT and ACT scores help predict which students are prepared to succeed both in college and even after college. Universities that require test scores might lose some “test-optional” applicants, making them appear less selective and less prestigious — at least in the short term. But these standardized measures ensure that admitted students are sufficiently prepared to succeed and that very expensive degrees will hold their value and accurately signal achievement to employers.

Despite being nonprofits with a duty to act in the public good, most colleges remain test-optional because they do not prioritize educational achievement. It is no surprise, then, that the public has lost its trust in and respect for them.

That trust and respect can be regained slowly, but only if colleges set aside the games and the social engineering of “holistic” admissions and do what is best for students: admit based on merit.

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David Blobaum is the CEO of Summit Prep. He is also on the board of directors and is director of outreach for the National Test Prep Association, a nonprofit that works to support the appropriate use of testing in admissions.

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