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Comment by nancyhn | Hacker News Reader

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

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I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example:

Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement.

Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (against the current state of the art which is a few seconds).

Which one would you admit?

Student 1 is the child of billionaires, and it's not clear how much of the work was actually done by him/her and how much was done by employees hired by the kid's parents.

Student 2 lives in Sudan and built their robot out of locally available materials, in the process inventing a new kind of motor built out of coconut fronds.

Now which one would you admit?

How is that an example of standardized testing?

Good point. I've edited my comment.

Student 1. He has the resources needed to move ahead. And unless my university can provide self help to the motivated, student 2 may not work out well here.

It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college.

The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that.

If admissions become “holistic”, poor kids would have little chances. Good luck to that poor kid competing subjectively with kids whose parents send them on impressive charity trips and get them unpaid internships at the most prestigious companies.

I think you are underestimating the extent to which standardized tests can be (and have been) biased.

https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racis...

That's soft bigotry of low expecations. All you have to do is look at data that includes Asian Americans, which is always conveniently omitted from these racist narratives. Even non-Americans routinely do better on American standardized tests.

It is not. GP is saying that the "expectations" in question aren't as applicable to potential as they're purported to be.

>Asian Americans, which is always conveniently omitted from these racist narratives.

Ironically, so is the diversity of the Asian American community.

I think you're underestimating how biased literally every other possible metric of admissions can be.

Everyone understands that standardized tests are biased. They are still the least bad way to identify students from underprivileged backgrounds who have high potential to succeed in college.

I am someone, and I don't understand why they are. Do you have a primer handy on this subject?

SAT scores are correlated with wealth. This CNBC article is a decent introduction to the issue, but be aware that anything you read on the subject is likely to be pushing a particular narrative so it's tough to find a neutral primer anywhere.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/rich-students-get-better-sat...

It’s funny how that article doesn’t mention the most obvious reason - it turns out intelligent people generally don’t get jobs as janitors, retail workers, or other minimum-ish wage jobs. Those intelligent people then have intelligent babies.

For some reason a large part of our society doesn’t want to acknowledge that genetics (highly) influence intelligence.

Anyone who has lived in the real world knows that the conditions in which you grow up have a massive effect on where you end up. There are entire communities of people who live in deep poverty. It's not because they're all - uniformly down to the last person - dumb. The parents are poor, don't have a high-quality education, work long hours, can't afford tutoring, can't help their children with their coursework, etc.

There are entire countries trapped in poverty. China was desperately poor until just a generation ago. Did Chinese people suddenly become smart for some reason? Which is the next country that will magically go from being filled with dumb people to being filled with smart people?

As I said, just a bit of experience with the real world and critical thought will show that your explanation is nonsense.

> Did Chinese people suddenly become smart for some reason?

Yes, they stopped following strict communism. They pivoted to authoritarian capitalism and got wealthier.

I wasn't talking about different countries. Obviously there are issues that can hold large geographic regions down.

(Basically) no intelligent teenager in America is held down by poverty. My parents were relatively poor, didn't go to college, worked long hours, and I went to a public school and certainly didn't have any tutoring and didn't receive much help with homework.

I did well enough on my ACT to go to a private college for pretty close to free. Even if that doesn't happen you can go to a state school that doesn't need great grades, take out loans for the entire amount, get a degree for a good paying job, and suddenly you're out of poverty.

thank you. I read that article and the linked NEA one. Lots of info on biased roots in history, not much information on the mechanisms that create the bias or unbiased standardized tests as an alternative.

I would think there would be a lot of demand for an unbiased standardized test. All I saw for suggestions was to use GPA instead, which clearly has a lot of bias potential... is there a recommended replacement for the SAT/ACT?

What is the evidence that the tests now are biased other than that different groups score differently?

When your history ensures that some groups are socioeconomically disadvantaged, every possible method will be biased. It's unavoidable.

So why don't we focus on socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals instead of focusing on racial metrics?

With affirmative action gone, that's pretty much exactly what's going to happen.

Yeah the SAT is the worst admissions metric, besides all the other ones.

What would you use in its place? You think grades don't have bias?

Interviews, transcripts, (optional) test scores, letter of recommendation, a set of common essays across all schools, and an optional supplemental section or portfolio to showcase any personal achievements not covered by the other standard categories.

Oh wait! That exists — it’s called the Common App, and it’s what most private colleges today use, from the Ivies to elite tiny liberal arts colleges with the largest share of students from the 0.1% that you’ve never heard of, like Pomona College.

They use it because it allows them to ignore standardized test scores and just do admissions based on their own preferences. They used less merit-based metrics because they don't WANT a meritocracy.

Question. Which tells you more about a student:

1. An essay that was probably written by chatGPT then edited by the students parents

2. A test taken in a supervised, controlled, timed environment

1. Would absolutely not get you in anywhere selective

2. Would absolutely not either

I believe the whole concept of “meritocracy” for purpose of admissions is a lie— choosing the criteria to measure against is itself a subjective act.

> I believe the whole concept of “meritocracy” for purpose of admissions is a lie— choosing the criteria to measure against is itself a subjective act.

Let me ask you. Do you also believe that requiring a display of proficiency in mathematics to get into the best schools is inherently discriminatory? What about requiring a demonstration of the capability to understand and complete basic subject matter material in the fields or reading, writing, or scientific literacy?

There’s no shortage of people who meet any of that criteria!

The whole point of a selective college is they have to select from a pool of already qualified applicants. There is no objective measure to measure against when you’re splitting hairs. Even were you to limit it to “objective” requirements like test score and GPA, how do you decide between two students for one spot when both have the exact same scores?

There is no shortage of perfect scores applying to Harvard. And yet a majority, or even a plurality, of any given class of admits didn’t have perfect scores.

There is no shortage of perfect scores applying to Harvard.

1,000 people typically receive a perfect SAT score yearly.

Essays are incredibly biased though! Do you really think that for some reason essays actually have to be written by the person applying, and can't be gamed with money? That an overworked public school teacher is going to write a better letter of recommendation than a private school teacher? That a rich kid is going to have worse extracurriculars, portfolio or achievements?

The Common App is great, but it's not magically less open to bias than standardized test scores.

Not only that, but the person reading the essay is also biased and will select for students who align with their bias. It is a terrible admission metric.

It’s naive to think schools don’t have a system in place for this: separating piles into buckets of test score, ordering by grade, marking a certain number from each bucket as worth another look, then ordering by essay, marking a certain from each group, and repeat on any other metric.

Many schools, selective or not, actually do this whole process — multiple times, with each admissions agent doing a separate order of criteria, to ensure everyone’s application gets read at least twice. The idea being that those with the most “let’s give them another look” across the board are the most notable. Then from that shortlist the debates comparing each applicant, usually sorted by geographic proximity to each other, begin (at Harvard, if you’re from Texas you’re not really competing against New Yorkers for a spot, you’re competing against other Texans for the XX number of Texan spots they usually admit a year).

I did a short stint as a student worker in the admissions office of a very selective college in California (<5% admission rate, but not one many could name off the top of their head), and this is more or less how it worked

> That an overworked public school teacher is going to write a better letter of recommendation than a private school teacher?

LOL. My understanding is the really good prep school college counsellors golf with one or more high-up folks in elite university admissions offices, and get the inside scoop on exactly what they and their peers in other universities are looking for in any given year, such that they can even tune an essay or letter of reference for a given school based on that non-public information and advise students which schools to focus their application efforts on, based on their background & activities.

> letter of recommendation

We've gone full circle.

Transcripts aren't useful across different high schools. Rich kids have more connections for rec letters. Rich kids get professional essay help, and lying kids make up a good story. Kids and parents with lots of time/money/connections on their hands get a portfolio of community service etc built up. I knew these kids in high school with resumes like veteran philanthropists, and it worked.

I think the only good one out of those is the interview.

Is there literally any test in which:

"Students of Color" receive scores in the same distribution as white/asian/hispanic students (same fraction of 1s, 2s ... 35s, 36s on the ACTs for example)

AND

Top scores are meaningfully distinct from the population average? (because the first condition can be trivially fulfilled by having everyone score the same)

"Since their inception a century ago, standardized tests have been instruments of racism and a biased system."

Standardized tests were invented in Sui dynasty China, in the early 600s AD, as a way of selecting officials for the imperial bureaucracy. They were invented precisely because they were more objective than the prevailing method of selecting officials - recommendations from the aristocracy.

There is a long history of standardized testing being a means for rewarding merit, instead of more easily corruptible methods of selecting officials/students/etc., such as recommendations. Just to illustrate my point: Do you know why Harvard abandoned standardized testing in 1926 as the sole means of determining admissions? Because "too many" Jews were passing the admissions test. Harvard's "holistic" admissions policy was invented for the sole purpose of restricting Jewish admissions.

To the contrary, the NEA wildly overestimates it and employs junk question-begging "disparate impact" [0] reasoning throughout. The article is full of stuff like this: "There is a clear correlation, for example, between test scores and property values."

To the extent that society is meritocratic at all and intelligence is heritable (and it is), we should expect test scores to correlate with all manner of measures of success, including property values. Articles like this don't even take that question seriously. They just ignore it. It's proof by repeated assertion. It may be fashionable to insist that this is prima facie evidence of bias, but that is a question of logic and not a difficult one, whatever exceedingly average minds like Ibram X. Kendi think of it.

[0] As a legal concept "disparate impact" is what it is. The law means whatever its authors intend it to mean. But as a matter of logic, it's embarrassing, and beneath this forum.

They're not biased at all. People don't like them because they're accurate.

The entire concept of an “admissions” department was based on the historical fact that too many Jews were being admitted and too few WASPs were. So they included a “character” criteria and fixed the problem.

Now, too many Asians are being admitted based on test scores. Oh no! To fix this problem, Harvard consulted their history department and included a “personality traits” section. Is it any wonder that Asian students scored low on this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...

Oh my. This obsession over race is so bewildering to foreigners like me.

That’s an awfully big article with no actual examples of how the tests are currently, in any way, biased.

This is so naive. Poor kids do worse in school because their lives lack the material and parental support necessary for quality education.

S1 definitely.

depends on their race

> Now which one would you admit?

Why not both? I think a lot of the debate over college admissions misses the fact that so much of this is artificial scarcity. Some of the big schools like Harvard/Yale/Princeton etc. could easily increase the size of their incoming classes many times, and still have them only be filled with highly qualified candidates.

Top schools exist not just to educate, but to ensure that the social hierarchy is maintained. If it were purely to educate or to ensure diverse learning environments, the top Ivies could solve this easily by quadrupling the size of their classes, but then this would of course dilute the exclusivity that is the primary reason for these institutions in the first place.

Magic that happens in top universities in US is combining money (kids of billionaires) with smarts (kids with 1600 SAT) in one place. Both bring different skills to the table and result is disproportionate share of top scientist, business and political leaders produced by those universities (from both classes of people). Removing either group from university will just lead to university stopping being elite. Considering that number of billionaires is measured in hundreds (so only a dozen or so kids of billionaires enter universities every year), university may just admit that one kid.

On Student 2 who build something in Sudan from stick and rocks. Unless he is from elite family he most likely did not get proper school education and won't be able to keep up with rigors of studying in top university even if he is very smart. Harvard is not really in a business of providing remedial education. With that if he is really smart and resourceful, he had a very good chance of doing very well for himself in Sudan (becoming entrepreneour, building soemthing local, become warlord, etc) and then his kids will be fully equipped to go to top university.

Yeah I see this take all the time. Admissions offices are allowed to take a student's means into account! So in deciding between two students with equal SAT scores, one from a Greenwich private school and one from South Tucson, the one from Tucson is the more impressive student.

Affirmative action was misguided because it assumed that because one student was Korean and the other Mexican, the Mexican kid must be disadvantaged. Besides the fact that there's an inherently racist worldview baked into that, Newsflash! There are tons of poor Korean kids and rich Mexicans!

Spot on. I don't see why this is so hard for people to comprehend and why they are fighting the obvious. That very basic level of nuance tends to be missing from these conversations.

> I don't see why this is so hard for people to comprehend and why they are fighting the obvious.

It's because these people only see the world through the one-dimensional lens of skin color.

Further, it's an attractive way to view the world when you're a complete idiot with nothing of substance to offer society. It leads these people to infecting society with parasitic and fallacious ideas that you see manifested in the extremes of both political parties.

Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot?

There should be some SAT score floor. But beyond that other factors should take over. If the floor is at n and two applicants appear - one with a score of 1.1n and the other 1.2n, I don’t think that’s enough information to decide who should get the spot.

> Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot?

Name a better way.

SAT score floor + lottery?

What makes you think that is better?

Vox had an article about college lotteries earlier this year you might find interesting:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/4/19/23689402/colleg...

Lottery is a metric that can't be gamed, if implemented correctly. It may not ever be the best system, but it also can't end up being what was a better system that was gamed into a worst system. It provides a certain level of consistent mediocracy between various other systems which rise and fall as they are gamed.

what are the other factors?

There is an incredible about of SAT prep that is free.

It's a good way of figuring out who is intellectually capable. SAT scores have a very good prediction rate of success in college.

High SAT scores are only a good predictor against low SAT scores. Can you say that extremely high SAT scores are a better indicator of college success than very high SAT scores?

I’m not saying SAT scores are useless, just that they should only be used as a filter and not for ranking.

We'll never have a perfect way to measure merit, but that doesn't justify the status quo. It would likely reject both students for a third student that checks the right intersectional boxes, even if coming from a more privileged upbringing than the other two students.

We should be constantly improving our ways of measuring merit, not throwing up our hands and pretending it's meaningless to try.

I'm confused here. Both facts are salient (what was built and under which circumstances was it built) to any discussion of merit. The main complaint I see here is that admissions committees should use as much information as possible, which I doubt anyone disagrees with. What is racist is someone saying 'Oh, student 2 is black, thus without any further information, I'm going to assume he's poor and from Sudan'.

Case in point, we had a very wealthy black student in my college. This woman was not disadvantaged in any way, yet she played the race card all the time in order to claim a disadvantaged background. I'm talking about a family that would take their kids to France and England to summer. That level of wealth, yet framing all her accomplishments as if she came from the inner city. That's disingenuous, yet the (now-gone) affirmative action camp would have gladly taken her checking the 'African-American/Black' checkbox as a sign that all her accomplishments should be judged on a poor disadvantaged upbringing. How is that not racist?

I believe that GP would admit the child of billionaires. People who promote the meritocracy myth have an agenda and are sticking to it. Do you really think you can change GP’s mind with logic?

Is this a need-blind or need-aware institution?

If need-aware, does the admitting class have enough full pay to cover the costs of those needing scholarships (wouldn't want to actually tap into that tax-free endowment)? If they need more full pay, then S1, if there are already enough full pay, then S2.

standardized tests are not biased.

Well, I'm getting down-voted even though I'm correct. This is one of the problems in our society generally -- people have decided that what they think is just must be correct because they assume that life is fair.

I hate these types of arguments that create an extremely contrived example. If we’re making a choice between these two students, then you can’t really go wrong. But that’s not the choice being made.

What kind of child, even that of billionaires, wants to build an automated chip manufacturing line? Maybe in Minecraft. Or in Roblox.

We're not, we're heading towards tribalism. The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white more so than anything else. With limited data on other schools, Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.[1] That didn't stop people who wanted an alleged merit based admissions policy from continuing to call it a racist backdoor. Carnegie Mellon did not publish any stats on their legacy admits however.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, universities have promised to continue to look at race as a factor that still complies with the SC ruling which means a backdoor for race. FWIW white students are the most underrepresented on elite campuses so it would be hard to argue that there are admissions policies favoring them.

[1]: https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/academi...

[2]: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/30/stanford-to-expand-outr...

actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits

Is the SAT score the only measure of merit?

The non-legacies are going to miss on the chance to make social connections with legacy admits who have a lot of connections...and access to a lot of resources..

Yeah how often does that actually happen. Did Tommy Lee Jones’ acting career really benefit from him being roommates with the son of Albert Gore, Sr.?

The legacy admits will just go to some other college where some other suckerfish can hop on to get access to a lot of resources..so what's the big difference socially.

> The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white

Disproportionally rich is my problem with legacy admissions.

Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits…

So you agree that Harvard shouldn’t need to factor in legacy status and instead use fairer metrics like SAT scores?

Not necessarily. I am neutral on it. I see both sides of the argument.

I do think legacy admissions should not be a strike against which seems inevitable now to prevent lawsuits and bad press. I also think legacy admits shouldn't be tarred as less qualified (a polite way to say dumber), affirmative action beneficiaries for white people, and spoiled.

Now I feel like you’re making up strawmen. Literally no one is saying anything about legacy status counting against applicants.

Even if that was a concern, applicants could simply… not mention their legacy status? Or better yet, the application itself could just not collect that data?

I'd hope it's not a strawman.

I do think legacy admission status counts against now. The SFFA lawsuit accused Harvard of using legacy admissions of being a backdoor affirmative action for white people because the legacy admits were so disproportionately white. I think my point is that in a highly racial context, the facts are thrown out.

To your point, in California, there was a law that was passed in 2019 that requires reporting on legacy admissions now[1] so I think the school is obligated to collect this data (so idk what happens if an applicant omits it). And again, legacy admission status is accused of broadly being affirmative action for white people[2] without evidence.

The reason it counts against now is that if a qualified legacy student is accepted, the data on students must be made public, by law or by public interest. The higher the percent of legacy admits, the more the school is accused of letting unqualified people in, facts be damned. I think that is because of a highly tribal view of school admissions.

[1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/california-lega...

[2]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/affirmative-action-white...

You claim “the facts are thrown out” but then don’t cite a single hard fact which remotely suggest anyone wants legacy status to count against. Instead you are extrapolating that removal of legacy from positive consideration will eventually lead to re-adding legacy for negative consideration, but no one is actually suggesting this. You are completely making it up.

The California law you cite only applies to universities that collect and consider legacy data in the first place. Thus, your claim that “if a qualified legacy student is accepted, the data on students must be made public...” does not hold if the universities simply drop legacy status from consideration altogether, which is the goal here. If they don’t collect the data, they can’t be accused of anything.

Honestly, this manipulation of facts and narrative leads me to believe that you are pushing an agenda and not arguing in good faith.

but then don’t cite a single hard fact which remotely suggest anyone wants legacy status to count against.

Accusing it of being affirmative action for white people or for "the rich" pretty clearly means people want it to count against. I think you are deliberately ignoring that the SFFA lawsuit said this, politicians said this, and even people ITT said this and clearly these things reflect poorly on the university. There isn't any evidence that legacy admissions is affirmative action for white people or rich people though.

simply drop legacy status from consideration altogether

There isn't any evidence that legacy status counts for. You have never established that it does. Not one of the California schools in that article I cited says that legacy admits have an advantage. Here is Stanford's policy https://provost.stanford.edu/2020/06/26/admissions-considera.... CMU from the OP article said legacy status had no bearing on admissions for years. Harvard likewise. Their reasons for tracking legacy status are probably complicated. I concede at one point they were used to allow in less qualified students but that hasn't been the case for years. But tracking legacy status does not mean it is used to give favorable admissions. I do not believe it does and the legacy admits are probably qualified. That is clearly the case for Harvard. If you did not believe this, you are saying universities are lying about their policies.

So since the accusation that legacy admissions is affirmative action for white people is disingenuous, I believe the people who continue to say that it is are actually the ones not arguing in good faith.

edit: dropping legacy status from applications may not even change the percentage of 'legacy' admits and yet I am sure that universities know who they are. Including it on applications may harm the legacy applications because the universities are now under politically charged pressure which is what I am arguing would be wrong.

Harvard likewise

To be clear, you are claiming that Harvard explicitly does not consider legacy status when deciding on admissions?

So, when a student is considered being cut in the final stage of the admissions process, i.e. on the “lop list”, and decision makers are provided with only four pieces of information: legacy status, athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race; you are claiming that legacy status is included for… what, to satisfy the curiosity of admissions committee members? Give me a break. Also, you’re moving the goalposts from “legacy-based admissions are okay” to “actually, legacy-based admissions don’t exist.”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

For the record, I don’t believe that legacy admissions are intended to be “affirmative action for white people”, but I do think the outcome is similar.

To be clear, you are claiming that Harvard explicitly does not consider legacy status when deciding on admissions?

ya. Well... I think it's unlikely. There might be cases, I went through some math on this once and concluded that maybe 2% of the incoming class at Harvard could be unqualified legacy admits based on the total pool and the SAT std dev, etc. but even that I doubt. I think legacies probably are qualified based on what I have seen but the main reason I think this is more because admissions are hyper scrutinized now (for the past 10-20 years and they've been publishing student body stats) so if there is a way for Harvard to let in unqualified people it will be noticed and the public would not accept legacy admissions(SFFA lawsuit began almost a decade now). The athletic one is a different beast.

you are claiming that legacy status is included for… what

Possibly a tactic to raise more money because alumni are somewhat tricked into thinking making donations increases the odds their children are accepted. I don't know for sure and they probably should not include it on the application.

Also, you’re moving the goalposts from “legacy-based admissions are okay” to “actually, legacy-based admissions don’t exist.”

haha. Well if a school came out and said we allow some legacy admissions because it raises more money from donors and we need the money (and that wasn't a lie) I think that raises an interesting question about admissions I don't have an answer to. Most schools probably don't need the money now, I don't know where the money goes though. But I don't know what to think about admissions; not convinced there is a perfect formula. I'm not in favor of one group monopolizing schools though.

> Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.

This likely indicates wealthy people can afford SAT preparation tutors.

It could also mean: smarter people make more money -- and they pass down intelligence -- both genetically and through teaching.

>reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits

About 30 points higher than non-legacy students whose average is brought down by affirmative action. VS Asian Americans who need to score 50-100+ points higher for comparable consideration, they're underperforming based on SAT merit.

I'm not sure I buy this because the only metric I have seen on racial categories at Harvard is using the old score where the average Asian SAT score was 767 out of 800[1]. Apparently roughly doubling this is equal to the score format reported in the link above for legacies so rounding up and using this chart I found which may or may not be reliable https://www.sparkadmissions.com/blog/comparing-your-new-sat-... that gives us a 1500. The legacy score was 1523. Also, affirmative action may lower the legacy score.

[1]: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/22/asian-american...

The 50-100 (really 140-450 points) is from Princeton study on Asian SAT stats for admission in private colleges vs other races. Apologies for wall of text.

Alternate explanation is that particularly sneaky elite admissions boards have learned to coordinate to devalue SAT scores for Asians, they'd rather engineer their mean Asian SAT score around something not embarrassingly high as cover for other cohorts, especially legacy which AFAIK doesn't need AA skew, since they're... legacy. AA primarily brings down average scores of non-legacy, and in this case make legacy look better, like average at Harvard for non asian & non white is 1450 according to your link, which is low considering 1500+ scores is 9th percentile for 223k Asian takers [0&1]. This is slightly conspiratorial, but also essentially what started the anti-AA case was when an Asian applicant with 1590 got rejected from multiple elite colleges, and the case essentially revealed high scores make Asians seem like bland test takers with bad personality even though personality assessment showed otherwise. Asian scores are high enough to break Harvard's argument not just for AA but IMO legacy as well.

Some other considerations, with respect to Harvard, according to latest admission data, @28% asian enrollment out of 2000 for class of 26, that's about 550 asians (previously this was ~20%). The real question the Harvard admissions stats don't show is how many Asians with 1550+ scores are being rejected due to "personality". If you look SAT score distribution [0], Asians are the only group where perfect math score is NOT 99+ percentile rank but "only" 95, and on ERW Asians 750+ score is 95 percentile vs other groups where it's 99+ except whites / multi racial at 98. Meaning Asians have disproportionate candidates with most perfect math and close to perfect ERW scores of all groups. Asians also total score outlier in that 1500+ is "only'' 91 percentile vs 98 to 99+ for everyone else. Collegeboard also has info that about 223k Asians (out of 2.2M takers) took SATs (2020 data [1]), so there's ~20k Asians with 1500+ scores (9th percentile). If extrapolated from 98th percentile of over 1500+ scores from 2.2M takers, that's ~44k total pool over 1500+ candidates of which 45% are Asians. 45% Asian is also in line with UCs where prop 209 banned AA and led to 40+% asian campuses.

Question is how many of 1550+ ones are Asians, keeping in mind ~7000 Asians have perfect math scores. My gut feeling is there are many 1550+ Asians being rejected by elites for skewing scores too high to keep legacy admissions charade going, especially at Harvard, because any Asian who scores that high, which rough napkin math is multiple size of their annual enrollment, would have an application to Harvard and eager to accept. Hence the narrative harvard stats paints via omission even by their student journalists, is that legacy does better non-legacy whose down by affirmative action, and legacy slightly worse than Asian Americans, when reality is Asian Americans have more than enough candidates to saturate scores above legacy and affirmative actions so their aggregate score has to be kept down through admission shenanigans.

[0] https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/sat-percentile-r... [1] https://i.redd.it/l6hb0eq4k5271.jpg

I am not sure why that argument would not also apply to white people then where there are ~909,000 who took the test. That leaves a large number of white students who got perfect scores or were 1550+. For example 1% of the total is about ~9000 people. So a strong case could be made that Harvard actually discriminates even more against white students who are not on parity and actually the only group underrepresented by total population size at Ivy League and other elite schools. The Asians who made this argument never mentioned this but actually made the opposite claim that whites were favored over Asians.

Of course, I don't think SAT score alone should determine entrance and no school has said that was all that mattered for admissions and I think that could be valid because the test score is really just one metric and doesn't give a complete picture. For example is the person a good test taker but a lazy student? That would reflect poorly on the student.

Also for the record and to be clear the legacy score of 1523 is still a high score and less than 1 std dev away from a perfect 1600 so it's not like we're talking about legacies who are totally out of range of admissions.

It does also apply to whites, hence anti AA actions was coordinated between white conservatives and some Asian Americans. One common talking point was AA + legacy was a double whammy on poor whites. Also it's not 1% it's 99+ percentile, i.e. any value less than 1%, which can be substantially less than 9000. States that have ban AA have demonstrated increased white and asian enrollemnt, so AA is indeed discriminatory towards whites. But if we use stats for institutions that banned AA in California, Asian enrollment uplift was highest, suggesting Asians are more represented on that end of SAT bell curve.

I agree at some point a 1500 and 1600 score are probably high enough even for elite universities. My broader point is that in composite admissions system like harvard, the score it self can be gamed to generate outcomes like racial composition. And institutes will figure out other ways to circumvent. But if they ever get slapped to move onto a score only admissions, that 1STD will make all the difference.

Except for, you know, Letters of Recommendation, which at top schools are often the deciding factor. All else being near-equal (or not), a letter from a Kennedy is going to get you into Brown versus say, a regular high school teacher that many of comfortable-but-not-connected suburban students applying to college will be using. Maybe a local lawyer, if you’re special.

Those are who families who scream “meritocracy” should be directing their ire at, not the applicants (usually with more impressive results and stories considering the background they grew up in, compared to—sorry!—a hum-drum suburban also-ran) _think_ they’re better than, which ultimately is what a meritocracy boils down to.

Ultimately the only answer that will give you, or your kids, peace is accepting the fact that schools will curate the student body they want. They’ve admittedly done a good job at it! Complain all you want about Harvard tilting the scales, they’ve done an amazing job maintaining their reputation and exclusivity. If they don’t accept you, they don’t want you. If they do, they do. It’s that simple.

I want to get rid of letters of recommendation as well. I would personally like to go off of only a single nationwide standardized test.

Nope, these are "racist" now. I'm not going to explain why at the risk of getting downvoted.

I personally could not think of a more boring way to curate a student body, but even more so than that, I think that’s completely unfair to the many, many way-more interesting people who make up top schools’ student bodies: why does Jimmy Also-Ran with the perfect score on a single test and nothing else get to go to college while track-star Olympiad with a 4.0 doesn’t?

Aren’t plenty of PISA high-ranking nations from the East Asian countries to Germany highly reliant upon placement examinations in student educational destinations? It might not feel very American, but it’s widely practiced.

In Germany, it's all about Abitur results: comprehensive exams and portfolio of work in a few subjects you've chosen to focus on, and really only for a few high-demand majors like medicine or law (everywhere) and computer science (at the top tech schools); for every other major, it's a matter of getting decent marks that prove you're likely prepared for university. Not picking mathematics as one of your major Abitur subjects would probably be disqualifying for computer science.

There's nothing like the SAT (single, high-stakes general aptitude test used nationwide); Abitur standards are set and evaluated by each state.

While there's a reputational difference between, say, Technisches Universität München and Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden, fees are the same at both, and cost of living of course is higher for TUM just because Munich is really expensive.

At least in tech in Germany, there is nothing resembling the prestige merely attending MIT/Stanford/CMU carries in the US. Of course there's a network effect from studying at TUM or RWTH instead of OTH-AW, but not nearly as pronounced. There are no private, elite universities, no university-sponsored sports teams, no legacy admissions, no giant individual donors hoping to secure a university spot for a lazy/dull kid. Lazy/dull rich kids go to private high schools if they can't hack it in public university-prep school.

Thanks for the very comprehensive information. Curious what you think of this opinion about the lack of elite schools in Germany not being a good thing-

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36789051

Because universities are academic institutions, not track-and-field training facilities (or at least they are in countries that take education seriously, unlike the US). Who cares how boring it is?

With that, the US is widely recognized to have the best universities in the world. A lot of countries claim to take education seriously, but the result is often very mediocre.

Very few people will pick IIT or Beijing University if they are offered spot at Harvard.

People go to Harvard not for the excellence of the education, which I'm sure is good but is pretty much equivalent to top state public schools, but for the network and the signaling.

Network - one of the best things you can do is put a bunch of intelligent, highly motivated people in one room and have them work on stuff together. Top tier universities are basically this. The actual education offered on top isn't that relevant as long as it's passable - these people will find a way to educate themselves

Signaling - having Hardvard on your resume is a global signal of your status and opens up so many more doors by simply having it listed by your name

There are plenty of academic opportunities at Harvard that are not available at state schools. Because they attract many of the top students in the world, they're able to offer highly accelerated or advanced courses that other schools can't.

> the US is widely recognized to have the best universities in the world

Recognized by whom? I would certainly be more impressed if someone went to ENS Paris than Harvard.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say an Olympiad 4.0 student — many of whom exist, I went to school with a few — has a much more promising academic career than someone who managed to get good-not-great grades and a single perfect test score.

Aside from the dedication of waking up to practice a sport every morning, think of how much time and discipline is it takes to balance being an amazing athlete with being a great student. They likely have all the mental fortitude and academic talent they need to succeed in college, no question, regardless of if they had a bad test day, or their pencil broke, or they had to use the bathroom and ran out of time, etc.

Someone with As and Bs, maybe a C, who did nothing else of note and managed to get a perfect test score one time doesn’t seem near as surefire a bet. If anything it shows you didn’t apply yourself.

What's the difference between training for track meets and training for a standardized test? In either case the student is applying themselves to excellence in a very niche skill - running really fast, or taking a test.

The difference is that one has to do with academic study, and one doesn't.

Edit: you’re acting like performance on the test is completely arbitrary. Clearly, it should be designed to avoid this, and to actually test academic mastery. For example, someone planning to study physics should be asked to solve difficult physics and math problems. Someone planning to study history or literature should be asked to write long-form essays on those topics. And so on.

I feel like a lot of people in this thread are only familiar with the American system and thus assume that “standardized tests” all have to be like the SAT, i.e. answering a ton of relatively basic multiple-choice questions as quickly and accurately as possible. That is not the case.

In this scenario where you have a track star with a 4.0 and a “boring” student who happened to luck out and get a perfect SAT score, did these students take the same classes? Because maybe the reason the track star didn’t do as well is because they don’t know as much as the athlete.

The track star olympiad sounds like they have a bright career in track. I don't see what that has to do with academics.

A track star olympiad sounds like someone that has a sense of dedication and a work ethic that will serve them well in academics. A person who has scored well on a single test they had a long time to prep for but displays no other outstanding qualities seems like someone that might be overwhelmed and not able to keep up with the academic requirements of university.

definitely doesn't play out that way at top schools lol

I know many people that have gone to top schools on athletic scholarships and achieved academicly and beyond school. I don't know many with high standardized testing scores and not thing else going for them at top schools, so it is hard to say how that plays out. I know many that have ended up at not top schools because they have high testing scores which would have helped them get into top schools if they had anything else going for them. Many of those have failed at not top schools. So what do you mean when you say things don't play out that way at top schools?

The problem with a single nationwide standardized test is that kids will spend an inordinate amount of time (and money) studying for it. Major downside is that time is mostly wasted learning tricks to answer questions instead of learning something valuable. People spend years studying for IIT exam in India and there is zero chance of scoring well on the test without prep.

And because they spent so much time studying for those tests, they did not study real interesting skills that could be useful for their career later as well...

The fact of the matter is that unless you pick names out of a hat wealthy people will always have an advantage. But standardized testing can reduce the correlation with wealth in ways that other factors can’t.

Yes, standardized testing isn’t perfect. It is biased towards those with time and money to prepare. But it’s also biased towards people who are good at problem solving, critical thinking, and a work ethic to actually do the preparation.

> I want to get rid of letters of recommendation as well. I would personally like to go off of only a single nationwide standardized test.

That is not good. China has that, and I would not consider the culture it fosters healthy at all. What you then get is kids who literally have no life beyond studying for the test and the results of one point on the exam having a massive effect on ranking and therefore outcome.

Not to detract from your larger point, but these days, it might depend on the Kennedy.

They're all bad! https://www.joshbarro.com/p/the-kennedys-were-always-bad

Even this random one seems weird and out of touch:

https://www.insider.com/jfk-grandson-jack-schlossberg-viral-...

The answer has always been to close the delta between the value of a Harvard degree and wherever else your kid can actually get into. The unspoken (or uncomfortable) aspect of that is that Harvard et al. receive outsize prestige because they're associated with outsize wealth, and access to that wealth through the personal and professional connections one can garner there.

Wealth concentration in society is the fundamental issue. When median wealth is higher and the range smaller, influential families will have less with which to "bid up" a spot at Harvard. They might choose another institution, that "wherever else" we mentioned earlier. So now your kids are friends. Or maybe not (it's not such a big deal, since they're not THAT much wealthier than you are). This becomes the dominant paradigm.

Decentralize education, as it were.

Exactly so. I know a guy who got into the top MBA program in the nation (U of C). He had no undergrad degree, but was born to a wealthy family. His wife was born to an even wealthier family, and he quickly after flunking out of undergrad within a few years found a career as an executive.

Connect the dots on how all that works.

(Curiously he insists he's a "pulled himself up by his bootstraps" type character)

I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least.

Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense if you really interrogate the idea. Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.

Resources are finite. If college courses were recorded lessons or they just gave you a theory book and an exercises book, then of course we could automate everything. Just sign up, pay your fee and take the exams and once you're done you get the degree, even full remote. Your taxes will go towards professors and a fuck ton of TAs for questions and exercises and to keep the infrastructure running.

But we're not there yet

Perhaps it’s politically incorrect to say, but students learn best when they’re around students that are of similar intelligence and motivation to succeed.

Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.

Students learn best when they have a quiet home to study in, 3 quality meals a day, parents who aren't working 3 jobs they can ask questions to, parents who aren't fighting about paying the bills that month, good school supplies, etc.

Agreed. So let's go solve those problems directly and stop pretending the solution is to put underachieving kids into top schools to make ourselves feel better.

I will only feel better when the working class controls the society it built.

Once they do that, they become the ruling class and the elites. Then their children are no longer working class, and are now the enemies.

In such a case, I won't feel better yet will I? So we'll try again...

Just like we've tried in the past again and again and again... and a few thousand years later here we are and we will keep trying :)

Exactly. A lot of progress was made in that time, so I have little patience for defeatism.

You're missing the point: If the working class becomes the ruling one finally the majority rules, not a rich elite.

Conversely, putting someone who isn't well suited to that environment is setting them up for failure.

> Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.

In a meritocracy, those that do not achieve do not advance, so this is not a problem after a time. I was in the US Navy's Nuclear Propulsion program. It was the closest thing to a pure meritocracy. You didn't pass a test, do the work, or behave in line with expectations you were sent to the fleet. After a few months, only the capable and motivated were left. It was completely colorblind, completely free of social agenda. You could either do the job well enough or not.

I watched a lot of wash outs where there someone would find a way to tip the scales in college to keep them passing along. I watched the following wash out: the son of a Navy Captain, a congressman's kid, a couple of sons of really rich parents.

> Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.

This is really a truth. There really is no meritocracy if you gate who is allowed to have merit before you measure it. Regulating opportunity to control outcomes is the exact opposite of what should be done to have a true meritocracy.

> universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least.

Or it can be seen as give education to the students that will make the best use of it maximizing value to society.

At the same time, we're getting rid of testing in admissions decisions.

So instead we're in an era of squishy, difficult-to-judge metrics... and of course, the places where one could stand out-- interesting stories on one's transcript or essay-- are increasingly being evaluated by AI.

The cynical(?) explanation is that it is precisely because of the dismantling of standardized testing that getting rid of legacy admissions tenable...because it means schools can still proxy for class in admissions decisions (except veiled as extracurriculars, or "oh, this student knows calculus" in boston/sf).

If Harvard or USC were on the list I'd wager this to be the case, but MIT, Mellon & Pitt are serious schools so I believe them when I say it's in favor of increased rigor.

Some schools probably have a higher academic floor. The other thing that happens is that a fair number of good but not spectacular students who nonetheless want to get into the best school they can will put somewhere like Harvard on their list even though they know it's a long shot. If they have so-so SATs (especially in math) they won't even try for MIT--and probably wouldn't like it anyway.

I'm not sure it's deliberate, but I broadly agree with you that getting rid of tests favors class (despite the reasons purportedly being for equity). While you can buy small improvements in test scores, most things that have replaced tests in admissions decisions are easier to buy.

> MIT, Mellon & Pitt

MIT still requires SAT scores, so it's a non-factor there.

It's because schools want to retain a measure of control over who they let in. A true merit based admissions system (say min SAT score + lottery after that) is uncheatable and therefore schools have _zero_ control on who they have to accept.

The only reason why Harvard has kept its mythos of being the incubator of the next ruling class is because, well, they accept the children of the current one. Those are most likely to become part of the next ruling class by virtue of having been born into it. It's an old boys club. There's no intrinsic property of Harvard that turns them into this incubator.

And from the other side you have the brain dead equity idiots who are also against true merit systems, for equally twisted, but different reasons.

Schools have the ultimate control.

We're merely discussing whether certain things are used as inputs to a very complicated decision process.

Test scores are no longer being used as inputs in many places, in the name of equity: but I think almost anything you'll weigh higher will favor class, instead.

They're also removing race. And legacy status. The net effect is an admissions landscape that will look very different.

I agree with you that the end of legacy and race-based admissions is a good thing. I think it's dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes when there is huge inequality. This best analogy I can give is the "sports stars" analogy. Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on the playing field is ignored. But what it results in is a teeny tiny elite making millions, and nearly everyone else barely making enough to get by. So if the rest of the economy was like the sports stars world (and more and more of it is leaning that way), what reason do the rest of the 99.99% have to support this meritocracy? Sure, you can say it's an improvement that the best people are in charge, but if it's clear my genetic talents will prevent me from ever being a star, my incentive is really to tear the whole system down if none of those benefits ever make it my way.

I think one contributing factor you see behind so much increasing social strife, the resurgent interest in unions, etc. is the belief that unless you make it to a top job after a top school, you'll barely be scraping by your whole life.

Pure meritocracy in a "winner take all/most" economy leads to a very unstable society.

> dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes

People who argue against meritocracy seem to forget that it's the only proposed alternative to the "birthright"-ocracy that civilization has been trying to pry itself from the jaws of for centuries.

Not really. Countries that are consistently at the top of world happiness rankings are ones that (a) both support a dynamic economy through meritocracy and (b) have high taxes and a broad social safety net that limits inequality.

To put it another way, I'm not arguing against meritocracy; I'm arguing that it alone does not lead to good outcomes - i.e. I think it's necessary but not sufficient. It's like when people thought "bringing democracy" to all these countries without democratic institutions would be a good thing. Democracy is generally better than the alternative, but only if there are broad protections like equality under the law for minority groups, otherwise it's just the "2 wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner" issue. Meritocracy is similar. It's generally a good thing but not if it results in a very small number of people hoarding all the spoils while everyone else barely scrapes by.

Why are the reward ratios in professional sports relevant to other occupations in society?

> But what it results in is a teeny tiny elite making millions, and nearly everyone else barely making enough to get by.

That is because a very small number of people can satiate the demand for almost all of the world’s people for entertainment from watching sports. Simple supply and demand.

It has nothing to do with meritocracy or how meritocracy distributed rewards. Making sure doctors/lawyers/engineers are appropriately qualified is not going to result in only a few getting the rewards, because their work does not scale as much (for the most part).

> Why are the reward ratios in professional sports relevant to other occupations in society?

My whole point is that the hollowing out of the middle class and the huge growth in objective measures of inequality in the US are precisely because many other occupations are looking more and more like "sports star" economies.

E.g. just look at how the former "main streets" of many smaller towns in the US have been decimated. There used to be "local leaders" in retail in cities all over the US, now it's extremely difficult to compete if you don't have the scale of Amazon. Just look at all the recent stories about fears of AI taking jobs. E.g. it used to be that lots of people could get copywriting jobs. Now it looks like in a pretty short time frame that only the very, very best copywriters will be employable as so much other work is delegated to AI. Look at how most smaller news outlets have completely disappeared across the country. These smaller news outlets used to be fairly important factors in their community, but now they simply can't compete with the Internet giants for ad dollars.

I can go on and on, but the "winner take all" dynamic of sports economics has been spreading to pretty much any occupation that faces competition over the Internet.

That is true, but I do not see the connection with meritocracy. I see “winner take all” dynamics to be a property of economies of scale, which technological advances and computing have greatly enhanced.

One might say meritocracy might lead to technological advances leading to economies of scale, but the solution to an increasing income/wealth gap would not be getting rid of meritocracy, but rather redistributing some of the wealth so as to provide a floor for quality of life and quality of opportunities (I would hope).

> One might say meritocracy might lead to technological advances leading to economies of scale, but the solution to an increasing income/wealth gap would not be getting rid of meritocracy, but rather redistributing some of the wealth so as to provide a floor for quality of life and quality of opportunities (I would hope).

Yep, that's pretty much what I was trying to say, so my apologies if I wasn't clear. I think the "quality of opportunities" is also a very important point - I made the argument elsewhere that there is no reason for many of the top schools to have such small class sizes in the first place. There is no reason with their huge endowments that they couldn't increase their class sizes and still only admit highly qualified applicants. That's still a meritocracy, but just ensures the "winners" are not arbitrarily selected by making the cutoff so high that you're making random decisions about who to admit (e.g. all ten of these folks had perfect SAT scores but we'll let this guy in because he had a "better personality").

> Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on the playing field is ignored.

Match fixing has been a perennial problem in sports.

> So if the rest of the economy was like the sports stars world (and more and more of it is leaning that way), what reason do the rest of the 99.99% have to support this meritocracy?

Pretty sure a big fraction of that 99.99% love the top sports stars.

For example, major league baseball games have higher attendance than Single-A games.

You're assuming that everyone is on an equal starting point. Wealthy people will be able to favor their kids.

That is exactly my motivation to become wealthy. I don't need a nice number with lots of zeros. I need to secure my children's future, including their prospects for higher education.

I see no problem with those who have amassed significant resources, being afforded use of those resources to their childrens' advantage.

I'm not disagreeing with you and I'm actively doing the same; however, I wouldn't say that our children gaining advantages would be considered "Merit-Based"

I doubt merit based approach is the only way of conducting admissions. Merits don’t count for as much as people think they do. A narrow pool of candidates come because of merit.

A more reasonable selection system wouldn’t just rely on the individual but also the support network. For example, I often hear “it takes a village to raise a _____ doctor”. And that truth speaks volumes.

There are plenty of choices for higher edu. What's the benefit of forcing a one-size-fits-all business model on all of them? Why should small out of the way esoteric college - or any other for that matter - have to follow Carnegie Mellon or similar?

This isn't being inclusive or diverse, it's assimilation at the institution/industry level. Yeah, ironic.

The problem with merit is that it's impossible to determine because the circumstances of people around the world are so vastly different. If you have, say, 1500 spots for a new class, it's going to be impossible to select the best 1500 students. Some elite universities you may even have more than 1500 valedictorians. So what to do? I say you just set a qualifying point to be considered and publicize it (as standardized as you can get, i.e SAT score or similar) and then put every qualifier in a hat and select at random until you fill your spots. Nothing else should matter.

Of course this assumes that merit is actually the only thing universities care about, and I'd say that it's not.

pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach

For the right definitions of "merit", yes. I'm not confident we've figured that part out yet.

We can't even define the purpose of college. E.g., is it only graduating and Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, ..., Mark Zuckerberg are all failures?

Meritocracy works best if you have something to measure against.

Now we just need widely agreed, easily measurable, non game-able definition of "merit". :)

Merit isn't enough.

I went to a po-dunk school in rural Missouri. I would never be able to I compete with kids from a rich Chicago/NY school. In the same way a black kid from a poor inner city wouldn't be able to.

This is part of the problem. The world isn't egalitarian. The poor will continue to get poorer, the rich will get richer.

Solution? Lottery? Don't have a great one.

I agree with you. Saying something is merit based is only half of an answer. What exactly is and isn’t meritorious?

I’m not convinced that scoring well on tests beyond some point is a particularly good way of deciding if a student deserves a spot or not.

> merit-based approach.

There are still issues with this. Food insecurity being a primary one. But apparently universal school lunches is not as important to people as having a HUGE military budget. What kind of beast doesn't want to feed kids!?

Edit: Apparently plenty even on HN. Wow. Color me shocked.

Only one of these is a good thing.

I don’t think discrimination against asians was a good thing!

There was an interesting piece in a NPR podcast on the effects on the more "elite" students:

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1182630192/the-indicator-from...

Basically, when the top students couldn't enter the more selective schools, they'd go to private or a bit less competitive schools and compensate the difference in education/networking in other ways, making it a wash when looking at their income years later. In contract students who benefited affirmative action where getting a way better deal at the exit and saw more significant salary difference compared to those who couldn't attend the more selective schools.

and it's probably not the one you think

this decision is not motivated by merit, it's entirely motivated by race.

and they have no intentions of using a merit based approach for applicants because that would result in an even more white and asian dominant student pool.

without the legacy pool they now have more wiggle room to juice their "merit-based" approach so that they can admit more blacks without getting busted for illegal affirmative action.

“Merit-based” is such a loaded term.

What do you mean by that exactly? What are you envisioning?

EDIT: Wow, a downvote. For this comment? Yikes!

EDIT 2: Oh, I see. I was using the phrase “loaded term” incorrectly. I only meant that “merit-based” is a phrase that can mean a lot of different things.

However, thinking about this more, I do still think it’s a loaded term. Politicians and the adjacents have visibly been using it to push an agenda. (I’m not saying this agenda is right or not. But it’s still clearly an agenda. I mean, that’s what their jobs are: to literally have agendas lol.)

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