The Myth of American Meritocracy

• Published in: American conservative (Arlington, Va.) Vol. 11; no. 12; p. 14
• Main Author: Unz, Ron
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Arlington American Conservative LLC 01-12-2012
• Subjects: Cheating; College admissions; Corruption; Employment; Scandals; United States > US
• ISSN: 1540-966X

According to incoming student test scores and recent percentages of National Merit Scholars, four American universities stand at the absolute summit of average student quality - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Caltech, the California Institute of Technology; and of these Caltech probably ranks first among equals.36 Those three top Ivies continue to employ the same admissions system which [Jerome Karabel] describes as "opaque," "flexible," and allowing enormous "discretion,"37 a system originally established to restrict the admission of high-performing Jews. But Caltech selects its students by strict academic standards, with [Daniel Golden] praising it for being Americas shining example of a purely meritocratic university, almost untouched by the financial or political corruption so widespread in our other elite institutions. And since the beginning of the 1990s, Caltech's Asian- American enrollment has risen almost exactly in line with die growth of Americas underlying Asian population, with Asians now constituting nearly 40 percent of each class (See chart on p. 18). In the end "connections" triumphed, and she received admission to Wesleyan, although she turned it down in favor of an offer from more prestigious Cornell, which she had obtained through similar means. But at Cornell, she found herself "miserable," hating the classes and saying she "didn't see the usefulness of [her] being there." However, her poor academic ability proved no hindrance, since the same administrator who had arranged her admission also wrangled her a quick entrance into a special "honors program" he personally ran, containing just 40 of the 3500 students in her year. This exempted her from all academic graduation requirements, apparently including classes or tests, thereby allowing her to spend her four college years mostly traveling around the world while working on a so-called "special project." After graduation, she eventually took a job at her father s successful law firm, thereby realizing her obvious potential as a member of Americas ruling Ivy League elite, or in her own words, as being one of "the best of the best."91 The notion of top universities only selecting a slice of their students based on purest academic merit certainly seems to be the standard today, and was so in the past as well. Karabel recounts how during the 1950s and 1960s, Harvard reserved about 10 percent of its spots for "top brains," while selecting the remainder based on a mixture of different factors.112 In Choosing Elites, Robert Klitgaard indicates that roughly this same approach continued into the 1980s, with only a fraction of admitted students being classified and admitted as "first-class scholars.""3 As already mentioned, according to [Chuck Hughes], who served five years as a Harvard Senior Admissions Officer at Harvard, by the mid-2000s only 5 percent or less of Harvard undergraduates were selected purely on academic merit, with extracurricular activities and a wide variety of unspecified other criteria being used to choose among the other 80-85 percent of applicants who could actually handle the academic work; and this same pattern is found at most other highly selective universities."4 Given a widening funnel of ability, it is absurd to base admissions decisions on just a small difference of twenty or mirty points on the SAT, which merely encourages students to spend thousands of hours cramming in order to gain those extra crucial twenty or thirty points over their competitors.