College Admissions

Quote of the day, courtesy of J. P. Sartre: “It is not what a human is that constitutes the important question, but what a human can become.”

As Trump lashes out with his pro-ignorance agenda, he’s taking dead aim on America’s colleges. With special focus on DEI’s role in college admissions. On May 9th, the bumbling Pete Hegseth issued a directive:  our military service academies must eliminate consideration of race, ethnicity, or sex in their admissions process. The least qualified Secretary of Defense in America’s history demands that admissions be entirely based on ‘merit.’ Now, to be fair, blind angry squirrels do at times find their way to acorns. And Trump and Hegseth have ample reason to attack a very broken college admissions process. But in true form, they just throw hand grenades at an important problem.

Baked into America’s consciousness is the premise that colleges should rank applicants based on demonstrated ‘merit’ — test scores, GPA, and extracurricular coverage. Then, the bickering begins. Many are troubled that America’s elite colleges (e.g., Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn) have more students from the top 1% than the bottom 50% — and call for giving special treatment to those from less fortunate backgrounds. Many, notably Team Trump, are outraged by policies that apply different ‘merit’ standards to some applicants (e.g., Black, Hispanic), to the disadvantage of their favored races. As an aside, I wonder if Trump and Hegseth realize that if colleges adopted gender-blind admissions, entering classes would be 75% female — which might not sit well with the MAGA crowd.

But what if the college admission’s definition of ‘merit’ is deeply-flawed? That the chase to produce an impeccable college application is ruining childhoods, laying waste to mental health, affording outsized advantage to the affluent, and ill-preparing all of America’s youth. Perhaps, just perhaps, there are far better ways to gauge a high-school senior’s potential to take full advantage of a college experience and blossom into an adult who will make the world better.

A few years ago, I spent a year visiting more than 200 schools, across all fifty states.  My book What School Could Be offers this surprising takeaway: the single most innovative education institution I visited was the U.S. Naval Academy. An institution that’s made remarkable progress — progress they attribute to a total re-think of their admissions criteria. The Naval Academy concluded that prevailing measures of ‘merit’ (GPA, SAT/ACT scores) were not identifying the highest-potential future leaders of the United States Navy. They pivoted, shifting more priority to an applicant’s non-academic traits. A Blue and Gold officer interviews every serious applicant, probing for evidence of resilience, determination, purpose, and potential.

And what’s happened in Annapolis? With these revised admissions priorities, the Naval Academy is producing better leaders. And . . . the applicants they accept are more — not less — diverse. Diversity because of more authentic admissions criteria, not because of quotas or lower standards. Admissions criteria that identify powerful young adults with the ‘right stuff’ to serve our nation with distinction.  

For those interested, I’ve included below ⬇ an excerpt from my book about what I learned from the U.S. Naval Academy.

Trump could play a transformational role in pushing America’s colleges to wholly revise their admissions policies. But it’s so, so counterproductive to push the Naval Academy to regress to a failed ‘merit’ model. We need to push other colleges to be more like the Naval Academy. That would be progress. Because the current system is FUBAR, undermining the future of millions of kids, thousands of communities, and our nation’s future. Time for some real ‘merit’ in our thinking about how to assess the progress and potential of America’s children.

Nervously,

Ted

From What School Could Be: