The American Dream has long been the United States’ biggest selling point — it is the reason why so many immigrants strive to make the move to the land of freedom and prosperity. The idea that success can be achieved solely through hard work and dedication has inspired many to pursue their dreams in America. While the American Dream has held true for many hard-working immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds, unfortunately, it does not apply for the competitive and often puzzling college admissions process. Elite colleges, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford are notorious for rejecting students with near perfect GPAs, SATs/ACTs, and impressive slews of extra-curricular activities.

Despite these selective schools boasting a holistic review of applications, there is clearly race-based bias in the college admissions process. The California Institute of Technology— a university that does not consider racial references in its admissions process fills over 40% of its class with Asian American students each year. Compare this to the aforementioned elite schools which fill their class with less than 20% Asian Americans [1]. In fact, the recent court case against Harvard put together by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) has drawn national attention to the case against affirmative action [2] — a policy aimed at improving employment and educational opportunities for members of minority groups [3]. In this court case, SFFA chose to focus on the personal rating of Harvard’s ‘holistic’ review process. SFFA’s lawyer John Hughes argued that this personal rating section shows “substantial preferences for African Americans and Hispanics in the personal score.[4]” The recent uproar against affirmative action has led many to question whether it is still an effective addition to the college admissions process. Some even propose a process whereby academic merit is all that is taken into consideration when admitting an applicant. This means exclusively taking GPA, standardized testing scores, academic awards, and extracurricular activities into consideration in college admissions.

This argument makes sense if we think of higher education as for the sole purpose of educating the most qualified in order to further advance academia. If the purpose of college is to foster further learning, it would follow that only either the most academically qualified candidates, or those who achieved the most within their circumstantial constraints should be granted this opportunity. A research study done by Karen Arnold, a Boston College professor, followed 81 high school valedictorians and salutatorians for 10 years after graduation [5]. Arnold’s observations underscore logical assumptions regarding a connection between exceptional high school academic achievement and later academic success. 95% of these valedictorians and salutatorians went on to graduate college with an average GPA of 3.60 and 60% received a graduate degree. 50% are employed in STEM and business and 25% work in the highest paying jobs. In summary, the study showed a strong correlation between top academic achievement in high school and similar achievement in college [6]. The higher these students achieve academically in high school, the more successful they seem to be in college and in life, and the better it is for the economy and society.

As the trial of a new Harvard affirmative action case has caused increased scrutiny of the college admissions process, it is important to reexamine the way that colleges admit their students [9]. How do colleges make sure that they are admitting students who can both thrive in rigorous academic situations and contribute towards a well-balanced student body? With the addition of legacy and development, top-tier athletic programs, and affirmative action, the question of fair college admissions becomes almost impossible. However, a system that ignores other variables in favor of academic success would still be difficult to judge fairly and would inevitably perpetuate cycles of privilege and inequality.

A pure academic meritocracy is, first and foremost, not a simple concept. Is GPA the only indicator? How about standardized test scores, which have been shown to have little to no indication on a student’s college success [10]? If we define merit by GPA alone, do we weigh the difficulty of a student’s schedule along with it? And what about the quality of the school? Regardless of the answers to these questions, it becomes clear that aiming for a pure meritocracy is a difficult process. What we call ‘meritocracy’ considers so many exogenous factors that it would end up resembling our current system anyways. And if these concerns are ignored in favor of the purest meritocracy possible, then it’s obvious that fairness would go out the window as soon as high schools started handing out 4.0 GPAs to inflate their admissions statistics.