What Would Colleges be Like If SATs Were the Sole Admission Criterion?

Many bar and dorm room conversations probably have centered on what colleges would look like if SAT scores were the sole criteria for admission. People have had their suspicions and cite anecdotal observations but now Georgetown University has quantitatively answered the question as least as far as elite universities go. Anyone with a passing awareness of today's college admission policies knows that the student makeup would change if academics were the sole criteria. How much they would change is the question. As to whether using just SAT scores -- i.e. academic performance -- is good or bad is another matter.

Back to the Georgetown report. Healy Hall at Georgetown University (photo credit: Gtwonsfs) It claims the percentage of blacks and Hispanics would fall sharply from 19 percent to 11 percent. The whites student population would rise from 66 percent to 77 percent. And surprisingly, Asian students would fall from 11 percent to 10 percent. The study goes on to say that many of the whites in these select college would lose their seats to other better qualified white students. In other words, the student mix would change noticeably. There are a number of reasons why higher academically performing students lose seats to others. There are legacy admissions and sport scholarships. Both these skew the college population downward on the academic scale especially when it comes to big money-making sports like football and basketball. However, the greatest factor is a commitment to racial diversity. College administrators will literally go to any length the prove they are 'woke.' Zero Hedge noted that black and Latino college enrolment is almost twice what it would be based on "merit" alone. And this is before the College Board introduces its so-called "adversity score," which is specifically designed to increase the minority presence in universities, to accompany a student's SAT result. Administrators twist and turn the wording of their admission standards to make sure that a certain number black and Hispanic students gain entrance to their schools. No matter what they say, the prevailing policies are a system of de facto racial quotas and are blatantly discriminatory. Ben Shapiro writes that racial diversity is a driving force in college admissions. He cites a Wall Street Journal article that says UCLA is committed "closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots by admitting have-no-qualification minorities over meritorious students." And UCLA is far from alone. There is another drawback to such policies aside from them being discriminatory. Once a critical mass of lower qualified minority students is enrolled in a department -- and the number doesn't have to be that high -- an unspoken pressure exists on the professors in that department not to let them flunk out. Over time, this leads to lower standards -- for everyone. To date, the STEM departments are not greatly affected but that's only because academically poor students tend to shy away from them. This is unfortunate given that we now live in a highly-competitive global society. Watered down college degrees are no substitute for the ability to think critically and logically and to do basic math. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the poster child for how deeply a college education has degraded. The woman graduated from Boston University, cum laude no less, with a major in international relations and economics yet her comments border on the moronic. In the Grutter v. Bollinger decision in 2003, the Supreme Court affirmed the discriminatory affirmative action admission policies at the University of Michigan Law School. In siding with the majority, liberal-in-Republican-clothing Sandra Day O'Connor, said affirmative action (i.e., racial quotas), which she just voted to legitimize, should not be carried on in perpetuity. She wrote: "We suspect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today." I hope that the Supreme Court will eventually have a majority of justices who realize that diversity is not in the Constitution, but equal treatment under the law most certainly is. Such justices will also need to have the backbone of a Clarence Thomas to stand up to the ensuing mau-mauing if they apply anti-discrimination laws to everyone and not just racial minorities. It's dubious if that will happen within O'Connor's 25-year time frame, but I hope I'm wrong.