The book SAT Wars has arguments for and against and the striking thing for me was that some in admissions believe in a concept called crafting a class: the applicants are input into the admissions officer’s artisanal contribution to producing a class that they believe would be good for the university to have.
The idea of a standard bar and so on does sound like it would interfere with such a process.
I always did find it interesting that US notions of anti-racism required treating individuals not as individuals but as racial representatives. It’s a local quirk of the culture of the land, I suppose, that one’s primary identification here is one’s skin colour.
America's vapid fixation with race is ridiculous especially since it uses race as a proxy for social stratum when it could just be addressing class issues directly instead. If only there were some history of forms that parents fill out every year showing their income to the government that is more-or-less vetted to some degree—too bad we don't have such a thing that students could use to prove social stratum! Plus, what the hell is race anyway? An unethical tip one could give to university applicants would be to claim membership to the most beneficial group because it's not like university admissions has any way of proving your "race". Construct any fabricated story that'll get the most approval and maximize your chances of getting into a top university.
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