The merit system, such as it is, is collapsing in the US. The SAT *is* imperfect in that it's more of an IQ test than the exams in other countries, which require a person use their born intelligence in combination with hard work to learn lots of stuff and do well on an exam. I wish we had a comprehensive exam system in this country that was the primary basis for admittance to colleges. But that's a pipe dream. If I were in a supreme deity, I'd allocate 15% of seats to black kids, and have an exam-based system that allocated those seats and the other 85% to the population at large. Basically, a simple quota.
I got a 1560 on the SAT, so I'm admittedly biased on this topic. I was also valedictorian in my rural Virginia high school . . . along with 13 other kids. Anyone who got a 4.0 or higher got the nod, and thanks to an abundance of AP classes worth 5.0, it wasn't particularly hard to maintain a 4.0 or higher. There were 5 other large high schools in the city, all churning out a bunch of valedictorians. Meanwhile, Harvard accepted ONE student from our region of the state every year. Short of winning the Westinghouse Competition, there wasn't really a great way for smart kids to distinguish themselves. Generally speaking, my observation was that the accepted Harvard student was either an underprivileged person or someone super rich (by our city's standards, which I now realize were rather low) who had connections.
As far as I know, kids can still get admitted to flagship state universities if they are good students, even if they are white and middle class, though the lack of SAT makes that harder. And winning admittance into graduate school and prestigious fellowships like NSF is still mostly merit-based. So admittance to college is becoming less and less merit-based, while higher education continues to be highly merit-based. Will that continue? But getting certain well-paying jobs that springboard to prestigious MBA programs (eg consultant at Bain) out of undergrad is very much based on your alma mater, and sets kids up for life. So for kids who can't get into the "right" college out of undergrad, it's potentially permanently life-changing.
One person I'm familiar w/Stephen Hsu was involved for a time w/an actual research project designed to map out all the varied loci which correlated w/IQ. It's supposedly been closed, but I have my doubts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGI_Group#Cognitive_Genomics_Project
Yes, the SAT is an IQ test. Yes some people are really smarter than others. If it wasn't for your genius level IQ trying to keep your train on the rails, you would have driven completely into a ditch and stayed there. It takes some time to learn how to drive a Lambo-brain anyway.
The merit system, such as it is, is collapsing in the US. The SAT *is* imperfect in that it's more of an IQ test than the exams in other countries, which require a person use their born intelligence in combination with hard work to learn lots of stuff and do well on an exam. I wish we had a comprehensive exam system in this country that was the primary basis for admittance to colleges. But that's a pipe dream. If I were in a supreme deity, I'd allocate 15% of seats to black kids, and have an exam-based system that allocated those seats and the other 85% to the population at large. Basically, a simple quota.
I got a 1560 on the SAT, so I'm admittedly biased on this topic. I was also valedictorian in my rural Virginia high school . . . along with 13 other kids. Anyone who got a 4.0 or higher got the nod, and thanks to an abundance of AP classes worth 5.0, it wasn't particularly hard to maintain a 4.0 or higher. There were 5 other large high schools in the city, all churning out a bunch of valedictorians. Meanwhile, Harvard accepted ONE student from our region of the state every year. Short of winning the Westinghouse Competition, there wasn't really a great way for smart kids to distinguish themselves. Generally speaking, my observation was that the accepted Harvard student was either an underprivileged person or someone super rich (by our city's standards, which I now realize were rather low) who had connections.
As far as I know, kids can still get admitted to flagship state universities if they are good students, even if they are white and middle class, though the lack of SAT makes that harder. And winning admittance into graduate school and prestigious fellowships like NSF is still mostly merit-based. So admittance to college is becoming less and less merit-based, while higher education continues to be highly merit-based. Will that continue? But getting certain well-paying jobs that springboard to prestigious MBA programs (eg consultant at Bain) out of undergrad is very much based on your alma mater, and sets kids up for life. So for kids who can't get into the "right" college out of undergrad, it's potentially permanently life-changing.
One person I'm familiar w/Stephen Hsu was involved for a time w/an actual research project designed to map out all the varied loci which correlated w/IQ. It's supposedly been closed, but I have my doubts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGI_Group#Cognitive_Genomics_Project
Yes, the SAT is an IQ test. Yes some people are really smarter than others. If it wasn't for your genius level IQ trying to keep your train on the rails, you would have driven completely into a ditch and stayed there. It takes some time to learn how to drive a Lambo-brain anyway.