Just a brief personal history with a comment about entrance into places of Higher Ed.

I am a graduate of CCNY (City College of NY)back in the 1950s. It was then called "the poor man's Harvard". You either had an 85% or better average in HS or you had over 65% and took an entrance exam (not SAT). I did not need the entrance exam.

Later, after I graduated, they went to an "open enrollment" policy. All that it accomplished was to add remedial instruction to, hopefully, bring the entrants up to a level competance for College level work. It turned into a disaster and a lowering of what a diploma from the City Colleges (there were others--Hunter,Queens,etc;) meant.

That said, I have to say that it is about time that things were merit based. Though I hasten to add that the SATs are also not the be all end all to admissions. Entrance exams, interviews, essays, and a combination of such things should enter into the selection of students.

Yes, race had played a part in recent and older history. So had religion, by the way.   But, at this point if we truly want to become color blind we had better do exactly that and start with merit based entrances. Athletics not withstanding---that is a whole other topic. A subject that belongs on the professional playing fields and not in the Universities and their desire for income and prestige from that area.

Bill Hahn