Holistic Harvard sounds nice, provided holistic means something good and Harvard isn’t just a legacy institution free-riding on its history of producing our future leaders. But what to make of its decision to make standardized testing optional?

“Test optional” was a fine policy for the topsy-turvy world of the pandemic, when there were lots of idiosyncratic reasons a student might not submit a score, from canceled tests to an immunocompromised parent or sibling. But as things return to normal, it’s unlikely that many kids with top scores will resist the Hobbesian competitive pressures to submit them. There will of course be exceptions — free spirits with ideological qualms about the tests and first-generation applicants who didn’t know to take them. But for many applicants, omitting test scores will be a strategic decision, presumably to play downscores significantly lower than the school’s average.

It’s easy to forget the rationale for standardized tests, that they created an opportunity for smart people of whatever background, caste, race, gender or religion to prove their merit and seize the American dream of improving their lot. And it did, but it didn’t, as outcomes didn’t always match expectations.

This moved the University of California to eliminate standardized tests altogether, as they were biased, easily gamed and produced ideologically unacceptable outcomes. It wasn’t that they were wrong about the competencies of students or as predictors of success in college, but that they were right, and we didn’t like the answers they provided.

But at least UC had the guts to eliminate the test rather than play the game Harvard chose, to allow students to apply without standardized test scores and not have it held against them. What are the chances that the students with great test scores will submit them and the students with crappy scores will not? For those who don’t submit scores, the admissions decision will be based on “essays, portfolios, recommendations and transcripts,” which aren’t at all easily gamed or of extremely limited utility.

The assumption here is that this will enable Harvard to “balance,” in the way quotas are balanced when you don’t want to call them quotas because that would be unlawful, its class along the lines of race, gender, wealth, sexual orientation and such other concerns having nothing to do with the effort or intellect necessary to perform high level work.

But is that the goal or is this a subterfuge to create the appearance of the wokiest admissions without the substance? Glenn Reynolds took a very cynical view of this new shift.

What it won’t be doing is admitting a bunch of poor black kids. Oh, there will be a few — even a hundred years ago and more, the Ivy League had its tokens, there to show its broadmindedness without giving up many slots. But the purpose and effect of getting rid of objective tests is to give more room to subjective judgments.

In short, they’ are getting rid of objective tests so as to give more power to admissions bureaucrats. And those bureaucrats won’t have applicants’ interests at heart but rather Harvard’s and their own.

Doesn’t Harvard want to admit a “bunch of poor black kids,” whether because of a sincere belief they have been denied access to opportunities for lack of a Harvard diploma on the wall or just to create the appearance of being woke? After all, a Harvard grad still has the cache to nail a big money job, and in the current environment, there is nothing more desirable to employers than a student who checks the right race and gender boxes. This isn’t meant in a negative way, but that there remains greater demand than supply.

Reynolds isn’t the only one who sees this shift in standardized testing as the wedge to allow admissions people greater latitude at the expense of smart kids who would otherwise never get a chance to be fed from prep school to Harvard College.

As blogger Freddie deBoer writes, “Now it’s in their best interest to have even more leeway to select the bumbling doofus children of the affluent, and you’re applauding them for it in the name of ‘equity.’ Brilliant.” (“Equity” is a term woke academics have chosen because it sounds kind of like “equality,” which Americans like, but actually means active racial discrimination, which Americans don’t.)

In fact, a cynic might think — and, in fact, I do think — that much of this is just to make Harvard’s already extensive discrimination against Asians easier and harder to prove.

Since deBoer writes on his own substack, he’s not constrained to be as polite about it.

It’s all corrupt. All of it. From the top to the bottom. It is so insane that all of these people who are ostensibly so cynical about institutions, who will tell you that capitalism is inherently a rigged game, who think meritocracy is a joke, who say that they think these hierarchies are all just privilege, will then turn around and say “ah yes, the SAT is gone, now fairness and egalitarianism will reign.” The whole damn thing makes no sense – it is nonsensical to talk about equality in a process that by its most basic nature is designed to select for a tiny elite! How the fuck do you think it’s going to work, exactly, when the SAT is gone? They’re still nominating a tiny elite to enjoy the most outsized rewards human life has to offer. That’s destructive no matter who gets a golden ticket. By its very nature.

To argue that giving admissions people at Harvard unfettered discretion because the SATs are on the outs these days isn’t going to be used to serve the best interests of the institution seems insufferably naive, although it doesn’t explain what the institution perceives as its best interests at the moment, which may well be Harvard’s version of social justice.

“Equality”?!? Harvard only lets in 2000 kids a year! You really think carving out space for 50 more Black kids among them, if that actually even happens, is going to result in some sort of quantum leap forward for the average Black American?

This raises a question about the efficacy of the move. Is the problem that they can’t find another 50 poor black kids with excellent SAT scores who demonstrate the ability to survive a rigorous Harvard education?

Now, just as in the past, Harvard admissions officers will admit classes that fit their idea of what Harvard should be, and if that idea included more low-income students, or underrepresented minorities, they’d already have admitted them. Instead, they have chosen to maximize other things, such as institutional prestige and future donation potential.

Has another simplistic Utopian rationalization, that the SATs are so biased against poor black students that they should no longer be required, given cover to the same forces that were used to justify the exclusion of Jews years ago, Asians today and whatever group is unpopular to the institution in the future? And was it just handed to them on a woke platter so they could eliminate objective opportunity in favor of the holistic discretion to admit the next generation of the bumbling doofuses of the elite?