“Merit” is making a comeback in higher education. Next stop: U.S. service academies.
College officials around the country—including those at some of the most selective (and notoriously left-leaning) schools—have admitted a student’s high school grades and often-obscure extracurricular activities aren’t enough for making admissions decisions.
Now, schools that abandoned use of college entrance exams during the COVID-19 pandemic—schools like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and MIT—are reinstating the practice.
While there is no single perfect measure of student ability, standardized tests have proven to offer educators valuable insight into prospective undergrads’ academic potential. Officials at Hopkins even admitted as much when announcing their return to using the SAT and ACT.
But service academies such as the U.S. Naval Academy, West Point, Air Force…
