They really only admitted students with strong extracurriculars. 

USC early action decisions had just been released for the students who I helped with college applications; I felt responsible for rationalizing their deferrals. So, I revisited the same subjective explanation that consoled my college “redirections” before I appealed my rejection last year.

“I don’t know, it just wasn’t competitive enough. Or maybe it was your essays?”

The mystification of the college admissions process is that it can feel like a lottery system. Well, if it’s a lottery system, how much is a ticket to get a seat at the reader’s table?

A nonprofit will indicate a moral compass, but not in a way that will get a college worried about you being a socialist. Eagle Scouts, school leadership and volunteering imply selfless community engagement — altruistic until your essay section needs to differentiate you. The SAT acts as your academic credibility.

In the college admissions conversation, the foundational argument against diversity, equity and inclusion is that meritocracy is the best way to observe a candidate’s qualifications because of its “objective” nature. The statement is difficult to refute because of its logical appearance, but the way merit is constructed reveals the statement’s instability. 

We see this most clearly when analyzing the relationship between economic position and performance on standardized testing. Economist David Deming explained in a Harvard Gazette article about a research paper that score gaps are not differences in intelligence but “the accumulation of unequal opportunities over 18 years of a child’s life,” beginning as early as kindergarten. 

Arguments for restoring meritocracy in higher education institutions have prompted a seemingly reasonable push to reinstate the importance of the SAT in the college admission process. But the credibility of these measures collapses when data is introduced. 

A 2025 study by Harvard-based researchers found that children from the wealthiest 1% of families are 13 times as likely as those from low-income families to score 1300 or higher on the SAT. 

While common arguments I have heard in discussions with my peers highlight cases of disadvantaged students obtaining gate-kept qualifications, these arguments purposefully highlight these stories to disregard the necessity of systemic safeguards.

By accepting that college admissions is directed solely by meritocracy, we grant colleges the authority to reject students they deem unfit for opportunity based on standards that closely correlate to economic status. 

We reinforce the expectation that high schoolers magically develop perfect autonomy, direction and time-management skills for admission to competitive universities. Anecdotally, many peers were influenced more by parental expectations than by internal educational passion. Who could blame them?

The idea is that students first paradoxically compete with indicators of college preparation, but are then free to act as undergraduate students: to jump from discipline to discipline, to join fun-sounding clubs, to take a Brazilian fingerstyle class that gives me more anticipatory anxiety than being cold-called in upper divisions. 

Students are told to meet preparation standards, temporarily sacrificing intellectual exploration, and then given freedom to find their interests in an environment constrained by the anxiety of being employable. 

If academic freedom and exploration are encouraged during our undergraduate years, why must we meet standards of college preparation before admission? 

Researchers at Harvard have shown in a 2025 paper that SAT performance often correlates with economic status; therefore, wouldn’t access to educational resources develop a student’s abilities and build that foundation as a result? The construction of merit has to start somewhere.

A necessity extends past admission for disadvantaged students to outcompete privilege; to adopt professional, academic and interpersonal indicators of merit and preparedness to earn a seat at the table — only to be reminded that, as Malcolm X told us, “Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner.” 

In a cyclical nature, the construction of merit returns to subjective qualifications when you lack the connectedness and identity to build merit. Is our university prestigious enough? Are your LinkedIn posts performative? How good do you really look in that suit? 

Without a DEI policy and, more importantly, without assumed merit, protection from these irrelevant indicators again becomes reliant on individuals within hiring and admissions, who are told to solely focus on qualifications. 

Amid this rejection of DEI, it has become clear to me that solidarity and mutual reliance must be possessed in disadvantaged communities to ensure equal opportunity is not only present but available. As USC students, we already possess standards of merit that must be leveraged to combat this veiled inequality.