There are far more qualified students than spots at selective universities, so factors other than academic aptitude must be used to make selection decisions. These factors are known as “merit.”
Merit depends on the institution.
Merit depends on what each school is looking for. Each university or college defines “merit” differently according to its mission and current campus needs. After applicants meet a threshold of academic qualifications (i.e. grades and SAT scores), each institution considers how well the applicant matches their institutional values and interests, how the applicant will contribute to campus diversity (geographic, socioeconomic, racial, academic interests, etc.), and how the applicant can meet current campus needs, such as the needs of athletic teams and space in each major. Financial factors may also come into play, such as the number of legacy and faculty children applicants and the mix of full-pay versus financial aid-dependent students.
Merit also depends on the context in which it was achieved.
Admissions officers also consider the context of achievement. The same outcome could mean different things depending on the resources available to the applicant, the other responsibilities they had to juggle, and other obstacles that they had to overcome to fall into the competitive category. For example, an applicant who has the same class rank and SAT score as another applicant but who had to work a part-time job to help support his or her family is arguably more meritorious than another applicant who did not have to work and received lots of private tutoring. This conclusion is uncontroversial because we accept that class is a meaningful contextual factor. Race is also a meaningful contextual factor because race impacts educational opportunity independent of class. For example:
- Children of highly educated, affluent black parents continue to lag behind their white counterparts in educational success because of racial stratification in our society.
- Black and Latinx children consistently have less access to Advanced Placement courses, even though they attend high schools with high numbers of students enrolled in AP classes.
- Students from the most underrepresented AAPI subgroups, such as Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Guamanian, and Samoan communities, all have lower than average access to education due to factors ranging from historical trauma (including war, displacement, and legacies of colonialism) to lack of access to information and language support.
Additional Resources:
