Accidental Blogger

This is great news for the promotion of social equality with respect to higher education in the U.S.  The New York Times has the story:

Harvard University,
breaking with a major trend in college admissions, says it will
eliminate its early admissions program next year, with university
officials arguing that such programs put low-income and minority
applicants at a distinct disadvantage in the competition to get into
selective universities.

Harvard will be the first of
the nation’s prestigious universities to do away completely with early
admissions, in which high school seniors try to bolster their chances
at competitive schools by applying in the fall and learning whether
they have been admitted in December, months before other students.

The basic idea is to stop giving this admissions advantage to affluent applicants.  This is far from a panacea, mind you.  Harvard, while perhaps this nation’s top university, is still just one school, and there are other major issues afflicting the college admissions process (e.g. legacy admits, wealth/fame admits, expensive SAT prep courses, etc.).  And the law school admissions process, even with its more supposedly meritocratic criteria, is probably at least as flawed as the one high school seniors suffer through annually — due primarily to overreliance on the LSAT, a test which is (1) easily gamed and (2) intentionally biased.