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A pure meritocracy would be good, but it would be myopic to judge candidates for the American elite solely on academic performance.
I would add a judged (can be behind a curtain / audio recorded to avoid accusations of bias) debate segment - Westminster/Oxford Union style, not what passes for debate competitions in the US - to measure public speaking ability, bravado and charisma.
Then two essay questions, again judged by senior faculty. One on classical western civilization, sat in person, written in (fountain) pen, with substantial bonus points for answers in Latin or Greek. A second brief essay on philosophy (or rather ethics or logical thinking), in the mould of oxbridge philosophy entrance exam essays. This measures the ability to write, sorely lacking among many shape rotators.
I would also require a letter of approval from a sitting US senator, who (a) could have no financial relationship with anyone in the applicant’s immediate or extended family and (b) could nominate fewer than 50 students per year. This is also meritocratic in a way, since true meritocracy is familial rather than individual, and a well-connected family has enmeshed themselves in the fabric of American life well, which speaks to likely success in life.
You can add all the additional requirements that you want, provided you understand that they aren't any less subject to gamification than whatever is currently in place. So add a debate requirement and you get Oxford Union debate clubs replacing whatever other extracurricular is the hot thing to get into a good school. Give bonus points for answering in Greek and Latin and you get a bunch of kids taking Greek and Latin not because they want to but because you get bonus points. I suspect a large part of the reason that so many Asian kids did poorly in Harvard's personality evaluation is because so many of them came out of a Tiger Mom culture where their dad played by Vivek Ramaswamy gave them a list of things they needed to do to get into Harvard and made damn sure they spent every available moment of their childhood ticking off the boxes. I mean, if you had two applicants to an engineering program with identical academic credentials, which one do you choose? The one who spends his spare time tinkering with radios and other electronic devices, or the one who can do integrals in his head but can't change a tire on his car? Who do you think actually wants to be an engineer and who is just doing it because it's a good job that will make his parents proud? You can't sort this out without a non-standardized personal interview.
There's already a college that requires this. Actually several colleges, though congressmen are also included and nominations are limited to ten apiece. They're the service academies, and they are extremely difficult to get into. Who gets these nominations has fuck all to do with how connected an applicant or his family is because you don't get them by knowing the Senator or whoever but by applying on their website, at which point someone from their office looks through the same paperwork admissions does. And what makes you think Senators even give a shit who gets into Harvard or wherever? Out of 100, 12 went there at all, and only 4 for undergrad. Anyway, this isn't England, and Senators don't give a shit about gatekeeping access to the "American elite". Do you really think John Fetterman is going to nominate the kind of prigs who can answer philosophical essay questions in ancient Greek?
I echo @Jiro's suspicion that so many Asian kids did poorly in Harvard's personality evaluation because Harvard wanted and needed them to do poorly in the quest for racial balancing. One could make the opposite argument ex-ante, that kids from Tiger Mom cultures would be expected to have "better" personalities, as their greater likelihood in having experiences at being (multi-instrument) musicians, (multi-sport) athletes, multilingual, and exposure to different cultures gives them greater depth and worldliness than someone from a non-Tiger Mom culture who maybe plays one instrument or a sport or two, while speaking one language (maybe two if they're latino) and spends their increased spare time dicking around, browsing TikTok and Instagram.
And furthermore, alumni interviewers rated the personalities of Asian candidates similarly as they did white candidates. It was the admissions office, which often didn't meet the candidates, that would give Asians the worst personality scores among any racial group. Harvard's attempt at jiu-jitsuing their way out was to imply It Just So Happens it must be the case that Asians have worse essays and recommendations:
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I suspect that 100% of the reason is that Harvard just didn't want many Asians. Even if you're correct, that doesn't mean that Asians would have done any better if they had avoided that. It just means that Harvard would have picked something else where Asians were different. And if Asians avoided that too, Harvard would have picked yet something else. Even if Asians were identical to whites in all measures, Harvard would have just said they had bad personality anyway, because you can't measure personality, so there'd be no way to prove that Harvard was wrong.
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Yeah, and all that stuff…would be good.
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