There are more high-school graduates qualified to attend an elite American college than there are admissions slots at such schools. As a result, our nation’s top universities must perennially find ways of distinguishing meritorious applicants who are worthy of admission from equally meritorious applicants who are not. One way they’ve done this is to take equity into account. Faced with an applicant from a comfortable middle-class background and another equally qualified applicant who grew up in poverty, universities have tended to favor the latter. Similarly, top schools have historically used membership in an underrepresented racial or ethnic group as a tiebreaker. But the Supreme Court recently ruledthat those sorts of racial preferences violate the Constitution.