At a November event for College Board, Art Coleman, EducationCounsel’s co-founder and managing partner, explained that if the mission of a college or university is to advance diversity and equity, then applicants whose identities align with this mission should be given preference. Under Coleman’s understanding of merit, presumably, a black student who writes his application essay about overcoming “systemic racism” might be considered more intelligent and prepared for higher education than, say, a Korean-American student who gets a perfect score on the SAT.
Even organizations outside of higher education have subscribed to EducationCounsel’s redefinition of merit. In its response to the Court’s decision, the New York State Bar Association referenced the firm’s July guidance letter six times and advised law schools in the Empire State to “consider reevaluating the criteria for assessing merit, including standardized test scores.” It warned law firms that “overreliance on a student’s GPA might not be appropriate or determinative of a student’s career outcome and is often at the expense of evaluating a prospect’s qualities and abilities more holistically.”
EducationCounsel has been trying to redefine the concept of merit for some time. In 2019, College Board published a playbook for “advancing higher education diversity goals” that was co-authored by Coleman. It explains that “adhering to principles of holistic review that consider multiple measures of preparedness and merit (i.e., a student’s academic, nonacademic, and contextual backgrounds) is critical to making the kinds of nuanced and individualized judgements called for to achieve robust student diversity.” It instructs colleges and universities to create “admissions materials that allow students to represent academic preparedness in multiple ways, in addition to or in lieu of test scores.”