The “Merit-First” Fantasy of Bari Weiss’ Anti-Woke University

During the 2022-2023 admissions cycle, Stanley Zhong applied to college. His application was impressive. He had a 4.42 weighted GPA. He’d launched his own software startup. And, to boot, he scored 1590 on the SAT, a score well above the 99th percentile. Yet, to his—and later the country’s—surprise, 16 of 18 of his college applications were rejected. Some of those rejections, Zhong admitted, were “certainly expected.” Think Stanford, MIT, and Cornell. But others, from schools like Cal Poly and the University of Illinois, were harder to accept.