The two folders feel identical in my hands. Same weight, same glossy cardstock from the university print shop, number 2. Inside, the documents are clipped in the same order, a dance of bureaucratic precision. The transcript is on top. Student A: 4.2 GPA. Student B: 4.2 GPA. The number is a clean, hard fact. It feels solid, dependable. A piece of granite in a world of sand.

We have a deep, almost religious reverence for metrics like this. We call it ‘merit.’ We pretend it’s an objective measure of worth, a pure signal in a noisy world. It’s not.

My stomach lurches with a familiar, sickening feeling, the same one I had last Tuesday. I was trying to coordinate a complicated family matter via text and accidentally sent a long, vulnerable message meant for my brother to a work colleague-a project manager named Dave. My thumb froze over the screen. There was no ‘unsend.’ Dave, who only knows me through polite emails and Zoom calls about server capacity, now had this raw, contextless blast of emotion.

The damage wasn’t in the information itself, but in its arrival without any of the necessary framework. To him, it must have seemed insane. To my brother, it would have made perfect sense.

I find myself railing against the tyranny of numbers, which is a bit hypocritical. I know it is. Just yesterday I was reading a report that stated companies with diverse leadership teams are 32% more likely to outperform their peers. See? I’m using a number to make a point about the failure of other numbers. We criticize the system and then use its tools to do so. The contradiction is baked into the very language we have to discuss the problem.

Let me tell you about a man I know named Thomas B.K. Thomas is a disaster recovery coordinator. His college GPA was a dismal 2.2. He wouldn’t make it past the first-round algorithm at any prestigious institution today. His resume is a collection of jobs that sound unimpressive on paper: logistics assistant, warehouse foreman, dispatcher. But a few years ago, when a hurricane knocked out power and communication across two states, Thomas did something extraordinary. While the official digital systems were failing, he took over. With a yellow legal pad, 2 landlines that miraculously still worked, and an encyclopedic knowledge of regional trucking routes, he manually rerouted 122 different supply convoys carrying medical supplies and food. He saved lives. He solved an impossible, dynamic, high-stakes problem with ingenuity and grace under pressure.

So what’s the alternative?

It’s not about abandoning standards; it’s about finding better ones. It’s a shift from measuring proxies to measuring performance. This looks like a portfolio of code, a business plan designed to solve a local problem, or the proven ability to lead a team-skills honed in focused environments like a High School Summer Internship. These are artifacts of capability, not just grades. They provide a signal of what a student can do, not just what they can remember for a test. This kind of merit is demonstrated, not declared. It’s Thomas B.K.’s yellow legal pad, filled with scribbled routes that saved a community.

This debate isn’t just about getting into college. It’s a proxy war for our national soul. It’s about whether we value inherited advantage or earned skill. It’s about what kind of society we want to build. Do we want one run by the people who were best at preparing for the test, or by the people who are best at handling the storm when it arrives? Right now, our selection process is heavily biased toward the former. The quiet accumulation of privilege-the tutors, the prep courses, the legacy status, the unpaid internships secured through family friends-creates a powerful tailwind for some, while others fight a headwind from the moment they are born.