Here’s a rant from my evil twin Tyromight, which I publish without endorsement as it appears to be an unhinged polemic with no constructive solutions.

Say that when people apply for their first driver’s license, 1% get Executive Platinum licenses. For life, they get free use of toll roads and can drive 20% over the speed limit. People argue—fiercely argue—if these should be awarded based on the written test, the driving test, or based on personal essays on What Driving Means to Me.

That would be weird, right?

Or say there’s a school. When kids enter as five-year-olds, the school deems 5% of them to be Gold Elites. They get special lunches and when they graduate as ten-year-olds, get preferred admission to competitive middle schools.

The question is not if Gold Elites should be chosen based on finger-painting or kickball competitions. The question is, why do they exist at all?

What would happen in schools if we lived in a magical dreamworld?

I think the answer is: Each kid gets whatever experiences maximize their potential.

That’s not controversial, is it? Ideally, they’d learn whatever subjects, in whatever style would best help them flourish into rich, happy, successful adults. Alice might spend her first few years in immersive Czech-language math classes and postpone history and science until she’s older. Bob might study everything in parallel with teachers that use puppetry and interpretive dance.

Picture each student as a dot in the space of possible experiences.

In the real world, there are only so many teachers and classrooms. So perhaps it’s necessary to carve up the space of experiences and create one class for each chunk.

(Really, it’s harder than this picture suggests, because many experiences are based on other students. If I want you as my project partner but you want to forget I exist, then something has to give.)

So there are tough questions. What classes should exist? Where do you put the best teachers? Should there be a “gifted” program? Most people acknowledge some tension between what’s best for the “top” students and everyone else. Opinions differ on how to resolve that tension, ranging from “top students in best classrooms with best teachers” to “all students together, with faster students helping others”.

But we agree on the ideal, right? In dreamworld, every kid would follow their own path. There would be no “advanced classes” or “tracks” because those concepts wouldn’t exist.

Now, this dreamworld school would not be a rainbow utopia where all students emerge equal. It’s plausible there would be more variance in outcomes than we have now. But we should still do it if we could.

So if that’s the ideal, then what’s wrong with giving 5% of kids Gold Elite status? Well:

• It’s decided by a committee, not something that emerges organically.

• If you must have Gold Elites (why?) you should pick them when they are graduating, not when they start.

• If someone’s going to make Gold Elites, it damn well shouldn’t be the government or a tax-exempt nonprofit.

That’s pretty much what’s wrong with Harvard. (And high-stakes college admissions in general).

In the limit, this is obvious. Imagine a society in which 18-year olds are assessed and then assigned to different career bands. “Alphas” could be senators or CEOs, while “gammas” could pursue dreams of carrying heavy rocks or carrying heavy pieces of wood. It doesn’t matter how the assessment is done, the idea is dystopic.

College isn’t nearly that consequential. But still, the effect of high-stakes college admissions is to make society a bit more like that.

I think that’s bad because I’ve internalized Western individualist values. (Haven’t you?) But there are practical reasons, too.

One is that when gates exist, the people who control them will put their fingers on the scales, creating all sorts of weird distortions and drama. (Witness: How college admissions currently creates all sorts of weird distortions and drama.)

But forget all that. The deeper reason is that prediction is hard.

Yes, grades and test scores and teacher evaluations are correlated with performance in college and beyond. But they are only correlated. When Carl Bernstein was a student at the University of Maryland, he was kicked off the school paper for bad grades. And yet, Carl Bernstein is extremely good at journalism.

Are there any criteria that would have identified what undergraduate Carl Bernstein was capable of? I doubt it. The only way to really know what a human can do is to let them try.

Yes, people will end up in different jobs somehow. But this should be a fluid process, not something controlled by any central authority. Your abil