Earlier this month, Dartmouth College announced it was reinstating its SAT/ACT requirement for all applicants to the class of 2029, after a four-year experimental suspension that began in June of 2020. What was sold as a temporary measure required by the realities of Covid-19 lockdowns was also, sub rosa, an experiment in social justice — the idea being that once admissions officers’ eyes weren’t deceived by a glittering array of perfect 1600 SAT scores, they could focus on the “holistic applicant” instead. This is, of course, code for “admit more of a certain kind of minority.” Black and Hispanic high schoolers underperform on standardized tests relative to other American youth cohorts right now, and rather than deal with ideologically inconvenient — albeit overwhelmingly predictive — measurements of success in college, the hope was that by “getting past the numbers” a truly untapped reservoir of talented youth could be given a leg up.

It didn’t work out that way for Dartmouth — either because the new crops of kiddies turned out to be either too stupid or (and this would be far funnier) too white and privileged. Now Yale University, who joined them in that same social experiment back in 2020, has agreed as well: This morning, Yale announced that it is reinstating mandatory test-score requirements for all applicants to their undergraduate program. (I wonder how Columbia now feels about being the last Ivy League university to jump on this bandwagon, right before all the other universities that enticed it to join them are hopping off themselves.)

Yale’s explanation for the policy change is actually worth reading, because large parts of it feel like it could have been written by the Editors of National Review. Here, for example, they flatly concede our core argument about how eliminating standardized testing only disadvantages minority applicants in poorer schools:

In other high schools, high-achieving students quickly exhaust the available course offerings, leaving only two or three rigorous classes in their senior year schedule. Teachers with large classes may use positive but generic words of praise in recommendation letters. Students’ out-of-school commitments may include activities that demonstrate extraordinary leadership and contributions to family and community but reveal nothing about their academic preparedness. With no test scores to supplement these components, applications from students attending these schools may leave admissions officers with scant evidence of their readiness for Yale.

When students attending these high schools include a score with their application – even a score below Yale’s median range — they give the committee greater confidence that they are likely to achieve academic success in college.

This confidence is founded on evidence: Yale’s research from before and after the pandemic has consistently demonstrated that, among all application components, test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s future Yale grades. This is true even after controlling for family income and other demographic variables, and it is true for subject-based exams such as AP and IB, in addition to the ACT and SAT. [Emphasis added.]

First of all, I congratulate the wise dons of the Yale University admissions committee on finally acknowledging its error and granting the fundamental correctness of National Review’s editorial position; Bill Buckley is doubtless enjoying an extra martini in Heaven tonight. It is notable, however, that while the academy’s ongoing rush to lower intellectual standards in the name of diversity seems to have finally hit a wall, it is not because they think affirmative action in admissions is suddenly immoral (or even illegal, in their minds at least, no matter what John Roberts says). No, it’s because a test-free policy simply made the resulting class not only dumber, but whiter as well. Yale is returning to testing requirements not in the hopes of immanentizing the meritocracy so much as making sure it still remains properly racially calibrated.