Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) is a new nonprofit seeking to establish race-neutral admissions policies. Its members include students who believe they were denied admission to the elite school of their choice while lesser qualified applicants were admitted under affirmative action.They have brought a federal lawsuit against the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for using race-conscious admissions practices. They cite a UNC study showing that the race-neutral 10 percent plan, that is, admitting in-state applicants in the top ten percent of their high school classes, would yield about the same, if not more, minority students. The college is countering that the ten percent plan brings in students with SATs on average 56 points below those admitted under the race conscious policy.

56 points?!

Haven’t contemporary experts and educators been telling us that SATs are not a matter of intelligence and ability but of the unfair advantage conferred by privilege, tutoring, superior schooling, helicopter parents, and the like? Yet UNC is willing to go to federal court for a mere 56 points? Can we conclude then that the SATs are still an important indicator of the ability to do college level work, at whatever level the particular college wishes to maintain? Or is UNC going to court for a bit of empty prestige?