In a December blog post, I contemplated the "thought experiment" of using a lottery to decide admissions to elite universities.

But just a few days later, the author of that thought experiment published an article where she really gets down to the essence of the message: "In fact, we should discard the notion that admissions is a meritocratic process that selects the 'best' 18-year-olds who apply to a selective university. When we let go of our meritocracy ideals, we see more clearly that so many talented, accomplished young people who will be outstanding leaders in the future will not make it to the likes of Harvard, Stanford and Yale."