Sciences Po is considered one of the most elite universities in France. It is most famous in France for preparing for entrance to ENA, the school that top civil servants, among whom the country's leadership class is usually selected, attend.

It is also the school that has been most eager to copy the US Ivy League university model, including increasing tuition at very high rates, teaching woke nonsense, and being shut down by pro-Palestinian protests. This process is easy to mock, but there have also been positives: Sciences Po has emphasized a pluridisciplinary undergraduate liberal arts program, while most French elite schools are laser-focused on one subject, such as business or science.

The way admissions to elite schools works in France is very different from the US: students sit a number of competitive exams, which are blind-graded, and then students are ranked based on their results in these exams. The top students go to the top-ranked schools, then to the second-best ranked school, and so on down the line. Sports, extracurricular activities, let alone race or whether your parents can donate a lot of money, are not considered as a factor for admission. Nobody can buy admission.

Sciences Po bucked that trend, starting in the late 1990s. First, they maintained their entrance exam, but also set aside a certain percentage of spots in each incoming class (to the frustration of many in the public, they never disclosed what percentage, exactly) to students of underprivileged backgrounds, who were admitted on the basis of transcripts. But eventually, they did away with the entrance exams altogether, as they were judged "discriminatory."

But, in a "vibe shift" move, Sciences Po's new President has decided to bring back the mandatory exam, just as some schools have decided to bring back the SAT, Semafor reports.

We confess to being huge fans of the French competitive exam system, and not just because it's inherently "meritocratic" in a general way, though that is certainly a plus. And not just because your correspondent happens to have done exceptionally well under that system.

An elite university selections process is, by definition, a way to select a country's future elites. This means that in a modern democracy, it must generate public trust that it is meritocratic (and the best way to do that is to make it actually meritocratic). But it must fill broader goods, in selecting a certain type of person.

The French exam system has two benefits. First, in non-science tracks, all tests are essay-based. Meaning you must sit down for four or even six hours, uninterrupted, and write an essay on a topic. Usually on liberal arts topics such as philosophy, history, or literature. This selects not just for raw IQ but for good writing, good thinking, and generally having a strong background in French culture—and your country's future leaders should be schooled in your country's culture. If an immigrant fresh off the boat has high IQ and work ethic but doesn't know who Flaubert is, the meritocratic compact will not be shattered, nor society deeply harmed, if he attends a science-focused school, or "only" a second-tier school (outperforming later in his career, as countless studies show that high IQ people who attend a school lower-ranked than the one they might have ideally attended still end up doing very well in life). Think of all the battles over the "core curriculum" and the supposed virtues of a liberal arts education in terms of passing on a body of culture, teaching "how to think" and write. Why not make it part of the entrance exam, thereby ensuring that people have learned it by the time they turn 18?

There's another virtue of the competitive exam system, and there's no polite way to say this: it rewards creative "high IQ slackers" and rewards unimaginative grinders less than a grade-average-based system. We have known many business leaders who tell us they seek to recruit "high SAT, low GPA" types; and we have known many such types to be the most innovative people we have come across. (The perceptive reader will understand that his correspondent is biased.) The experience of the meritocratic kid is a dire, humorless grind. Of course, every motivated family or child can turn any selection system into a humorless grind. Certainly, France has a system of extremely demanding prep classes to prepare for these exams. But in grade average-based systems, the humorless grind is a necessity, while in competitive examination-based systems it is optional.

Another way in which the US might adapt the French system: for all the scorn we have heaped on Sciences Po, version 1.0 of its positive discrimination program actually has merit. The school targeted specific high schools in underprivileged areas (they claimed they targeted poor rural (read: white) areas as well as the immigrant-heavy Banlieues) and built partnerships with those schools. Teachers in those schools were coached to look for "diamond in the rough" type students, and those students, once identified, were enrolled into afterschool activities to prepare them for potential admission to an elite school. Then, after several years of this, the students were able to put together an application for admission to Sciences Po.

Given the realities of politics and racial test scores in the contemporary US, it seems illusory to believe that all spots at all Ivy League schools will one day be granted purely on the basis of the SAT or some equally meritocratic system. The original way Sciences Po did it seems to be much more respectful of the most charitable interpretation of what affirmative action tried to do: to identify the most meritorious potential future leaders in America's underclass, who have the potential to succeed at the highest level but for reasons beyond their control would not have been admitted there otherwise. You may disagree with even that idea. You may think that all students should be admitted on the same basis. You may be right. But at least the approach we have been describing is noble in its intention, it doesn't just blindly try to achieve some sort of ideal racial mix so that the pictures in the brochure might show a certain pigmentation of the student body. Ivy League schools who want a diverse—truly diverse, not just "diverse"—student body and don't want to get further punishment from the Supreme Court might well consider such an approach.

Harvard could announce tomorrow that 85% of its incoming spots would be awarded based on a nationally competitive exam, including an SAT-like IQ test, a mathematics test, and essays on the great books of the Western canon (and some non-Western books, let's be realistic). High school brand, high school grades, and extracurriculars would not be considered. Students of high athletic ability would be able to submit an application outlining their athletic skills, which the school's athletics staff would grade, and this would give them extra points, but never counting for more than (say) 5% of their grade. The remaining 15% of the spots would be awarded based on applications from students at participating charter schools serving poor communities, in the way we have just outlined. This system would serve competing goods and interests. Most importantly, it would be transparent, which is what most people truly crave out of such a system. Most Americans, for example, we believe, would have a much better time with the idea that student athletes get a bump in admissions if schools were transparent about how much that bump can be and on the basis of what objective criteria it is granted. Actual academics would judge the academic potential of students, on the basis of essays actually produced by students, rather than overrated low-IQ admissions bureaucrats judging essays produced by overpaid admissions consultants.

More realistically, a state such as Texas, which has nationally-ranked elite public universities, could implement this system at the state level.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Tech — In our exclusive interview with the Reshoring Initiative's Harry Moser, he pointed out that the CHIPS Act's investment in semiconductor manufacturing capacity in the US, along with similar investments in China and Europe, could have the unintended consequence of creating a chips glut and crashing the market. The WSJ now worries that we may be there. "Investors are worried that a huge production increase from China could derail the recovery of the memory-chip market. That doesn’t yet seem like an immediate risk, but China could still be a wild card down the road," Jacky Wong reports. Obviously, the CHIPS Act won't be making manufacturing jobs great again if it causes (in part) a worldwide crash in the chips market.

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#Immigration — "Of the 662,566 illegal immigrants with criminal records, approximately 647,000 weren’t detained." This is an incredible statistic from a WSJ op-ed by Texas Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales.

#AI #Manufacturing — The company Atomic Industries has announced it has created the first AI-designed injection mold. Could AI help spur a manufacturing renaissance by making manufacturing more efficient and therefore more competitive in high-wage countries? That's a thought.

#FamilyPolicy — Nice find from American Compass's Sam Silvestro, going back to the well of the intra-Republican debates on the desirability family policy. Far from being a newfangled reformocon idea, Silvestro notes, Teddy Roosevelt already championed pro-family policy in his day. He publicly argued "that tax rates 'should be immensely heavier on the childless and on families with one or two children, while there should be an equally heavy discrimination in reverse, in favor of families with over three children,' and that single working men should receive a 'far heavier share of taxation' than families," Silvestro writes. So there! Using the tax code to benefit families is as Republican and conservative as the bull moose and the charge up Kettle Hill. By the way, this historical memento is also a useful reminder of something else: in the English language, "discrimination" used to be a neutral term, to simply describe factually that something was being selected rather than something else.

#SocialIssues — French court orders four major porn websites shut down for failing to take sufficient action to comply with that country's age-verification law. See? It's possible. All that's needed is the will. (Via Le Figaro)

#Politics — The Kamala Harris plagiarism scandal keeps roiling on. "A Washington Free Beacon review of Harris’s work finds instances of plagiarism extend beyond her book Smart on Crime." The Beacon has all the receipts, detailed and factual. Ordinarily, this would tank a presidential campaign. But we live in a post-truth, balkanized-media era. Actual and potential Kamala Harris supporters won't hear about these facts, let alone get to use them to form an opinion about her fitness for the highest office in the land. But the facts will remain in the public record, and gnaw at her career in the public arena, should it extent past November in any shape or form. This is not just about politics and Presidential horse race. It's about public trust. A republic can only function when its elites have some degree of public honesty, and of public accountability for publicly failing to uphold a standard of honesty.