Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

In this edition, I want to tackle a counterintuitive question right off the bat—is meritocracy a bad thing?

You’d be hard pressed to say no, because any competition, exam, or  selection based purely on merit should yield the best results. Ideally.

Of course, no education system in the world exists in ideal social conditions. They are tinged with the inequalities and inherent biases of the societies they exist in. Different students are going to have different economic and social starting points. So how does one even begin to calculate merit? (Now, I know where you think this is going, but no. The arguments for and against reservations are interesting, but that’s for a different day.)

Tackling merit in a diverse country like India is super complex. So higher educational institutions have chosen one of two methods for admissions. One way is to create a common baseline exam, like the JEE, NEET, or Class 12th boards, and make that the only gatekeeper.

The other way, though arduous, is to introduce not one but several hoops in the process, like the prestigious IIMs. A Common Admission Test (CAT), a group discussion, a personal one-on-one interview to pad an in-depth selection process… IAS aspirants, lawyers, and private college applicants very often have to “crack” the interview stage to get selected.

And now, we have a storied college in Delhi, known for being picky in its selections and graduating future parliamentarians, that is stuck between these two ideals of calculating “merit”.

Stephen’s solo act

St Stephen’s College, part of Delhi University, is a highly coveted destination. I mean, just their acceptance rate—1.3%—can put Harvard to shame. 

And yes, yes, I know the scales aren’t exactly comparable, but here’s the thing. Similar to Ivy league colleges in the US, Stephen’s gives the “interview” leg of its admissions process a 15% weightage; 85% weightage is given to an applicant’s class 12th board marks. The interview may not have the majority weightage, but it definitely matters: for every seat in a humanities course, Stephen’s interviews five candidates.

For Stephen’s, the interview stage is a clear decider. It’s also what sets the college apart from its surrounding stack of colonial institutions, which depend solely on the other mark of merit—the board cut-offs.

And Stephen’s thought it could carry on as usual in 2022 too. 

But the policy winds have shifted so drastically during years of the pandemic, how can a 141-year-old institution not feel the draft? (And ‘draft’ is severely understating it, to be honest. I’d rate what’s been happening as a decently-sized storm, at the least.)  

For one thing, the board cut-off (which we’ve written about before) has now been made redundant.