After all, if you flipped the script and the US used standardized tests and you were then told that China uses a committee of experts that will certify incoming applicants' stated political positions, race, and cultural background in order to "craft a class" (as an admissions officer calls it in SAT Wars) with a carve-out for the children of those who have already attended, you would be informed of the need for meritocracy, the tendency towards nepotism, and the obvious racial biases that will affect individuals in such a system.
Likewise, you would doubtless be informed that the East's more holistic look at the total student is a superior form of student selection since it is driven by a Confucian focus on the gestalt human rather than on the reductive metrics of the West.
What is interesting to me is to hear from those who have succeeded in some system but nonetheless wish it were different.
