Meritocracy.....
Earlier: quotas to pretend lower achieving minority should be represented by percentages rather than tests and other qualifications. U of Michigan suit in SCOTUS was upheld as they could “consider” race for admissions, and all US were allowed to discriminate against whites legally.
Then: Jews kept out of universities or held down to a lower percentage. Dr.Jonas Salk was barred from entering several medical schools but found one to accept him as a Jew and invented the polio vaccine The Salk Vaccine later. Many other Jews were examples.
Later: Highly intelligent and well qualified Asians kept down to a low percentage so as not to make schools majority Asian in math, science, technology and others. Quota systems were opposed in court and have ups and downs:
“Asian-Americans make up about 5 percent of the population of public high schools in the United States and were 22 percent of those admitted to Harvard’s freshman class this year. Asian-Americans make up 26 percent of the undergraduate enrollment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/07/look-data-and-arguments-about-asian-americans-and-admissions-elite?v2
Yep, pre-meritocracy the elite schools were basically networking associations for the descendants of colonial-era settlers - many of those same people then abolished quotas and used the SAT for admissions which cleared the way for Jews and later Asians to thrive at said institutions. As a white gentile at U of Chicago in the 1990s, I have to say all of my Jewish and Asian classmates earned it (as did I).