Move over, racial quotas and DEI questions. Colleges are letting high schoolers virtue-signal their way in.

Administrators at elite American colleges are simultaneously outsourcing some of their work evaluating potential students to juvenile critics around the world while giving applicants an opportunity to virtue-signal their way into contention by telling strangers what they want to hear about hot-button topics like abortion and the war in Gaza.

Colby College, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University, and Washington University have partnered with Schoolhouse.world and will welcome applicants to submit “Dialogues” certifications on the peer-tutoring platform as an optional supplement to their college application this fall.

One of the upcoming ‘Dialogues’ focuses on the topic of DEI.

According to Schoolhouse, which was founded by the CEO of Khan Academy, Sal Khan, “The Dialogues portfolio is a certificate you can submit to our university partners as part of your college applications to demonstrate your open mindedness, empathy, and communication skills.”

Students on Schoolhouse can engage in one-on-one Zoom conversations with other students for “Dialogues” credits.

Topics include abortion, “addressing racism,” affirmative action, climate change, euthanasia, “free speech vs hate speech,” “future of gender equality,” “income inequality,” “Israel Palestine Conflict,” and “threats to democracy.”

At the time of publication, one of the upcoming “Dialogues” focuses on the topic of DEI.

Students participating in sessions on this particular topic will be: provided with an overview on the subject; prompted to discuss their views on diversity, equity and inclusion; and allotted 60 minutes to discuss the matter and take up relevant questions.

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  LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images

In order to receive credit for the session, students ages 14-18 must complete a post-event survey, which asks them to select up to five terms from a list of real and HR-championed virtues — including empathy and kindness — that best describe their partner’s strengths in the discussion. These responses are reflected in the other student’s “Dialogues” portfolio.

Students can improve their scores by attending more sessions, signaling the attributes strangers online want to see, and challenging their own views.

“It’s very easy in anonymous or asynchronous forums to just completely ‘other’ the other party — to think they’re idiots, think they’re evil, whatever,” Khan told Education Week. “That’s very hard to do in this [face-to-face] setting.”

Harvard sophomore Alex Bronzini-Vender noted in a recent New York Times op-ed that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action in college admissions, colleges exploited a “loophole”: “Though the court would no longer allow colleges to screen applicants for race per se, they would probably still be allowed to ask applicants how race had shaped their lives.”

This “identity question” apparently gave way to a “disagreement question,” where applicants were prompted to detail a moment where they engaged in a difficult conversation or encountered someone with a differing opinion.

‘Not exactly subtle.’

Schoolhouse, which rewards literal virtue signaling, appears to afford colleges another way of “tone-polic[ing]” admissions files, suggested Bronzini-Vender.

Forbes noted in 2022 that colleges were drawn to Schoolhouse by the promise that it could provide evidence both of applicants’ academic preparation and whether they might make positive contributions to campus life.

James Nondorf, the University of Chicago’s vice president for enrollment and dean of college admissions, told Forbes, “In our first year of the partnership with Schoolhouse.world, students from 15 different countries and 14 states submitted certifications to UChicago, and UChicago enrolled an incredibly diverse group of 13 students with Schoolhouse.world transcripts.”

“College admissions basically adding ‘virtue signaling’ to [their] list of enrollment requirements,” said Austen Allred, co-founder and CEO of the coding boot camp BloomTech.

“‘Let’s debate immigration then I’ll grade you on empathy,'” Allred added. “Not exactly subtle.”

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