[dghf]

Well, that kind of depends on how you define merit. One could argue that someone who gets reasonable but not stellar grades in spite of bad parents, a deprived background, etc. displays more merit than someone from a privileged background with every advantage who attains perfect grades.

[SamReidHughes]

If you have that information, you can factor that into your admissions criteria using feedback from previous students. For example, you could rank incoming students and tweak a racial parameter to equalize the 6-year graduation rate of the bottom decile in each race. Doing so will (by construction) improve the outcome of your 6-year graduation rate. Pick whatever is a good proxy for whatever your goals are.

That's more meritocratic than ignoring that information.

There is a different sense of meritocracy though, in which the goals themselves are unmeritocratic. For example, "educating lots of left-handed people" (to the exclusion of right-handers) is a rather unmeritocratic goal. The real argument being had is in this respect -- for one, whether educating should be done for students' benefit or for the sum of others' benefit. And also, in the subcategory of "for others' benefit," whether making maximally good scientists, historians, and the like, should be the goal, or whether and to what extent there's benefit in trying to infiltrate minority communities with a more education-valuing culture.