should have said more merit based! how about comparing kids in common tests - that should give you an idea of normalizing student grades. If a 4.0 student in a schools get a 3 or 4 in all APs or 1300 in SAT or 650 in SAT subject --let us compare that to another student who has 3.8 GPA but has higher scores in these common tests. There are multiple was to reduce the bias - but is there a political will to do it?
Throw away lines like merit based admission is a cop out! Other countries are doing that is why most of the top students in Grad school are kids from China, India, Korea! They do NOT have these fuzzy ways to admit kids or even Germany for that matter!
Understand that top kids from poorer neighborhoods should get the opportunity to attend these schools but you do NOT have to give 6% auto admits if they those school students do Not have comparable scores in common tests. There are many ways to reduce the inequity - just look at what they did for Auto admit for small classes? why Not use similar criterion for some schools who have not proven that their top kids are in any way comparable to top 6% of top high schools?