Perhaps I find this less shocking because my kids have gone to school in a place where you apply, interview, and test in to kindergarten, middle school, and high school. Passing through the gauntlet does not mean that the school will not ‘counsel out’ your child in later years if they feel the fit is not good. It happens all the time in private and selective public schools. By all means avoid schools with policies you cannot abide but imagining that this process or anything else in life (especially in entertainment) will be ‘fair’ is unrealistic. One evaluator’s ‘arbitrary’ is another’s ‘justifiable’. No one who enters will be ‘safe’ from emotional injury.