In America I believe they use a Grade Point Average system. In the UK we use the grades from A Levels. Those systems seem to work pretty well for determining academic merit.
So the only thing you need to do is prevent corrupt admissions policies. That can be pretty easily prevented by anonymizing the grades. Have a system where the colleges get a list of grades / GPAs alongside a unique ID for each student. The college makes a decision based on the grades, and then after the decision has been made, a computer links the unique ID back to the student's name / address and sends the letter of acceptance.
So the only thing you need to do is prevent corrupt admissions policies. That can be pretty easily prevented by anonymizing the grades. Have a system where the colleges get a list of grades / GPAs alongside a unique ID for each student. The college makes a decision based on the grades, and then after the decision has been made, a computer links the unique ID back to the student's name / address and sends the letter of acceptance.
