Except racking up points for your adversity is the point of such policies.

Avoiding doing so basically means you need to rack up the inverse - privilege points - except you're not allowed to do that, so it turns into obscure "penalty points" hidden in euphemisms.

Right, at the beginning sure, and ideally it would quickly improve. But why have all of these institutions do it individually, and out of the public eye? I doubt some random Yale admissions specialist has unique societal insights that the other institutions don't.

at least it would be more intellectually honest and transparent.