But that goes back to my problem with the original article suggesting that “the core of a university’s real mission is to produce and disseminate ideas”. If that is the claim then why wouldn’t you want “pure intelligence” to be “the only factor colleges could or should consider”?
In reality that is not what US colleges are trying to do in admissions, and hence they are either not fulfilling or actively diverging from what the author claimed to be their “real mission” and instead engaging in social engineering. That may be all for the good, but then the author is trying to mislead his readers.
And it’s not in the least bit difficult to “make a test that differentiates students at the highest levels without making it too much like either AP tests or IQ tests.” Look up what a STEP paper entails for students wanting to do math.