The system should value qualification higher than other factors. But the system is made up of people with inherent biases that has led to imbalanced representation of the majority over actual qualifications.

You can strive for excellence and equality at the same time. It’s not zero sum.

In my country, in high school, you get grades and at the end you have a standardized test.

Colleges decide what ratio will be used (and if any special requirements are needed), and in most cases it's 60% standardized test results, 40% grades + some formula to turn that into 0-100 score. This is known well in advance, before even applying to the college.

College has 150 open spots, 230 people apply, 20 fail the last year of high school, the other 210 are put on a ranked list by the points they've achieved, at 150th place "a line is drawn" and that's the cuttof for who gets accepted and who doesn't. They just publish "86.5 points needed to be accepted", and you can do the math at home and don't have to wait for the post to arrive.

How is that not equal? It has worked since literally the commie times.