The nursing student case is different. There has been a broadly successful movement to give increasing numbers of students extra time on tests, nominally due “disability”. This movement, which started I think in the high schools, has seeped into colleges and, as in this case, professional schools. And professional schools of all type now routinely make admission and grade decisions based on the results of tests in which some students have much more time.

One effect of this movement (apart from certifying unqualified students) is that there is no longer an objective way for a student to prove mastery of the material or even intelligence. A 180 LSAT score might be due to the student being smart and quick-witted – but it also might be due to the student having twice as much time as other students; likewise with a top GPA from a top school.

And that in turn is going to make it much tougher for students who are independent thinkers to get into top schools. A conservative student is already going to have difficulties with grades and recommendations from some of the politically oriented liberal faculty; now he can’t argue that he is actually bright. Cruz, for example, got into Harvard partly based on his 180 LSATs, and likely got into Princeton for similar reasons. In the modern regimen, a few SJW type professors who disliked his politics could have harmed his chances.