In France, admission to the best higher education institutions, like Ecole Polytechnique, is done through an anonymously-marked written exam with questions about math, physics, etc. Admission is entirely based on how you scored on that exam, with the top N scores guaranteed admission (and the ones below that have to expect some people above to decline for whatever reason, which in the case of Polytechnique is rare, unless they got into something equally prestigious like Ecole Normale Superieure).
This system has produced three Nobel recipients (Becquerel in physics, Tirole and Allais in economics), many famous mathematicians and physicists (Carnot, Cholesky, Chasles, Coriolis, Fresnel, Mandelbrot, Navier, Poisson, Poincare, Thevenin, Lagrange, etc.), three French Presidents (Giscard d'Estaing most recently), many military leaders, astronauts, CEOs, etc. and indeed also Hacker News posterboy Fabrice Bellard (and that's just for one school, Ecole Polytechnique).
In France, admission to the best higher education institutions, like Ecole Polytechnique, is done through an anonymously-marked written exam with questions about math, physics, etc. Admission is entirely based on how you scored on that exam, with the top N scores guaranteed admission (and the ones below that have to expect some people above to decline for whatever reason, which in the case of Polytechnique is rare, unless they got into something equally prestigious like Ecole Normale Superieure).
This system has produced three Nobel recipients (Becquerel in physics, Tirole and Allais in economics), many famous mathematicians and physicists (Carnot, Cholesky, Chasles, Coriolis, Fresnel, Mandelbrot, Navier, Poisson, Poincare, Thevenin, Lagrange, etc.), three French Presidents (Giscard d'Estaing most recently), many military leaders, astronauts, CEOs, etc. and indeed also Hacker News posterboy Fabrice Bellard (and that's just for one school, Ecole Polytechnique).
It works.