S.F. school board strips Lowell High of its merit-based admissions system FacebookTwitterEmail The Lowell Black Student Union hold a press conference to speak out against the recent racist attacks on the Lowell community on Friday, Feb. 5, 2021 in San Francisco, California.Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle One of the top-performing public high schools in the country will no longer admit students based on academic performance, ending more than a century of merit-based admissions. More than seven hours into a marathon meeting Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Education voted 5-2 to use the same lottery-based system to assign students to Lowell High as other district high schools instead of maintaining the previous system that used test scores and grades.