Perhaps I missed it but I didn't see the author put forward a mechanism for how the "gate later" approach was supposed to work. Did I miss it?
To your point though, absent an implementation of "gate later", it's not clear to me that what the author would want would put you near the "dullest stars". There's no way Harvard (or any other Ivy+) would accept a "gate later" implementation that would give them the dullest of stars. The differentiators between folks with any non-zero chance of acceptance are already pretty small, and I don't think "allow everyone in" would be feasible as they would not have room to put all of the people who want to be there.
To your point though, absent an implementation of "gate later", it's not clear to me that what the author would want would put you near the "dullest stars". There's no way Harvard (or any other Ivy+) would accept a "gate later" implementation that would give them the dullest of stars. The differentiators between folks with any non-zero chance of acceptance are already pretty small, and I don't think "allow everyone in" would be feasible as they would not have room to put all of the people who want to be there.