This is not just "bad methodology in service of dubious goal". It's blatantly illegal, and not just by weak "disparate impact" standard. According to disparate impact standard, procedures that result in disparate outcomes between protected classes are illegal, even if causing these outcomes was not the intent of the policy. Here, the disparate impact was not just unintended side effect, it was the deliberate goal. They deliberately constructed the test to discriminate based on race. This is even ignoring the alleged cases of insiders leaking answer key to some applicants.