The answer to every story about elite college admissions is to make sure every American has access to a low price high quality public education within a reasonable drive of their hometown.
The wild thing is we mostly achieved this. Then destroyed it.
Yeah - well, it's fine if people have access to good-quality education, the key is whether or not they have access to high-prestige education and the connections and status that go with it.
Yup but also, many of those kids already have connections from prep school. The whole thing is a "prestige" game but the game is to show their kids aren't just rich but also smart. It's supposed to be a thing you can't "just" buy and in some ways you can't
The other thing I'd add is these people have a class anxiety that's real. They're clearly rich but not necessarily rich enough to make sure there kids are also rich if that makes sense. The gap between where they are and the tranche below is large but instead of pushing for a more equitable society
They reinforce inequities and then work to tilt the scale on their favor. That's the subtext of the NY Mag piece and pieces like it. I just wish they'd made it text
No one is more cutthroat than parents who climbed from the middle classes out to the bottom rungs of the upper classes, and feels they "need" to get their kid into a prestigious school so they'll marry up, and stay up. They are MORE than happy to reinforce inequities to do it.
“Tilting the scale” also includes hidden practices to deliver grades to students. At Harvard when one student was deliberately failing I got a call to explain why. Not the student— the instructor. I said “because he’s not doing the work” and was asked what “we” could do about that.
Perhaps that’s why the least prestigious Ivies (and less prestigious Ivy-adjacents) are the least prestigious - they have fewer rich kids proportional to the number of middle class and lower kids.
And the smart kids are assumed to be well-connected (or at least benefit from the apparatus that exists to connect people to the rich kids), so it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement to some extent.
As long as you're smart, white, and male, and otherwise socially acceptable to the wealthy. If you're female, smart, and very lucky, you might get married for a few years.
There are prestige games everywhere, all the time. Our attention and public policy doesn't have to prioritize it. That's a choice (and I get why it's made but it's still a choice).
There’s also an entire industry of small, expensive private colleges designed to provide the networking advantages to students with average grades. Some parents will pay any price to keep away the shame of having their kid go to a non-flagship state school.
these small colleges seem to have a very summer-campy vibe too. for those rich kids who are afraid of facing the reality of adult life, more than the normal huddled masses of young adults anyway
