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
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.
