Let me pose a "risky" question. Those classes and signs of affluence. Are they JUST signs of affluence, or are they also signaling mechanisms for academic fit

Let me pose a "risky" question. Those classes and signs of affluence. Are they JUST signs of affluence, or are they also signaling mechanisms for academic fitness? Having gone to an city public school with students across the financial spectrum (all the way from projects through upper class suburban) there was certainly a correlation between income and these classes, but there was also (logically) a correlation between the students who took those courses/had those good SAT scores and students who had the right tools/experience to succeed academically/not be one of the many first-year college dropouts I also unfortunately saw. What I worry is that we're addressing the problem too high up the pipeline. I'm not sure how many of the highschoolers I saw who had no access to mentoring/training figures, or extra help through parents/extracurriculars, would have been ABLE to succeed in college off the bat. The metrics, although correlated with money, _do provide utility_ to the things colleges want to look for in a purely academic context. A poor student can be intuitively brilliant on some subject, but entirely lacking the sort of background, academic and work habits, and other tools someone with earlier exposure would have built up by college. (again, this is a broad generalization, there are certainly outliers, and while one could make a well-taken effort to capture them, I'm just musing on the underlying problem) In summary: - I want to see more of those less fortunate get opportunities in higher education - I'm not sure dropping them into the system after years of having been less fortunate will have the level of success that is often aspired to. - I'd like to see more focus on opportunities earlier on in upbringing; but here's the biggest catch 22: I'm not sure we'll EVER fix things like SAT prep courses. Even if we offered free prep, SO MUCH of taking advantage of it relies on having the right mentors/guides to push you to take advantage of that, build the right mindset, and that's harder to give broadly pro-bonum than some free prep courses. (The other problem in a similar vein is, and perhaps I'm just not creative enough, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with measures of academic fitness that _couldn't_ be gamed with more time/money. At the end of the day, time and opportunities DO lead to more academic fitness, so to me it becomes a question less of digging for diamonds, and more of trying to give more people time and opportunities early on.) That's the real conundrum though as it seems: If we want to make a level of schooling that doesn't just become "another highschool", it will necessarily select the "best and brightest". And for any system of judging that, having more money/resources(time) will likely allow someone to improve their odds. I'd be curious as to if anyone sees ways around this; or to go back to my "risky question" statement, if there IS a safe way around this.