Merit is more probabilistic when socioeconomic factors depress performance. You'll have a few outliers who kill it in secondary/middle/high school, but for the

Merit is more probabilistic when socioeconomic factors depress performance. You'll have a few outliers who kill it in secondary/middle/high school, but for the most part, people who are less well-to-do perform less effectively, and there's more and more research pointing to the likelihood that survival pressures negatively affect academic performance. Maybe not alone, but they're likely connected. (Edit: tylerho references this here—https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018383) Good starting point: https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/widening-academic-achievement-gap-between-rich-and-poor-new-evidence-and-possible https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/widening-academic-achievem... Basically, if the goal is fairness, merit only fulfills this when other pressures are relieved. This includes racial and income inequality.