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>America’s supposedly meritocratic system of elite higher education revolves around an intensive search for the most capable students. That is an incorrect ass

>America’s supposedly meritocratic system of elite higher education revolves around an intensive search for the most capable students. That is an incorrect assumption. The elite institutions want people who will be part of the elite. The big draw for these is networking opportunities. If one of your dorm mates is a Justice, the other a Senator, and the third a CEO of a Fortune 500, when you say found a startup, you are going to be able to pitch your idea to some very powerful and wealthy individuals. Now how do these elite institutions make sure they get future elites. Well, throughout human history and even now, the most likely way to become elite is having parents who are elite. So students who have elite parents are disproportionately represented. The other way to be elite is to have extraordinary talent combined with extraordinary determination combined with some luck. The colleges therefore use test scores/ extracurricular activity etc to select for these people. It is no coincidence that the founders of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook all came from elite institutions as have a majority of Presidents and Supreme Court Justices. The benefit of an elite institution is not the curriculum but who your classmates are.

DuskStar 8y ago
Exactly! If I had the opportunity to go to an institution with Harvard-tier educational opportunities and reputation but no legacy admissions (merit-based only) or one where a third of the students were children of the rich and powerful, I know which one I'd choose. (Of course, if I was one of those "children of the rich and powerful" I'd probably choose the first school - much better environment for finding opportunities to invest in. Less competition, after all)
- rayiner 8y ago
  > Exactly! If I had the opportunity to go to an institution with Harvard-tier educational opportunities and reputation but no legacy admissions (merit-based only) or one where a third of the students were children of the rich and powerful, I know which one I'd choose. Case in point: I went to a public selective-admission high school where the average SAT scores were comparable to an Ivy (probably 1,450 when I went, over 1,500 today). That's higher than the top private secondary schools. 15 years later, folks are mostly pretty successful (doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists) but not exactly masters of the universe. Nothing compared to what you might see in a cohort of Andover or Exeter grads.

DuskStar 8y ago

Exactly! If I had the opportunity to go to an institution with Harvard-tier educational opportunities and reputation but no legacy admissions (merit-based only) or one where a third of the students were children of the rich and powerful, I know which one I'd choose. (Of course, if I was one of those "children of the rich and powerful" I'd probably choose the first school - much better environment for finding opportunities to invest in. Less competition, after all)

rayiner 8y ago
> Exactly! If I had the opportunity to go to an institution with Harvard-tier educational opportunities and reputation but no legacy admissions (merit-based only) or one where a third of the students were children of the rich and powerful, I know which one I'd choose. Case in point: I went to a public selective-admission high school where the average SAT scores were comparable to an Ivy (probably 1,450 when I went, over 1,500 today). That's higher than the top private secondary schools. 15 years later, folks are mostly pretty successful (doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists) but not exactly masters of the universe. Nothing compared to what you might see in a cohort of Andover or Exeter grads.