> This would seem to contradict the premise of the article. The talented poor kids would by that argument have no problem breaking into the top echelons of soci

> This would seem to contradict the premise of the article. The talented poor kids would by that argument have no problem breaking into the top echelons of society, irrespective of the resources available to rich kids to attend the best colleges. Reality is somewhere in between. I'm a self-taught autodidact who grew up relatively poor (by first world standards) and attended a mid-tier Midwestern school-- so I do have a BS degree but not one of the top-brand ones that really open doors. I've worked my way up to doing a lot of the things that top-tier college grads do: working with other top people, working on advanced leading-edge things, and raising angel and venture capital. There's a catch though: I feel like I've had to work at least twice as hard to do these things vs. someone who graduated with a name brand degree from a top school. I'm also white and male, so if I were female or non-white I'd probably have to work 4-8X as hard. So yeah, you can battering ram yourself past things like name brand university bias, classism, racism, etc., but it's nice if you don't have to. So my advice to today's young people would be to go to a top tier university if you can do so on reasonable terms. I'd also say it probably matters more if you have other things going against you like race, gender, or a stronger class divide. Having that name brand university will compensate a bit. It's somewhat disturbingly like leveling your character in some kind of MMO.