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Eh, this kind of "the sky is falling" argument doesn't hold much water to me. So, some "smart nonconformist kid" doesn't get into Harvard. Is that the end of th

Eh, this kind of "the sky is falling" argument doesn't hold much water to me. So, some "smart nonconformist kid" doesn't get into Harvard. Is that the end of the world? Larry Page went to Michigan, Brin to Maryland - they did fine. There are a lot of great public schools out there. Talented people like that aren't getting locked out of anything. A much bigger problem in education starts much earlier. If your parents don't provide a stable and education-leaning home life, or you live in a school district where safety is a bigger concern than educational quality, well, social mobility becomes a lot harder then. These are some hard problems, but reach way beyond education, into the social safety net and beyond. Guaranteeing that a bright kid who is not born into the best circumstances gets a fair shot at life is still a work in progress, but has little to do with whether they get into Harvard or MIT.

govg 6y ago
That's really not the argument though is it? Saying "so what if someone are left out of X, Y is a comparable alternative" doesn't change the fact that X is being shut out. If you remove these "objective" measures, it starts being reliant on "holistic factors", and feels like this inherently gives an advantage to well off kids whose parents can send them on different summer schools or labs or whatever. Harvard (and the Ivy league) still maintains a reputation and the industry still does care about it (especially in liberal arts / banking etc), so these fields will reduce in accessibility to those who can't develop "holistic skills". The other problem you point to is very real, but that's independent of the issue currently being discussed in this post.