A few comments on this book excerpt: - For the most part, high SATs are tables stakes for applying to elite schools, they are not the deciding factor. The exce

A few comments on this book excerpt: - For the most part, high SATs are tables stakes for applying to elite schools, they are not the deciding factor. The exceptions are for athletes and other folks with preferred admissions. I don’t know why people continue to think that great grades and high SAT scores are the main or only factors in elite school admissions — the admissions materials themselves make it abundantly clear that they are looking for more. - All that said, the “more” mentioned above is typically easier to access if you come from a high income family. - The excerpt mentions low % of students who go from bottom quintile to top quintile after an elite education (~2%). Is that 2% of the total student body or 2% of the bottom quintile elite school students? This is unclear to me, but if it’s the former, that’s probably a big win since lowest quintile students are a small part of the student body to begin with. - Note that some (many?) jumps from bottom quintile to top quintile may just be a well-off family that ran into bad times. This happened to a friend of mine — wealthy family one generation, the next generation lost it to drugs and alcohol, and the third generation reverted back to wealthy. - The leap from the bottom quintile to the top typically requires much more than education. There are a ton of soft skills that are common in the top quintile that are foreign or antithetical to people from the bottom quintile —- general communication, conflict resolution, attitudes towards money, socializing skills, etc. Without these skills, it’s really tough to make it to the top quintile unless you effectively hit the time-in-history and degree lottery with a FAANG-type of high paying job. Even then, someone from the bottom quintile will have limited upside without the soft skills mentioned above. - To close, I wish people would stop presenting elite schools as the gateway to riches or even a stable high income. Learning how to play the “game” that the top quintile plays is much more important than where someone went to school. Obviously schooling (esp. elite schooling) is part of that game, but based on the wide variety of winners in the game that I have known, the soft skills I have mentioned are a much more common and salient trait than an elite schooling.