> would go to the most deserving students, with the greatest academic potential, whose families have worked the hardest to prepare them I don't disagree with y

> would go to the most deserving students, with the greatest academic potential, whose families have worked the hardest to prepare them I don't disagree with you but this clearly wouldn't satisfy the complaints of most people in the general population. I went to an Ivy and can assure you that although there were probably some people who completely bought their way in - the vast majority of the wealthy kids there also had stellar aptitude and test-taking ability. I think probably a more straight-forward (but maybe as politically intractable) solution would be to increase the funding/prestige of public institutions. These already rely much more on hard metrics. Its probably pretty hard to coerce Harvard to not let in that child of a billionaire who is "only" 90%th percentile on the SAT - but not as hard to throw UMass research money.