Yes, if you are a good students and want to have the same measures of success as successful US students have, then you are going to be disappointed. But that's

Yes, if you are a good students and want to have the same measures of success as successful US students have, then you are going to be disappointed. But that's the US point of view. Germany has different measures of success. E.g. there are high school competitions throughout Germany (Jugend Forscht, etc). For university, smart students can still get into social clubs if they are good, like the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (0.5% of all German students), or if they graduated high school in the right area, the Maximilaneum. You then still study at the normal university but have access to a network of equally successful people as you. I think this setup is way more egalitarian than what the US has going on with its historic graduates and donor families admission setup. It's not a wrong thing in itself to mix intelligent people with rich people, intelligent people need investors for their ideas and rich people need smart people to manage their money and companies. Such a mixing process is I think really good for creating a successful economy. But then call it how it is. It's also a bit of a lie for old money in the US to use their influence and prestige to get their kids into top institutions and then have them later label themselves selfmade millionaires. I prefer the German system, and am not really happy about the federal excellence initiative that tries to "Americanize" the system by creating a divide among universities. The current system is way more in the spirit of "the children of California shall be our children" than what the american elite institutions do.