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Equal opportunity is nice :-) Here is the study, that the op-ed refers to: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013/2013a_hoxby.pdf http://w

by flexie 14y ago

Equal opportunity is nice :-) Here is the study, that the op-ed refers to: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013/2013a_hoxby.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013... The study suggests that around 4 percent of all US high school graduates are high-achievers so we are talking about somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 high school graduates yearly who fall in this category. It's clear that not all high-achievers can go to Harvard. Right now the qualified applicants are sorted based on extra curricular activities etc. If more of the 25-35,000 low income high-achievers, which the study suggests there are, applied to Harvard, most would probably by filtered out based on the lack of extra curricular activities.

pcl 14y ago
most would probably by filtered out based on the lack of extra curricular activities That's possible, but that certainly doesn't seem like a good reason to disenfranchise 25% of our brightest students. Furthermore, I'd expect that if those students had help during their applications to the top-tier schools, they'd probably also apply to some other great schools along the way. More exposure to the system can only help. The interesting thing about this is that a huge chunk of the operating expenses for top universities are paid for by us taxpayers. It'd be interesting to replace military recruiters with "government recruiters", charged with representing all the post-high-school government-funded programs available.