Whatever we do, the elite of a generation from now will consist largely of the children of the current elite. The path to the good life is challenging because t

Whatever we do, the elite of a generation from now will consist largely of the children of the current elite. The path to the good life is challenging because there is a lot of competition, good advice and careful preparation help a lot in getting there, and the people in the best position to provide that advice and preparation are the ones who have already made it. But I do think we can tune the parameters a bit. We can make sure that everyone has access to decent-to-good education, so the talented poor have a fighting chance. We can make the admissions based on some reasonable proxies of ability so the biggest boneheads among the sons of privilege get sorted out. And we can make the system as transparent as possible, so everyone knows what is expected. With that in mind, I think the current system in the US fails pretty hard on the first criterion -- the worst schools are just awful. It could also improve on the third; what the elite colleges are looking for in admissions, such as "service", isn't at all obvious. My sense is that the US has constructed a very complicated system that in the end delivers pretty much the standard result. A simpler, clearer system based on plain tests, such as India's, just might be a better solution in the end.