[sawyer]

The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits is a great book on this topic.

It makes a great argument that, unfortunately, merit based admission to elite universities does nothing to increase equality of opportunity because the rich are so much better at training and educating their children.

The upside is that people are forced to earn their privilege with hard work and study, rather than having it handed to them at birth. The downside is that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, privilege begets more work, which begets more material wealth, which begets yet harder work / overachieving children.

[newsclues]

It seems like rather than do the hard work of making meritocratic admissions function as best as possible, we are doing away with merit completely.

[threatofrain]

Now we will focus on life story. I'm not sure if that's more equitable or accessible.

[nscalf]

Is there any alternative available? While rich parents can train/educate their children better than non-rich parents can, I don't really see much of an issue there. It's not entirely equal, but I don't see it as much of a problem since judgement is passed by merit. I guess you could admit people, in part, by IQ tests? But that only captures one part of the picture.

[fallingknife]

The work trap is real. But suggesting that the top schools shouldn't take the smartest students is like saying the NFL shouldn't take the best football players.