[EinsDueTresFour]

I can relate to this.

I went to a state school in a country where the only way in to university is by taking a test (this was in the early 00's), so I went to one of these cram schools after I finished high school. The cram school was focused on students of lower income families who would otherwise not have the means to attend a more prestigious one, and I remember in the inauguration ceremony for my year's class, one of their former students was invited to give a speech.

Her story was that after four years trying to get into medical school (i.e. four years attending the same cram school), she was given a tuition scholarship to a more prestigious cram school for her fifth year, and then she finally passed the test.

The thing is, this wasn't even an elite school -- it was just the only federal (state-funded) medical school in our state. The fact that the students' only way in was by taking the exam -- extracurriculars were not taken into account there also -- only made it even more of an _achievement_ for you to actually get in, especially if you were not from an upper middle class family.

[Gollapalli]

IMHO the solution is probably to de-emphasize the metric. Class bottlenecks are probably bad. They’ll always happen, but it shouldn’t be the only route to a good life.