The challenge is that the environment that is predisposed to produce teenagers with a well rounded educational foundation and well developed critical thinking and studying skills... tend to be affluent households that can afford to move to areas with great schools, and send their kids to a constant stream of extracurriculars.

That’s not to say it’s impossible to succeed in adverse conditions, but it’s inane to pretend conditions are on average not more adverse for certain populations.

There’s a fundamental question of identity some colleges are struggling with. To put it in exaggerated terms - do they want to be ivory tower institutes of learning, or do they want to be a kaleidoscope of all of the next generation who do not want to go on to trade work?

For people who want to go to college purely for rigorous academic study with the brightest young academic minds, this is going to be a shift. The populations will be formed less so based purely on that narrow selection criteria.

It’s a progression which has been happening for decades, but as it seems in many things, the rate of change is accelerating.

>For people who want to go to college purely for rigorous academic study with the brightest young academic minds, this is going to be a shift.

Will it? The academic cheating scandal and what we know about legacy admission tells us that many prestigious colleges very decidedly don't put pure academic rigor above all else. I've heard tell that getting into Harvard and surviving its social scene is harder than actually graduating from it. Anecdata, but of all the big-name schools, I've only heard of a handful that deliver on their "chew you up if you're not intellectually ready" reputations: MIT, CalArts, several UCs... That's about it.

I'm of the opinion that the radical and purposeful shift we should be moving towards is one of parity in rigor and support for all students passed a certain level of demonstrated competence. Then, lottery.

You might not fail out of a lot of big name schools that like to keep their graduation rate high, but you'll come out with a boatload of C's. You may have a degree, but that's not a great outcome, and why go to school for four years if you aren't learning effectively? I know that people say that it's a networking opportunity, but most of my friends that got good jobs they were happy with out of college were the ones that worked hard. The ones who just floated by continued to float by.

Because the networking thing is real, and often supercedes one's grades or demonstrated competence in a job market based primarily on networking.

The problem is that SAT isn't actually a good predictor, even though it seems like it should be.