Re:The Tyranny of Merit
by bloodborne on Monday November 23, 2020 @09:44AM
(#25187203)
Maybe I misunderstood, sorry if I am. Are you saying that you're family made greater than 196k and that you were not wealthy? If so I'd say you are out of touch. That is ridiculously wealthy for the majority of humans alive. You're view might be skewed by seeing the ultra rich at Yale as your classmates. Which all goes back to the original point, these ivy league schools favor the rich
Re:The Tyranny of Merit
by epsilonclose on Sunday November 22, 2020 @02:30PM
(#25180266)
I don't disagree with your point about admissions (and in fact I came from a family that had good income but both parents never went to college, so had little advice to give).
Still: your family was already well near the 75th percentile nationally for the time. In what sense would that not be wealthy?
We were certainly in the top 5% at the time. “Rich kids” would be a fair description in my opinion. But to me, “children of the wealthy” as used by the article carries a connotation of having enough wealth to have power and connections. My mom made over $100k/year as the top sales associate at her furniture store, but you don’t meet many Congressmen that way!
Re:The Tyranny of Merit
by epsilonclose on Sunday November 22, 2020 @03:25PM
(#25180733)
That is certainly a real distinction, though I think your point about immigrant families not knowing "the game" is probably the better one.
If parents know how the admissions game is played, then they can throw capital (fiscal and/or social) at the problem.
A non-tenured biology professor is by no means wealthy, but their daughter will almost certainly have an easier time finding a lab to volunteer at in high school than the child of the owner of a successful car dealership.
So wealth is an advantage conditional on knowing the rules of the game, and you've raised an important point: a lot of families don't even know the rules of the game!
Re:The Tyranny of Merit
by bloodborne on Monday November 23, 2020 @09:48AM
(#25187241)
I would disagree. If you experience poverty you realize that making over 50k is intense. Making over 100k means a lot of power and connection compared to most. You may just be underestimating how many advantages that amount of money truly gives you over everyone else, in terms of opportunity, time, educational resources, guidance, lack of prejudice, and sheer wealth. I would argue the article is taking about "rich kids"
I worry about the collateral effects of these attacks on meritocracy and the SAT. As immigrants, my family and I didn’t have social connections and deep cultural familiarity. Applying to college, doing the “right” extra-curriculars, etc., was actually quite a challenge. We never knew to work teachers for extra credit or retakes on exams to keep our grades up. What we had to distinguish ourselves from other upper middle class kids was our SAT scores.
Today, my wife and I have vastly more resources and cultural competency to navigate “the system” than my parents did. My kids go to a tiny K-12 private school where their teachers and guidance counselors will know them from preschool. We know the trendy extra-curriculars, how to craft admissions essays, how to put together class schedules that look good on a transcript while minimizing GPA risk, etc. I feel like deemphasizing the SAT and objective measures is going to help established families like mine at the expense of the kind of family I grew up in.