If you need an example of this, take a look at the admissions scandal with Lori Laughlin, et al. No denying they were rich, but despite how rich they were, they could not tutor their kids way to a good SAT score and had to resort to outright cheating that was so blatant that they had to go to prison.
People in a cohort fall into a bell curve. “Social lubricant” is why the dumb or less capable kid in a rich suburb ends up being some sort of professional in a nebulous job where the smart kid from a poor neighborhood feels like Starbucks or an LPN is a life changing job.
If getting into top (TOP!) universities correlated with education/aptitude alone, the wealthy would pay more to get thier kids educated but the best teachers. But they don't do this, they pay to dollar for their children to get educated by the "best" schools. But what makes them the best schools is their ability to get more kids into better universities. If education were the critical component of these schools, they'd pay premium rates for the best teachers, but often the teacher salaries at these private schools are lower than those at the public schools they compete with in the area. That suggests that it isn't the education provided by the teachers that's the most important component of these schools. There's a whole stew of other factors that these schools rely on to get kids into top placements that had nothing to do with actual education.
Imagine if 99% of programming jobs were on Win32 native apps using tools from 1998, and 1% of them were using modern tools on a modern Unix-derived stack? Would the 1% really have to pay a premium to get top 10% developers?
Simple! People receive a benefit from peer group connections (status) and quality-based assessments (in economic terms, reputation). If you are well educated and intelligent, on average, you will have access to more resources if you are also associated with high-status institutions, such as prestigious schools and high ranked universities.
The good news is that, under competitive conditions and provided that everything else is equal, being "good at something" (reputation) eventually leads to high-status attainment. So, if you happen to receive a good education but graduate from a less prestigious university, you have an opportunity to eventually recoup the difference in resource availability (on average & assuming that your production translates to the market).
Likewise, if you're a less prestigious institution, providing a superior education and employing people who do "good research" will eventually increase your prestige.
https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c...
There are others. E.g., if you're line of work doesn't allow for high-status recognition (e.g., a blue collar job), being good at what you do will likely not allow you to benefit from reputation -> status transfer.
I disagree with the second half of this. I think it simply creates an arm race that the wealthy win. A rich family looks at what it takes to get their kid into Harvard and they do what they can, no matter the cost. A poor family simply can't compete on an otherwise equal footing. Even if we socialize all the advantages that the rich currently have, they simply do even more in response.
The real problem with a meritocratic system is that rich people from good schools with private tutors actually get a better education, that's what all the hubub is about. Poverty leads to worse education and worse educated people are less prepared for the more difficult course load of college. Through no fault of their own, they are less ideal candidates. That's the injustice.
It's cognitive dissonance to simultaneously recognize that injustice but not recognize that poor students are actually substantially less prepared for college at 18.