> perhaps schools in poor areas really are pushing the children hard to go to extraordinary heights and it’s just the fault of poor people for being so damned useless that they ignore it or fail.

That's not how I understood it - are we talking about the same comment. I understood the commenter to be saying that their school didn't give students the resources to understand and apply to top colleges, including basic understanding of colleges (e.g., who MIT is) and the admissions process. Are we talking about the same comment?

The comment that you paraphrase is, I agree, absurd!