...and anyone mentioning this is voted down by the chattering class of HN.

Predictable yet still disappointing.

What's happening to lower middle class kids in Iowa? I'm honestly just confused here. To my knowledge, they're getting decent lower middle class jobs and doing fine. Maybe going off to college and moving to the coast, probably not unless they want to leave. I don't think of that particular group of individuals as disadvantaged, at least not in the context of getting into a good college.

Yeah Iowa is getting totally jacked in this thread.

People on the coasts and even in the big cities in the Midwest just can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that a lot of us wouldn't be willing to live in New York City or California for all the money in the world. It's not that one lifestyle is inherently better. People have different preferences and it's pretty condescending to think that folks who live in the great plains and don't go to the big name schools are only in that situation for lack of opportunity.

We’re not talking about settling in NYC or Cali, we’re talking about the opportunity to compete with rich coastal kids for positions in top schools.

My position is that it’s an injustice if an Ivy-caliber student from a lower-middle class background is denied top educational opportunities because they don’t have the family pedigree of wealthier, more middling students. We would expect upward mobility here, we shouldn’t content ourselves with “at least they’re not getting poorer than their parents”.