Fighting for Fractions .. roughly 2% of college students go to a "top 30" school

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12/24/2025 22:27

Subject: Fighting for Fractions .. roughly 2% of college students go to a "top 30" school

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Anonymous

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Anonymous wrote:US is designed around the idea of competition and freedom to compete. Everyone gets a chance to wrestle to the top of the heap, instead of being forced to stay lower class or upper class.

That’s not true. Most Ivy League schools and other top colleges are disproportionately filled with wealthy students, which shows how wealth and power tend to remain concentrated among those who already have them. Many high-achieving students are denied admission not because of a lack of merit, but because they lack advantages such as influence, legacy status, or institutional “hooks.” The admissions system is not fair, nor is it a level playing field.

It is true that many high-achieving kids are denied admission. But, they are denied admission because of a lack of space, not a lack of fairness. Your implication that those with hooks don’t merit admission is incorrect. The playing field isn’t always level but those who do are not qualified for admission rarely get in.

There are far more high-achieving applicants than spaces which is why you cannot really stack rank top schools. The student body and resources are more similar than different. This vexes those who gain admission because they need to crow about their “win”.

I agree with this in part. The vast majority of the kids in the Ivy+ (and mine is one of them) are high achieving and earned their spots (including the athletes and legacies). It's really only the donor ones that are potentially exempted from being at the same level of GPA, test score etc. The problem is indeed that there are multiples of equally qualified students for whom there aren't enough spots.
What I disagree with is the idea that the kids/parents who did get lucky and get a spot don't recognize that. Believe me they do. They are fully aware that many of their equally talented and qualified siblings, friends and peers simply didn't win the random chance lottery that is highly rejective admissions

I agree with that. I acknowledge a lot of equally worthy didn’t get the lucky ticket. However, I do think there is a difference and I know that will make some people annoyed. When we attended admit days for two schools that were ranked around 20, they did not have the same feeling of intensity the higher ranked schools did. It could be a pro or a con based on personal opinions.

There is no difference, it does annoy me because it is absolutely incorrect. I say that as someone who attended one of the HYPSM and has a child at a WASP. I have another child at a different school with single digit acceptance rates and the education that they are getting gives no ground to mine or their siblings.

Obviously. The people extolling the virtues of the hyper-elite schools here admit that most people rejected from those schools are just as meritorious as the ones admitted. It’s a lottery. So what do people think happens to the rejected students? Despite what you might sometimes think from the tone of DCUM, we don’t execute high-performing 18 year olds for the crime of failing to get into Harvard. Ergo, there are many other schools enrolling many strong students.