In every society, the wealthy have advantages over those who are less well off, and the shock to me would be to discover that such advantages did not extend to a higher rate of admission to the best schools. In my thinking, to call this a "scam" says more about the author than it does about the admissions process he is questioning.
I think a lot is revealed here in the way the author handles the SAT. This test is still widely used as a major part of admissions. The author cites academic studies indicating a strong correlation between high test scores and high family income. So far, so good. It is the conclusion he draws from this that is suspect, and that is to suggest that the test simply serves as a false cover for institutions claiming to admit based solely on merit while systematically favoring the wealthy in reality - hence the alleged scam.
This to me is logically flawed along post hoc, ergo propter hoc lines. If the SAT truly does not test for merit, that is fine - abolish it. If, however, it does indeed test for merit and rich kids tend to do better at it, this means only that such kids tend on average to be better prepared academically at this stage in life than are poorer kids. But isn't that what a system based on merit is supposed to determine? Why then call it a scam?
Apart from the SAT, it may be that the author's other evidence in support of his contention is enough to support his thesis. When I hear "scam," however, I expect something pretty strong to support it and when I see the sort of analysis that appears here with respect to the SAT, I tend to think that the author himself is prejudiced on this issue (i.e., that he himself prefers to see a leveling quite apart from merit and is using a hypocrisy argument merely as an attack tool), leading me to regard the rest of what he says with a healthy measure of skepticism.
Yes, I would agree. He states that the SAT score serves as a "proxy" for the resources such students have had available to them in high school and, one would infer, is therefore rigged against middle class and poor students who had lesser quality resources at their disposal.
The unstated premise, though, is that elite academic institutions have a social obligation to act affirmatively to equalize outcomes in society by finding alternative ways to qualify students for admission besides the academic capabilities such students demonstrate at the time of applying. Since they have no way of knowing who has what innate merit that may not yet be reflected in academic test scores or historic grades, this ipso facto leads to a system where they have to apply quotas or arbitrary weighting adjustments (e.g., x% upward adjustment in GPA to account for having come from a poor school district) to achieve the equalization sought. Such adjustments will then have the effect of excluding some applicants with higher current performance scores in favor of others with what administrators deem greater unrealized merit, which seems a fairly arbitrary outcome. Whether this would lead to inclusion of more students based on true merit would seem to me to be a dubious proposition but it would decidedly put the schools in the business of trying to iron out social inequalities through admissions standards tied to something other than measurable academic criteria. This is the logical outcome of divorcing the idea of merit from any objective means of measuring it.
I think a lot is revealed here in the way the author handles the SAT. This test is still widely used as a major part of admissions. The author cites academic studies indicating a strong correlation between high test scores and high family income. So far, so good. It is the conclusion he draws from this that is suspect, and that is to suggest that the test simply serves as a false cover for institutions claiming to admit based solely on merit while systematically favoring the wealthy in reality - hence the alleged scam.
This to me is logically flawed along post hoc, ergo propter hoc lines. If the SAT truly does not test for merit, that is fine - abolish it. If, however, it does indeed test for merit and rich kids tend to do better at it, this means only that such kids tend on average to be better prepared academically at this stage in life than are poorer kids. But isn't that what a system based on merit is supposed to determine? Why then call it a scam?
Apart from the SAT, it may be that the author's other evidence in support of his contention is enough to support his thesis. When I hear "scam," however, I expect something pretty strong to support it and when I see the sort of analysis that appears here with respect to the SAT, I tend to think that the author himself is prejudiced on this issue (i.e., that he himself prefers to see a leveling quite apart from merit and is using a hypocrisy argument merely as an attack tool), leading me to regard the rest of what he says with a healthy measure of skepticism.