On what’s wrong with college admissions

The problem with college admissions is that colleges don’t really know that much about students. All they kind of have to go on is an SAT [or ACT] score, which is kind of a blunt instrument … a high school transcript, which is sort of hard to figure out, [and] maybe a personal essay, who knows who wrote the personal essay. So they tend to fall back on, “Is this person a legacy? Did they go to a ‘good high school?’” Well, everyone figures out where “good high schools” are and people pay a lot of money in tuition if it’s a private high school, or in the real estate market to buy a house near the good high school. And so again the opportunities for students to go to particularly elite colleges that are often the stepping stone toward the best jobs in government or business are in many ways constricted to a narrow band of people.