Why Elite College Admissions Are Biased Toward the Superrich

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News Commentary, News

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Less than 1 percent of college students attend Ivy League colleges and equally selective schools, like Stanford and Duke. But these schools have an outsize influence on American life. Practically every Supreme Court justice of the last 40 years, 25 percent of the U.S. Senate, and one in eight Fortune 500 CEOs went to these schools. A new study on their admissions programs finds that they are heavily biased toward children from rich families. For applicants with the same SAT score, kids from families in the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in compared to the average student. A coauthor on that paper, Harvard economist David Deming, talks to Derek about what his landmark study tells us about college, fairness, and the American Dream. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: David Deming Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:31.4	Today's episode is about a big new study on college admissions that
1:35.2	America's most elite colleges, and what it tells us about wealth and education and fairness in
1:43.5	America. Now, we know fancy schools that Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, have a lot of rich kids.
1:52.0	It is a fact that a child from the richest one percent of families
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