> certain self-styled 'elite schools' are really principally selecting for that and not e.g. wealth or family connections),

This hasn’t been true for years, decades even

To create wealth, you must identify and educate the most capable students.

The only way to pay for a large and generous welfare state is to educate the most capable to the highest level of ability. The tech industry was built by highly ambitious, competitive, risk-taking individuals.

"California collected almost $1 billion in personal income tax revenue from Palo Alto’s 94301 zip code in 2016. That was the most of any zip code in the state, according to a new LA Times analysis, which found that California’s top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 46 percent of income tax for that same year. "

https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101867426/californias-top-1-p....

Research shows students admitted based on affirmative action have higher drop out rates due to the academic mismatch effect. Giving preferential treatment based on class may be better than based on race, but such students may still be under prepared for the rigors of an elite university's program. After all, middle class families generally choose the best schools they can afford under the assumption that it has a material effect on the human capital of their children.

I also don't see the problem with students from poor families simply going to community college for a couple years then transferring to a state school. It's far cheaper and the curriculum is largely the same for most undergraduate courses.

The major problem that progressive don't want to recognize is the role of culture and family structure, e.g. lower class Blacks and Whites who view education negatively, and who tend to be raised by single mothers. Asians generally don't have this problem and have the highest SAT scores even when you control for family income.

I think the massive blowback the College Board got from "Adversity Scores" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_SAT#2019_introd... would prevent them from doing that themselves.

However they do offer a "Landscape" which provides similar details and many admissions programs use that to do something like what you're describing.

I'm pretty sure The College Board (makers of the SAT) have done that analysis. Not sure if they share it publicly, but I'll bet they share it with admissions officers.

Of course you can argue that. There is nothing that is perfectly fair. More fair would be to individually interview every college candidate with questions custom tailored their life experience via video chat where their face and voice is obscured as well as any accent and speech affectation they might have.

But that certainly isn't scalable. I'd argue the SAT is one of the most fair things we have at scale.

It's true that the SAT used to be biased (for example the word problems would use the word regatta which a wealthy east coast teen would know but a poor west coast teen would not) but from what I've seen they've done a good job removing that bias (as shown by this paper).