We have the SAT and ACT, and those are objective. The wealthy still pass disproportionately due to better tutoring specifically oriented to those tests. It’s Goodhart’s law.
American system feels more unfair when you're given points for extracurriculars like playing instruments or sports, like that's not going to hold poorer children even more (also how's that related to academic performance at all? Unis should not care about unrelated things)
US universities do care about extracurriculars and GPA and other things because they aren’t optimizing for raw academic performance, they’re optimizing for various other things like an interesting student body (that attracts donors, professors, and future students), real-world networks, and so on.
I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.
Even worse, rich kids have far more means to engage in extracurriculars than poor kids.
The large campus-style uni is fairly recent creation - many came out of the land grant system during/after the Civil War. And even as newer unis have been created, they've followed that general design (even though they aren't land grant institutions).
I would expect wealthy to always be well represented.
It's easy to think this but its not true. There is just a ton of privilege involved in life. There are groups in India who purely tutor slum kids to the top IITs(the JEE exams in India are very hard).
And at a certain point the argument about equal access is entirely hypothetical. For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.
Everywhere? Both in rich and poor households.
> For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.
Ah I thought the argument was more about genes(aka born smart) and not something like nutrition.
I think a good thought experiment is Formula 1. Most top F1 racers come from super rich backgrounds. Does that mean that more money == better driver? Its mostly a accessibility problem.
1. Financial and career success are correlated with good test skills.
2. Good test skills are strongly influenced by genetics or early childhood.
If you agree with both then you expect some correlation between wealth and test performance.
It's mostly privilege. And just being born in America is one of the biggest privileges wrt career and wealth.
From your conclusion you’re telling me wealth is completely random or the capabilities of children is completely random. Neither of those holds up to any scrutiny.
I don’t know what being born in the US has to do with the conversation.
We should perhaps recognize that and try to compensate for it, and it's not a value judgement on the person so afflicted, but pretending it doesn't exist just confuses matters.
> just because unintelligent people fail to do well financially doesn't mean that their children are doomed to the same fate.
Correct, my statement is about expectation of averages. Not a claim that we should exclude an individual because of who their parents are.
My understanding is that there is some genetic correlation but it's not a certainty; smart/rich parents can have dumbass kids and vice versa.
It's hard to quantify because a direct "IQ" measurement is fraught with issues and trying to measure by "success" has its own issues. If you've not met a lawyer/doctor/PhD that you'd put in the "dumbass" category, you probably haven't met many.