Poor
Felicity Huffman is being raked over the coals for paying a lousy $15,000 to
get her daughter extra time to take the SAT.
Jared
Kushner's father paid $2.5 million to get him into Harvard -- and arranged for
two of his beneficiary politicians, Sens. Ted Kennedy and Frank Lautenberg, to
make calls on his offspring's behalf.
"His
GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it," a former
administrator at Jared's private high school told Daniel Golden, author of the
2006 book, The Price of Admission.
"There
was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would
on the merits get into Harvard."
Welcome
to the baby boom's remaking of college admissions!
For
decades, going to college was a matter of social class, not IQ, talent or
merit. From 1900 to 1960, only a tiny percentage of Americans even went to
college, about 2 to 5 percent until well after World War II.
It
wasn't until the '60s that admission to college first began to be based on a
universal standardized test, the Scholastic Aptitude Test. This fulfilled the
dream of Harvard president James Conant, who believed that SAT-based admissions
would redeem America's promise of a classless society.
Recall
that England's law of primogeniture was one of the best things that ever
happened to this country. If you are a small island nation and want to keep
land from being chopped up every generation, it makes sense to mandate that
entire estates be bequeathed to the first-born son. But that left a lot of smart
second-, third- and fourth-born sons -- not to mention daughters -- out in the
cold.
The
talented, but screwed, Brits responded by hopping on boats, sailing across the
ocean and creating America! In this country, status would be earned, not
inherited.
But
the meritocracy in college admissions lasted only 30 years -- right up until
the baby boomers had college-aged kids. Then it was over. The Worst Generation
came along and decided that sending their kids to Harvard was the perfect
accessory!
Today, literally every baby boomer I know who went to Harvard sends not one, not two, but all their kids to Harvard. (Except the ones whose kids didn't want to go there.)
If you've read The Bell Curve you know that this is a statistical impossibility.
Today, literally every baby boomer I know who went to Harvard sends not one, not two, but all their kids to Harvard. (Except the ones whose kids didn't want to go there.)
If you've read The Bell Curve you know that this is a statistical impossibility.
A
group of 100 kids with high-IQ parents will have a higher average IQ than a
group of 100 kids with low-IQ parents. But individually, there's a reversion to
the mean. Parents with extremely high IQs will tend to have kids with lower
IQs, and parents with low IQs will tend to have kids with higher IQs.
Sometimes
spectacularly so. That's how a lot of ordinary middle- and working-class kids
with no social connections used to get into Harvard.
Now
they're out of luck.
Give
or take a few slots, approximately half of the places in Harvard's entering
class are already taken by kids whose parents made big donations to the college
-- and/or campaign donations to politicians who can grease the skids, like
Jared. The other half is made up of approved minorities -- including the
children of immigrants who arrived last Friday, but have to be admitted
"to make up for the legacy of slavery."
Sorry!
No room for the son of a middle manager in Newton, Iowa, who got double 800s on
his SATs.
It's
a striking fact that the great leveler, the SAT, didn't come under relentless
attack until the baby boomers' kids were college-bound.
Throughout
the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, most of the news about the SAT concerned secretive
College Board meetings to formulate the test, and public alarm when scores
declined in a particular year.
Only
when little Billy's SAT scores weren't up to snuff did we start reading about
the rank unfairness of standardized tests. Rich parents of dumb kids were
indignant that a universal IQ test might allow the son of a dentist to get into
an elite school over their own precious offspring.
Suddenly
standardized tests were being denounced as meaningless and anxiety-producing.
Using African-Americans as a false flag, the elites bashed the SAT as "culturally
biased." Don't worry, hedge fund guys: Minorities are getting in, with or
without high SAT scores.
Some
colleges pretended to dump the SAT out of principle -- when everyone knew they
were dropping it because they were no longer attracting kids with decent SAT
scores.
In
response to the college cheating scandal, our Brahmins rail that "Spoiled
rich kids can get tutors!" Didn't seem to help their kids. Didn't help
Jared. Contrary to the marketing claims of the test prep companies, tutoring
barely moves the needle on SAT scores.
When
the whole thing is a scam, why shouldn't parents pay finaglers to doctor SAT
scores or sports photos? Who's that unfair to? The Jared Kushners of the world
who pretend they got in on merit?
It's
one thing for colleges to discount SAT scores in order to admit more
descendants of American slaves -- not to be confused with the Somali who
arrived last week. But now that the baby boomers are running things, the SATs
are irrelevant for pretty much everybody.
As
Ilhan Omar would say, it's all about the Benjamins.
Strip
Kushner of his degree or stop picking on Felicity Huffman.
