Why Elite College Admissions Are Biased Toward the Superrich

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.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: David Deming

Producer: Devon Manze

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