Bostonian, I think that probably there is some truth to the notion that children born after 1975 in this country have been born in an era, at least, when such a thing is plausible.

The problem with that assumption, however, is that it relies heavily on one very flawed series of assumptions to begin with:

a) Ivy/Elite colleges have always admitted students upon purely meritocratic standards, and were certainly doing so from 1970 onwards in a way that perfectly captured the "brightest" students and sorted them out into elite schools in order of prestige.

b) that there is a perfect correlation between IQ (as measured by...? Oh, nevermind) and income. That's not really so, though the trend is certainly true that the highest paying 30% of occupations as a whole tend to draw from, perhaps the highest 40% of population IQ's. But that effect largely dissipates significantly when you look at individual occupations, or even at "what does the average person with IQ 140-145 have as an occupation?" Does that make sense?
One need not take an IQ test to major in physics, but I think that most people understand that it is certainly a proxy for high IQ. The thing is, majoring in communications isn't a proxy for low IQ, and yet the lifetime earnings of the two fields are different... but for individuals, could be identical or even paradoxically inverted from what one might expect.

SO. Yes, I'd buy that as a complete explanation, or even a "major" one if-- and only if-- it could be demonstrated that in countries where gender equality in college admissions was NOT a factor this trend had not been observed... and that in another country where income distributions are relatively flat, that it DID still exist over the same time-frame in tandem with gender equality in higher education.

I also don't buy it because so many studies have shown-- again and again-- that test prep WORKS for things like the SAT and GRE. It also works if you have the means to take them 4-7 times.

Finally, it's also worth noting that in most of the highest paying (and also with overlap into highest IQ) fields, gender equality in college admissions is still not at parity yet. Engineering, physics, and computer science come to mind immediately.

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Val, I think that you make a good point, but I think that it is not (as some comments at the NYT seem to indicate) that there is any kind of conspiratorial effort to keep the "great unwashed" disadvantaged in an effort to game the system so much. I think that it's a population effect whereby those with both means and perspicacity to note the nature of the game have lurched toward (as a group) the means of optimizing play. So yes, they as individuals may engage in ethically questionable activities (or worse) as a means of leveraging better outcomes, but for the most part, it's a matter of an arms race that parents justify by comparing that behavior and finding it more or less normative.

I have mixed feelings about test prepping and ghostwriting of grants... it feels... icky. Ethically, it feels like it's a grey area to me. Brinksmanship, maybe.

But this is real, and it's my child. Ergo, I am torn. We could play the game. We have a dream player in a fantasy league sense, after all. We have the means to do a few of the things that the rich do. We have the know-how to determine which of those trappings of upper-middle-class (and wealthy) upbringings matter later. (Country club brunch? No. Golf? Yes.)

But will higher INCOME mean the best chance at happiness? Would my daughter want her colleagues and peers to be the 'elite?' Are they really the best/brightest? I strongly suspect not. I think that they are just the 'fittest' and I think that it isn't the same thing.

The reason that the answer matters to me personally is that my daughter is someone who finds that ethically ambiguous super-competitive peer cohort to be abhorrent-- revolting in the extreme. I certainly don't want to groom her for that, if that is really what it is. She is troubled deeply by inequity.






Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.