<p>Sadness. Unless you're rich or famous.</p>
<p>I think the article blows it out of proportion and uses a few colleges to justify it. Last year at Yale, for example, developmental admits made up less than 1% of admits, and legacies only made up 14.2% of matriculating students.</p>
<p>Golden's book has already been discussed at great length:</p>
<p>warblers,</p>
<p>I think that you need to read it in the Economist context: libertarianism. Outside of that context, it's a bit less bad than it might seem in the article. In that context, however, it's a crying shame what goes on in the admissions game. </p>
<p>I don't know how much I agree with this article on the severity of the issue, but I do find it irksome to an extent.</p>
<p>Why, the colleges are private. They could be like they were 50 years ago, almost solely for the rich. The money they have for the general financial aid they give to about half their students comes from wealthy alum and generous present day donors.</p>
<p>Ari, if you don't like the system there's always state schools as it sounds like you know.</p>
<p>suze,</p>
<p>Woah, way to jump on me right away. I generally do like the system quite a bit, and like I said, I'm just trying to put it into the libertarian/Economist Magazine mindset.</p>
<p>However, as the article also alludes to, even the top public universities (such as Cal) are not necessarily succeeding in making admissions "fair" to all economic and ethnic groups. Asians are the new Jews, as it said.</p>
<p>I don't necessarily agree with it, lock, stock, and smoking barrel, but in the libertarian context it does make some sense to me.</p>
<p>Wait a minute, Golden claims to be big with "on the merits" admissions, yet isn't he also in favor of (distinctively not on the merits) affirmative action for URM candidates, which is nothing more than disguised racial quotas?</p>
<p>On the merits color-blind admission decisions for all candidates - that would be ideal, but he's not actually in favor of that.</p>