Ask A Genius 513 – Affirmative Action for the Rich (4)
March 15, 2019
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Thing three is, even without cheating as many do, huge advantages for rich people. For one thing, there is no good guide to applying to college. Every family, every kid, has to kind of learn anew the principles of putting together a good application and putting together a good academic record.
It is not clear. There are a gazillion steps in the whole process. If you do it right, it is the culmination of 12 years of school. But it is the culmination of 4 or 5 years to apply in the case of the most prepared applicants.
The less prepared applicants don’t even know this. It is the difference between the chances for a kid with two parents with a family income of $300,000 who goes to a private school versus a kid with a single parent going to a public school in an inner city.
The inner city school may have one school counsellor for the graduating class of 500 or 600 or even zero counsellors. That counsellor may or may not give a shit, or may or may not have clues.
The counsellors at private schools cultivate relationships with the admissions people at certain colleges. They cannot be friends with every admissions person at every college. But they can be friends with admissions people at a few pretty selective colleges.
A week before calls go out. They can say, “So-and-so, my student, is the most gifted and talented kid I have seen in the last 5 years.” Often, that will make a difference. A counsellor at a city school does not have any of these connections or has very little idea.
They may be able to point kids at appropriate colleges. Or a vague idea in their ideas of all the crazy crap that all the most qualified and most prepared kids are doing to get into colleges.
So, you don’t have to cheat to have a huge advantage if you’re a kid whose parents are still married, if they have a decent job, read, are good at researching stuff online.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
License and Copyright
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Rick Rosner 