20 Preferential treatment goes to children of alums, large donors, and, at all but a few colleges, families who can pay full tuition. Well-off parents pay for private schools, tutors, SAT prep courses, athletic expenses, travel and enrichment programs, resume-ready public service experiences, college application advisors, and occasionally even bribes or ghost-written application essays. The advantages of wealth are equally apparent in the college admission process and, as both my own and Sandel’s research note, undermine any claims of meritocracy. 11 White children in poor families are four times more likely to reach affluence than Blacks, and Blacks in affluent families are more likely than whites to end up at the bottom of the economic hierarchy. 10 Those from low-income families have less than a three percent chance of rising to the top fifth of household income distribution as adults. Recent studies find that about seventy percent of Americans raised in the bottom two-fifths of the wealth distribution never make it to the middle. 9 Yet research summarized in my forthcoming book, Ambition: For What?, paints a different picture. In recent polls, only about a third of Americans said coming from an upper-income family was important in becoming economically successful, and even fewer thought that race or ethnicity was important or that discrimination against people of color contributed a great deal to inequality.
Moreover, innate talent plays far less a role in determining outcomes, and class and race far greater roles, than Americans typically assume.
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