In the United States i suspect some portion of this is due to "legacy" admissions whereby some child is admitted to a competitive program or given very advantageous scholarships not because of their hard work and displayed competence, but because of their parents. I know that it will be very possible for my children to end up at ivy league if they take the legacy advantage I've given them, even though ivy league has been completely off the table for me my entire life. They'll start _much, much_ higher on the ladder than I could.

▲

Larrikin 4 days ago | parent [-]

Legacy admission was removed in response to affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration.

	▲	gtowey 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. They were not "removed", they were made to be disallowed if and only if the school wanted to receive a certain kind of government funding. Some schools have enough money that they can ignore this. Notably, Stanford said they would give up the funding to keep their policy of legacy admissions. So the richest, most prestigious schools where legacy admissions are a gateway to the upper classes, will keep the policy.
	▲	RestlessMind 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration. Affirmative action was gutted by SCOTUS when Biden was president. Not that it was popular before. California of all places rejected it by 56-44 margin in 2020.