The "elite college" scandal is not about educational excellence.

[DFW]

14. That is only true up to a point

My brother and sister both went to Harvard (I went to Penn), got in on their own merits. After all, we are nobodies, and my parents wouldn't have had the financial means to pull off any of that funny stuff even if they had been so inclined.

Of our classmates, as far as I know we all have virtually no contact with any of them. The exception is me, as I had kept in touch with a folk musician classmate who moved to the west coast and became.....a folk musician. He drowned about 15 years ago saving one of his sons from a riptide off the Oregon coast. The other is a struggling one-woman law office near Lancaster, PA. Real hot good old boy connections, yessiree.

There are definitely these networks at the "elite" schools, but far from everyone is part of them. Indeed, it seems to me that the reason that some of these families employ these sleazy tactics to get their kids in is that they fear their kids can't offer the academic achievement and social maturity that normal mortals like us were required to show before we were considered for admission. It isn't exactly a high vote of confidence that they fear their children don't have what it takes to get in on their own merits.