For seven years Lucas Spielfogel has been the executive director of the Baton Rouge Youth Coalition, an organization helping public school students enter and persist in college at nationally-recognized rates.
In a guest column for Business Report, Spielfogel writes it didn’t take a national scandal for him to understand that the college admissions deck is stacked. Now, however, he’s working with low-income students to change their odds of admission—and success.
Nothing surprises Spielfogel about Aunt Becky-gate, but, he writes, the sensational headlines distract from systemic unfairness in highly selective college admissions.
Spielfogel’s “ticket” into an Ivy League school was rowing, a sport one almost has to be affluent to compete in, as it is mainly offered at prohibitively expensive prep schools. His grades and SAT scores were just strong enough for the tailwind of privilege to push him into to Yale under the illusion, he writes, that he was especially deserving.
He contends that this, which he himself experienced and benefited from, is the more insidious injustice you’ll find at selective colleges.
Read Spielfogel’s full column about what he says is the real college admissions scandal. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
