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In March 2019, federal prosecutors dropped a bombshell: dozens of wealthy parents, including Hollywood stars and high-powered executives, had been caught in what authorities called “the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted.”
At the center of the scheme was William “Rick” Singer, a college admissions consultant who offered parents a “side door” into elite universities. For millions of dollars, Singer bribed test proctors, falsified athletic résumés, and even staged photos to make students appear as star athletes, securing them spots at schools like Yale, Stanford, University of Southern California, and Georgetown.
Though the scandal involved a small fraction of applicants compared to the thousands admitted into colleges and universities each year, it sparked a broader conversation about how wealth distorts America’s competitive college admissions system, raising a critical question: what does merit mean when advantages can be bought?
To be sure, merit should be the foundation of college admissions. But wealthier students hold a clear edge because their resources unlock opportunities poorer students can’t access. This isn’t to say wealthy students always succeed or poor students always fail—exceptions can be found under every rock—but the pattern is undeniable. And if we value a system where merit drives outcomes, we must confront how wealth shapes who appears more meritorious.
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As political scientist Samuel J. Abrams told me, rural and exurban school districts often receive up to 30 percent less modernization funding per student compared to urban and suburban areas. That means fewer STEM labs, fewer Advanced Placement (AP) courses, and less access to college counseling—all of which make competitive applications harder to build. “[E]ven modest increases in per-pupil spending for low-income students have been shown to yield impressive returns: a 10 percent uplift in spending throughout K–12 corresponds to nearly half a year more completed schooling, a 9.6 percent jump in earnings, and a 6.1 percent drop in adult poverty risk,” Abrams added. “These disparities illustrate that what colleges perceive as ‘merit’ is often a function of where students start—not merely what they’ve accomplished.”
Standardized testing further illustrates the divide: wealthier students consistently outperform their low-income peers on the SAT because affluent families can afford multiple test attempts and expensive prep courses, while low-income students typically get only two fee-waived attempts. Wealth also buys access to better-funded K–12 schools, which offer more AP courses and college counseling. Poorer states like Mississippi, as one of the state’s educators told me, have fewer schools offering AP courses compared to wealthier states. And wealthier states tend to have higher AP participation. Massachusetts, for example, leads in AP participation—and not coincidentally sends more students to Harvard than any other state. Elite “feeder schools”—often pricey private institutions or well-funded public schools in wealthy enclaves—dominate the admissions pipeline. At Harvard, one in 11 students comes from just 21 high schools, mostly in Massachusetts, New York, and California.
Another—and perhaps the most important—factor in educational success is parental involvement, which significantly shapes a child’s academic, social, and emotional development. Research suggests lower-income parents, often constrained by long work hours or limited resources, have fewer opportunities to engage with their children’s schooling compared to wealthier parents. This lack of engagement leads to lower motivation, weaker study habits, and poorer academic outcomes over time. Data shows that strong families often serve as the most reliable engine of upward mobility—something not lost on ideological movements like Marxism, which seeks to weaken or abolish the family unit as a means of leveling society.
And wealth’s influence doesn’t stop at the admissions gate; it continues to shape who actually graduates. A 2015 Atlantic article, drawing on research from the Pell Institute and the University of Pennsylvania’s Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy (AHEAD), found that over the past 45 years, the gap in bachelor’s degree attainment between rich and poor students has grown wider. In 1970, students from the highest-income families were five times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than those from the lowest-income families. By 2013, they were more than eight times more likely. Bachelor’s attainment for the wealthiest families rose from about 40 percent in 1970 to 77 percent in 2013, while for the poorest quarter, it inched up from six to just nine percent.
This stark reality makes the recent Trump administration’s request for admissions data all the more relevant. The administration is seeking to ensure that colleges and universities are complying with the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) decision. That ruling against race-based admissions was, in one sense, a move toward a more merit-driven system: it ended the practice of holding students of certain racial groups to different standards. Yet one of the overlooked flaws of affirmative action was that, in focusing so heavily on achieving racial diversity, it neglected wealth inequality as a factor in admissions. Under the old system, a wealthy black student could be admitted under lower academic thresholds than a poorer white student—despite both having access to vastly different resources. In doing so, colleges claimed the mantle of “diversity” while sidestepping the deeper, more pervasive issue: the role of economic privilege. As David I. Gonzalez, a student at Harvard, has argued, Harvard’s version of diversity often draws from affluent demographics of every race while excluding large swaths of talented low-income students. Without addressing socioeconomic disadvantage head-on, elite institutions risk preserving privilege under the guise of merit.
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So, how do we reconcile the ideal of merit with the reality of wealth?
Abrams says, “When we talk about ‘merit’ in college admissions, it’s vital to remember that applicants are not abstract individuals—rather, their demonstrated merit is deeply shaped by their socio-economic environment and the embedded resources available to them.” Colleges, therefore, might redefine merit to value raw potential and achievement in context—not in a way that discriminates on the basis of race, as institutions have done before and are likely still doing, but in a way that accounts for the opportunities students had before applying. This means giving greater weight to students who excel despite limited resources—those who score well on a single SAT attempt or thrive in underfunded schools. Legislatures should also consider policies that empower families—such as programs supporting parental involvement—or expand access to education earlier in life, addressing disparities at their root. Several states, many of them red states, have recently made significant investments in early childhood education to increase participation and capture students at the earliest stages of development. States that are succeeding could serve as models for others.
The bottom line is that reformers cannot honestly claim to want a merit-based system while ignoring this issue. Conservatives often roll their eyes at complaints of wealth inequality, but the fact is that a true meritocracy should reward talent and effort, not wealth. If we ignore how wealth shapes educational achievement, we are only endorsing a system where opportunity is reserved for the affluent.
The Trump administration’s admissions transparency mandate will reveal whether schools are complying with the SFFA decision—but it could also expose just how deeply entrenched universities are in elite capture. If education reformers fail to confront the wealth advantage, we risk simply trading racial discrimination for a system that functions as a degree mill for the rich, cementing institutions that are less concerned with cultivating America’s best minds and more focused on preserving the oldest advantages.
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