despite these changes, the student bodies of the elite schools were still drawn overwhelmingly from the upper-middle class. According to sociologist Joseph Soares’s analysis in The Power of Privilege, consistent with other such analyses, 79 percent of students at “Tier 1” colleges as of the 1990s came from families in the top quartile of socioeconomic status, while only 2 percent came from the bottom quartile.16 For Soares, these numbers are evidence of obvious bias against the most able students who are not from the upper-middle class and above. “Unless one believes that only rich people can
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