The
Power of Privilege by Joseph Soares, 2007, Excerpts
In 1967, Yale dropped personal evaluation
categories and photos. The effort to classify and predict personal qualities
and leadership potential had not been abandoned, but its technology was being
re-tooled. Yale retired its predicted grade algorithm in 1972. This radical
departure for Yale’s tradition of measuring academic ability could be seen as
yet another move away from objective measure of brains toward subjective
selection based on character. Yale proposed to conduct research on reliable
measures of personality.
They immediately set about translating those
factors into behavioral types and came up with seven types of successful
students and five types of unsuccessful students. The seven were artists,
athletes, careerists, grinds, leaders, scholars, and socializers. The five
failures were alienated, directionless, disliked, extreme grinds, and
unqualified. Yale could cherry-pick from among privileged and prepared youths
while reserving room for legacy and racial targets.
A Life in Our Times by
John Kenneth Galbraith, 1981, Excerpts
Primary responsibility is exercised, even
monopolized, by a small group of well-connected, upper-income Americans
selected for the task by family membership and attendance at Groton, Exeter,
Andover or St. Paul’s and Princeton, Harvard or Yale. They are attracted to the
State department because manner there is as important as knowledge and more
easily acquired and because it is the one government department where a
true-blue gentleman can work. Among Harvard men, it is not important that an
individual be intelligent, but he does have to be superior.
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