From youth, children are taught that they can achieve anything they want, as long as they work for it. The story of rags to riches is appealing. But is this still an attainable goal? In the traditional meritocracy, if life gave you lemons, you worked hard and made lemonade. But that’s not really the way it works. Not every one gets handed lemons – the “hooked” get grapes, and they make wine. Is the game rigged even before we start?

“Hooked” is one of the many terms that author Daniel Golden uses in his book, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges – and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates. “Hooked” describes a student with connections, a highly recognizable and powerful family name, money, and/or a legacy. On the other hand, an “unhooked” student is the average Joe or Jane who can only hope not to get lost in the crowd.

The September 21st, 2006 issue of The Economist featured a piece, based on Golden’s book, on the meritocracy of education. It’s no secret that many students can “buy” their way into college through legacies, donations, and other connections. But Golden reveals the extent to which this not-so-secret secret has been and still is carried out in the college admissions process today. Much of his two years’ worth of investigation provides incredible stories that read like gossip columns. For example, he cites a February 1998 article in Vanity Fair that deemed Brown the “school for glamour,” “a college best known for pursuing scions of the famous.” Some of Brown’s alumni count the likes of designer Ralph Lauren and King Hussein of Jordan as parents. Golden argues that the children of the famous, rich, powerful, and even the “faculty brats” all manage to slide in through the back door when their intelligence and talents may not have merited such easy access to the Ivy League and other top schools. Essentially, America’s highly praised meritocracy system is deteriorating into an oligarchic system where those who can afford to do so pay their way into a name-brand school with great ease.

What does it take to pass through the sacrosanct gate that guards admissions to Ivy League colleges? Is it sheer intelligence and hard work? Or is it, as often as not, a well endowed trust fund?

Jerome Karabel, who wrote, The Chosen, also a book on those who get in and those who don’t, argues that the concept of meritocracy conflicts with egalitarian aims, and remarks quite rightly that, “Those who are able to define ‘merit’ will almost invariably possess more of it, and those with greater resources – cultural, economic, and social – will generally be able to ensure that the educational system will deem their children more meritorious.” Has pure meritocracy become an ideal that has placed itself too high for anyone to truly attain? In college, we have the “privilege” of being fair and equal and treating others likewise. The college admissions process is putatively blind to class, race, sex, gender, sexual preference, and appearances. But who says that’s what the real world is like? Getting a job doesn’t always mean placing merit first. College is all about ideals. It is never a true reflection of the real world.

Meritocracy has traditionally been determined by two things: I.Q. and effort. But does this system of “merit” really pan out this way for all of us? The Economist argues that “social inequality is rising at a time when the escalators of social mobility are slowing.” This means that education is more important than ever in evening out the gap between the lower and upper classes. In taking a look at some traditional ways that merit and college admissions have been defined, we can see where the picture begins to get fuzzy between “merit” and money.

SAT scores have been described as a “common yardstick” for ranking the merits of students from all backgrounds and types of educations. But it has long been clear that the SAT favors those who can afford tutors and prep courses. Although there may be a few who can score that perfect 1600 effortlessly, the bulk of us studied effectively to ace this exam. The College Board itself sells its own prep materials, which can cost over $800 or more. Those who are not inherently intelligent but who do have the money to spare can plow hundreds of dollars into private tutoring and SAT prep classes. These wealthy will likely go on to achieve scores several points higher than similar students lacking such financial advantages. And as the competitiveness of college admissions has elucidated, those few points sometimes make all the difference.

The belief that individuals can inherently overcome their social status and other environmental factors and transform themselves from paupers to princes is simply unfounded. Despite the prevalence of underdog success stories, there are many who simply cannot overcome certain disadvantages of their upbringing, making their journey toward upward mobility via better education that much harder. Those in poor socioeconomic classes may not have the same environment of incentive to achieve that their upper-middle-class peers have. There are few outside factors that push these poorer students to achieve the next level in terms of work and standardized tests.

Golden, however, goes many steps further than critiquing these traditional barometers of measuring “merit,” flawed as they are, and focuses heavily on how rich, famous, and politically-connected families maintain their upper hand with the complicit help of college admissions officers.

Among these insidious strategies is “the Frist Effect.” In one of many fascinating anecdotes, Golden describes how Bill Frist’s son applied to Princeton with numbers less impressive than other seniors from St. Alban’s (an exclusive all-boys prep school in the District of Columbia). Princeton subsequently accepted all applicants from St. Alban’s that year, worrying that rejecting seniors with less famous surnames would prompt outcries of favoritism. This begs the question of how far other Ivy League schools will go in trumping merit for money.

Not so surprisingly, Harvard has something even slyer: the “Z-list.” Golden argues that one way Harvard could reduce favoritism is by eliminating weak applicants at an early stage of the process. He believes that the first cut should be the final cut because for most “hooked” applicants, the final nod from the admissions committee does not come until the last minute – perhaps evidence that the admissions officers do have consciences after all. The process is not over until the “Z-list.” The Z-list is comprised of about 25 to 50 “well-connected but academically borderline applicants” who are put on a list of students to be accepted after a year of deferral. As reported by The Harvard Crimson in 2002, 72% of students on the “Z-list” are alumni children.

Asian Americans, on the other hand, are apparently the “new Jews,” according to Golden and “need not apply.” Golden argues that Asian Americans are held up to unfair standards, more than other applicants because of the already-high levels of academic achievement and standardized testing statistics achieved by this category of students and the massive amounts of Asian applicants.

Finally, Golden pops the million dollar question: “How much does it cost to buy your child’s way into college?” Apparently, egalitarianism is getting awfully expensive these days because at any of the top 25 universities, a minimum of $100,000 is required and for the top 10, donation amounts hit 7 figures.

It is because of how unfair reality can sometimes be that the academic meritocracy system, even if not perfect, needs to be sustained, ensuring that for the bulk of us who aren’t Frist legacies or Z-listers can have at least some sort of footing in the rough marathon uphill.

The race to the top has never been easy. Education is supposed to level the playing field. But in today’s race, the rules have changed and the players have become more underhanded. It goes without saying that the college admissions process needs to be re-evaluated and muckraking reporters-turned-authors like Daniel Golden should keep up their inventory of such insidious ways that colleges allow the “hooked” past their gates for the purposes of self-sustaining image and endowment. Despite the attributes that the hooked may have, I say to the unhooked: Use what you have and squeeze it for what it’s worth. Don’t despair lemon farmers. If life gave you lemons, make lemon martinis.