This book perfectly lays out how not every American gets a fair chance at a college education. Those with money can buy their child's way into whatever school that they want, as there are so many different avenues they can take to accomplish this. This didn't have a lot of shocking information, but it was a really informative read.

The authors of “The Merit Myth” argue that the educational system in the United States is reserved for a tiny minority, leaving the rest out. With the rising costs of education in the States, one cannot help but agree. However, I have many problems with this book. It uses skewed statistics and anecdotal evidence to make broad claims and weird implications. In its search to expose bias, it is itself biased. The authors seem to believe that the idea of merit is generally false, that standardized tests are racist and that students themselves are not endowed with agency. .

This book was exceedingly dry and could have been much shorter for a mainstream audience. Not sure if this was a dissertation turned into a book, but I wouldn’t be shocked.

2.75 stars
Don't let my star rating fool you: I really did enjoy this book. I learned so much from it and this has introduced me more thoroughly to a topic I would love to explore even more. I thought it was incredibly well-researched, and the authors conveyed very complex concepts in a passionate and coherent way.
Some of my main issues were honestly personal. I tend to prefer a more narrative nonfiction style, with anecdotes and first-hand interviews. I don't think every nonfiction book has to have that in order to be good, but unfortunately this book's lack of that made it quite a drag to get through at times. It can become a little overwhelming reading statistic after statistic, study after study, with very little else to break it up.
Beyond that, it did feel like this book was longer than it needed to be. It has eight fairly long chapters, each covering a different topic. However, there was a ton of overlap between the different chapters and I began to notice statistics or examples being repeated over and over again. It was hard to get through the end of the book when I felt like it was consistently demonstrating that it didn't have anything new to say.
I appreciated that on top of just laying out the problems, there was also a chapter dedicated to solutions. They felt realistic and it was a really good note to end on. It also never really felt particularly partisan, and acknowledge problems with actions within both political parties.
Overall, I think anyone who reads this book would learn something. I will definitely be thinking about the things that I read in this book for a long time. As I read more about this subject, I don't know if this book will hold up as the best one I read regarding it, but it was a solid introduction.

Carnevale, Schmidt, and Strohl begin The Myth of Merit with a bold but not counter-intuitive claim: the very institutions that often teach young people to be concerned about inequalities based on class, race, gender, etc. are in many ways the fundamental drivers of those inequalities. The Myth of Merit argues that colleges and universities, particularly those that qualify as elite or "selective," have inbuilt mechanisms that favor those from more elite socioeconomic backgrounds, regardless of "objective" merit. From the desire for more prestigious rankings to the selection criteria used for admission to the way financial aid is allocated, selective schools work overtime to provide admission to legacy students and those with the generational wealth to attend better schools, participate in more extracurricular activities, or hire the best tutors (and psychologists) to ensure success on standardized tests. But even these standardized test measures, which are famously predicted by race/class/income and don't seem to represent actual student success in college, don't seem to provide a meritocratic ladder for well-performing students. The authors note that large numbers students in the top quartile of SAT scores drop off the map and fail to earn certificates or degrees, despite the likelihood that they would succeed if they enrolled in a selective program. The problem then spirals: selective colleges "select" on criteria that are not truly meritocratic, but have the resources to retain their students and ensure their graduation and professional success. Meanwhile, high-achieving students who don't meet the "selective" criteria often attend 4 year institutions with far fewer resources available to make sure they graduate and succeed post-college. This bleak story ends with a welcome and thorough chapter of proposed policy solutions and institutional reforms that could address the problems the authors highlight as inherent in our current system.

A couple critical notes: given the large role high school education plays in the story the authors tell, I was surprised to see few proposals aimed at high school education in the final section of the book. The authors suggest a national "K-14" educational system and efforts to improve guidance counseling across the board, but these hardly seem sufficient to address the educational disparities at the high school level that have such drastic downstream effects. In terms of the institutional reforms proposed, the authors often provide little discussion of how these reforms might be practically implemented. For example, they suggest that selective colleges need to "halt legacy admissions" and stop favoring the children of donors, because "there is no good reason to favor the children of donors." Well, it seems that the schools think that a steady stream of income is a plenty good reason to favor the children of donors. A proposal for new ethics rules is fine, but if the people responsible for adopting those new ethical guidelines are primarily interested in the financial interests of their university, it's difficult to imagine that they would be chomping at the bit to vote for reform.