IN THE INTEREST OF FAIRNESS, THE IVY LEAGUE SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO ADMIT STUDENTS BY LOTTERY: Recruitment, Resumes, Interviews: How the Hiring Process Favors Elites.

In terms of the gatekeepers to these elite jobs, these are just people who are on the ground who are responsible for deciding who is in and who is out, who gains access to professional jobs in management consulting, investment banking, etc. The decisions they make have huge consequences for students, in terms of not only their immediate post-graduate opportunities, the salaries they make, but also opportunities for future and career growth and development.

Commonalities of all of these individuals: They tend to be a very elite group, they tend to come from a fairly prestigious set of institutions, and they tend to come from some of the most highly educated and affluent backgrounds as well. This is pretty standard across the industries. . . .

I think if you were to ask someone at first glance, they would say “oh anyone can work at my firm” and they could probably point to one or two people who didn’t attend elite schools. But if you look at how these firms’ recruiting processes actually work in practice now, the chances of getting into one of these firms from what’s called a non-targeted school is extremely low. And this is because these firms starting around the 1980s shifted from a hiring system in which people were hired in a one-off fashion through informal networks to really really focusing on on-campus recruitment where firms hire directly out of the graduating classes and oftentimes earlier from elite universities.

They talk about equality and diversity, then they hire people who look just like them.