Let’s Blow Up The Elite College Admissions Black Box by Terry Connelly

Terry Connelly delivers a rousing and unrelenting call to action with Let’s Blow Up The Elite College Admissions Black Box: It’s Roiling Young Lives, Rigged for the Rich, and Wrong for America, a stirring treatise addressing the historical and worsening inequities in America’s college admissions process.

Connelly wields his impressive career experience from the financial and academic worlds like a broadsword, eviscerating common objections and weak arguments in defense of wealth-driven advantages, legacy admissions, and other outdated practices of entrenched institutions. Underpinned by a proposal called the Transparency, Equity and Fairness in College Admissions Act, this book suggests a sweeping overhaul to college admissions policies on a nationwide scale.

Fearless in its demands and confident in its criticisms of perennially “elite” institutions, Connelly puts voice to what many disenfranchised and underprivileged populations have felt for generations. Noting that both economic and academic disparity are mounting, and that this problem will only get worse without action, this powerfully penned book is not asking for slight reform laden with loopholes. Instead, it demands a revolutionary shift in how advantages and opportunities are doled out to the young students of this nation.

Given the unprecedented national climate and the opportunity Covid has presented to enact dramatic change in areas of society that need it most, this is a stunning indictment of a broken system, as well as a practicable solution, which is a rare combination, providing actionable answers to an enduring problem.