David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

person would say that the solution to her
problems would be for her to go to an
even more competitive school like
Stanford or MIT. Yet when it comes to
affirmative action, that’s exactly what
we do. We take promising students like
Caroline Sacks—but who happen to be
black—and offer to bump them u p a
notch. And why do we do that? Because
we think we’re helping them.
That doesn’t mean affirmative action
is wrong. It is something done with the
best of intentions, and elite schools often
have resources available to help poor
students that other schools do not. But
this does not change the fact that—as
Herbert Marsh says—the blessings of
the Big Pond are mixed, and it is strange