Now a shot at the ivies is vastly overrated. Students accepted at, say, Princeton who go to the University of Oregon do just as well, it turns out, 10 years down the road. There are many roads to success in America, which is one of the great things about this country. And the high-tech revolution is shaking up the old hierarchies, even if many of them do not realize it yet. But elite colleges have maintained their status (and their huge price tags) in large part because of the SAT, which allowed the colleges with old money and reputation to gather together and brand the high-aptitude kids whose abilities are increasingly valuable in a high-tech world.
What will happen to the Yale or the U-C Berkeley brand when these colleges can no longer tell who the really, really smart kids are? It is not the biggest problem in the world, the decline of elite universities. Other institutions who resist the trend or who spot the market opportunity will no doubt rise to take their place. But it is a social spectacle worth watching: Elite eggheads shooting themselves in the foot.