From a reader:

Jonah,
You have the core of at least a column, probably a book with your corner post “is Beauty Unjust?”
The ties you touch upon as providing unwarranted advantage are the primary justification for the Harvard/Yale/Princeton axis still being viewed as the holy trinity of American education. I attended Chicago at the same time my best friend enrolled in Harvard. When we compared coursework for our respective Common Cores after the first term, I’d been required to write about 70% more papers than he, on nearly double the reading load. Not a terrible close race, to his chagrin, in terms of respective intellectual rigor.
On the other hand, and to your point: his most prominent House resident was Princess Catherine Oxenberg of Hungary. Mine was a guy who then held the world’s record for solving a Rubik’s cube in the shortest time. His ‘connection’ landed he and a few others a summer invitation to jet-set Greece. My ‘connection’ earned me thumb calluses from trying to learn the d*mn cube.

Update: Too many people keeping sending me this not to post, from a reader:

Mr. Intellectual Rigor who did so much writing at Chicago has lousy grammar sense. His ‘connection’ landed he and a few others a summer invitation to jet-set Greece.
sheesh.

Me fail english? That’s unpossible!