ABSTRACT
Karabel’s 2006 volume on admissions at America’s most elite private colleges calls attention to the ways in which college admissions policies reflect the power relations among major social groups in the USA. It has been argued that subordinate social classes have long experienced these inequalities in part because they lack the political power for effective mobilization in order to call attention to such class-based differences (Karen, 1991). Karabel’s work powerfully elucidates the sources of this relative powerlessness and ties it to the larger preoccupation by scholars, policy-makers, and the general public about inequalities among college participation rates.
