ABSTRACT
Large parts of the present book rightly focus on the challenge of different groups in society accessing any form of higher education at different rates and the causes for such differences: there is a strong focus on the persistent link between social origin and attainment in education and differential transition rates and the social, economic and cultural causes underlying it. In contrast, this chapter only looks at admission to the internationally most highly ranked US and UK universities where applications by far outstrip the supply of available places. This group includes universities like Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Edinburgh and University College London. The challenge of admission here is not so much that students who are not admitted to one of these institutions will fail to gain any place for study in higher education. To be roughly in the ballpark to even apply to these universities, applicants generally have an attainment record that makes them eligible for admission to a wide range of institutions. Instead, admission and access to elite institutions raises the question of what type of higher education different social groups can access and also of whether and how these universities select new undergraduates in a social context of inequality.
