Trae (Trey) Stephens

And my mom was like, where do you really want to go to school?

I really want to go to the school of foreign service at Georgetown.

She was like, all right, you're going to get on a plane.

You're going to fly to Georgetown, and you're going to tell them that they're going to take you.

And I was like, okay.

I don't think that's the way it works, mom.

But she was like, no, no, this is what you're going to do.

And so a week later, I hopped on a plane and flew out to DC.

And I posted up in front of the admissions department, demanded to see the dean of admissions.

And as the story goes, I camped out.

I didn't really camp out.

I was only there for about an hour before they were like, OK, we'll hear your case.

And I went in and dumped out a backpack full of recommendation letters.

And I remember specifically what the dean said.

He said,

you know, son, there are cracks in the meritocracy.

And it's not as simple as you get good grades, you play varsity sports, you do whatever.

It's like there's more to it than that.

And it turns out that a lot of this started coming out in research years after I graduated.

There was a Princeton study from 2009 that basically showed that the most underrepresented demographic in college admissions is poor white kids.