I don't know what your definition for "ace" is, but I did pretty well. That was my peak. Ever since has been dealing with barrier after barrier, which often seem actively hostile. I suppose that some would chalk my failure up to laziness, but everyone that I've seen overcome those barriers had access to mentors, contacts, connections, and opportunities - resources that don't come my way. Too black, too short, too gay, too quiet, too whiny, too weird. Maybe I just I trip people's gut alarms?

Granted, most of my peers who received a full ride seem to be doing fine. For millennials, I guess your parents gave decent advice. When I look around today, though, I feel less like a one-off loser than someone at the vanguard of a socioeconomic reality where even coming out of an education with no debt weight isn't a guarantee of a clean and unencumbered launch. Increasingly, superficialities - affinity, attractivenes, imminence - are the criteria. Which means that playing by the old rules, going forward, is foolish.

I sometimes wonder where I'd be, with my dark skin (et al.) and high scores, in a country that cared less about the former and more about the latter. But, here, socially, I don't know what I'd have to do to beat out an Asian or white candidate.

This is what puzzles me. What is the intent of the SAT, is it to assess aptitude for something? Is that something the desire to achieve good grades? Is it intelligence? Is it the aptitude to fire guns in a tank? For sure if you have a test that tests something, then you assign outcomes based on that assessment, then anyone has the opportunity to understand what is being assessed and practice until they are good, but what does that tell you?

I don't doubt there's a correlation between some aptitude that measures propensity for success and SAT score, but I'm still struggling to see how that benefits the poor or the migrants in general? In truth, it benefits a narrow section that "fit the mould" that is expected by success on a SAT; that is, members of the notional outgroup that do the SAT in the expected way can benefit, those that don't still fall by the wayside.

There are very many intelligent people that for whatever reason - cultural, bad parenting, poor education - still fall to achieve this mark of success. Is that acceptable? I think there's at least scope for saying that maybe a SAT is not the optimal strategy for finding all those that would benefit most from higher education. I've no idea what is, but there seems to be some very strong opinions here that don't seem particularly intent on seeing the bigger picture.

Not sure if America an easier country to succeed in, but I do believe it's a RICH country (with a high GDP per capita), i.e. it can afford to fund more colleges, imho, which means the competition is less.

Not just colleges, but colleges with prestige, there are a LOT of American college at every prestige level. The supply is rather high.

I am really impressed at the Land grant college schemes, for example. Really funneled a lot of money into the creation of colleges all over the country, not just in the populous cities.