How the Super-Rich Are Getting Their Children Into the World’s Top Universities
26th March 2026
Tatler is a British vehicle where the Comfortable and Constructive classes can read about the doings of the Crust and the Clerisy under the illusion that it will unlock the secret achievement badge for fame and fortune. America doesn’t really have an equivalent; perhaps if one did a mashup of Vogue and Vanity Fair run by the editors of Hello! magazine.
Entry to the world’s top universities is increasingly becoming a long-term strategy rather than a final-year push. For high-net-worth families, preparation now begins earlier, stretches further and involves a level of planning that mirrors any other major investment decision.
The decoupling of famous-tier university life from actual education that began with the progressive march through the institutions in the 1960s and transformed them into Woke DEI indoctrination factories is pretty much complete.
Note that the most important characteristic of “the world’s top universities” is not the education they provides but the credential as a member of the Clerisy—and, ultimately, of the Crust—for one’s children, justifying full-court-press helicopter parenting.
Figtree Learning describes the shift as a far more layered process than it used to be. ‘It’s no longer enough to achieve top grades and write a strong personal statement. Securing a place at a top university is now akin to completing a pentathlon, which demands success across five distinct elements: outstanding grades, rigorous entrance tests, demanding interviews, compelling references, and a persuasive personal statement. Falling short on any one of these can cost a candidate their place, no matter how strong they are in the others.’
Needless to say, none of these elements has much to do with the efforts of the child, any more than success in the Olympics can be achieved without an extensive support team of coaches and nutritionists to act as pit-crew.
I would be prepared to argue that any 18-year-old who could demonstrate “outstanding grades, rigorous entrance tests, demanding interviews, compelling references, and a persuasive personal statement” could pretty much skip the rather tedious step of actually attending university for four years and just parachute into whatever nepo-baby slot has been prepared for him/her since he/she were conceived (probably by genetically-screened IVF). (And increasingly it’s going to be a “she”, since the Deep State world has pretty much agreed that Men Are The New Hitler upon whom it isn’t worth wasting a lot of time and effort.)
I am reminded of the famous “Machine That Goes Ping” scene from Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life, where the pregnant woman lying on the gurney awaiting the birth of her child watches the team of doctors walk the visiting Corporate Bureaucrat through their array of high-tech medical machinery, and eventually is moved to say, “What am I supposed to do?”, to which Graham Chapman responds, “Nothing my dear; you’re not qualified.”