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Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs
Pedigree How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs Author:Lauren A. Rivera Americans are taught to believe that upward mobility is possible for anyone who is willing to work hard, that college is a great equalizer, and that the job market is a level playing field. Yet it is often those from affluent backgrounds who land the best opportunities. Pedigree takes readers behind the closed doors of prestigious investment ban... more »ks, consulting firms, and law firms to reveal the truth about who really gets hired for the nation's highest-paying entry-level jobs, who doesn't, and why.Drawing on in-depth interviews as well as firsthand observation of hiring practices, Lauren Rivera reveals how decision makers' ideas about talent--what it is, what best signals it, and who does and doesn't have it--are deeply rooted in social class. Displaying the "right stuff" that elite employers are looking for entails considerable amounts of economic, social, and cultural capital on the part of the applicants and their parents. Pedigree exposes the class biases built into American notions about the best and the brightest, and shows how social status plays a significant role in determining who reaches the top.« less