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But this is sort of interesting, analogy-wise, because relatively widely-played, low-equipment sports like football and basketball might be said to be equally accessible to all Americans, regardless of their race, location, or income. The athletes who make it to the professional draft probably do approximate the most talented players who exist.</p>
<p>But for a sport like skiing – which is expensive to pursue and for which it is tremendously useful to live near a skiable mountain – it’s likely that the restriction of access to local and/or wealthy athletes means that the hypothetical best skiers aren’t exclusively contained in the ranks of the pros (or top amateurs). An organization that was interested in fielding the best possible US ski team might be well-served by recruiting potentially highly-talented young athletes from low-income families or from geographical areas far from ski resorts, then training them to be the best at skiing.</p>
<p>Admissions officers at places like Harvard believe that they are more like skiing than basketball – that some of the applicants who appear highly talented only appear that way because they have had unequal access to academic opportunities, and that some applicants whose profiles aren’t as impressive simply haven’t had the access they needed to shine. A place like Harvard isn’t just a museum of smart teenagers – it’s a training site, and its professors intend to craft the next generation of thinkers.</p>