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thursday

To any middle-class fool of a high-school student with a dream of earning his way into an Ivy League college through hard work and dedication, America’s rich have this to say: Tough luck, sucka! As Daniel Golden’s the-title-says-it-all tome, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, points out, you can study for the SAT as much as you’d like in the vain hope of beefing up that application to Harvard. But if you don’t come from a family of money, power, and/or influence, you’d be better served filling out an application to McDonald’s Hamburger University. Potential mathematics majors, take note: You don’t even need to take AP Statistics in order to understand the slim-to-none chances Golden lays out for those competing with the “preference of privilege” that has come to dominate the admissions offices of top-drawer schools. Practice asking Golden if he wants fries with that when he discusses and signs copies of his work at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Matthew Borlik)