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The Wall Street Journal recently published a profile of an elite institution that is “either the best of its kind… or a scourge.” It has a gargantuan waitlist and receives tens of thousands of applications each month. Everywhere its leader goes, he’s asked the same question: “Why don’t you let more people in?” But according to the Journal, he credits his success to his “refusal to… scale.” The institution is thriving because lots of people aren’t in, “but want to be.”
Of course, I’m talking about the dating platform Raya. According to the Journal article, Raya is the app where A-list actors match with models, NBA players meet beautiful influencers, Grammy winners pair with fashion photographers, and everyone else tries to cadge dates with all of the above. Who’s everyone else? Supermodel Paulina Porizkova said that for her first two to three years on the app, “my feed would present me with, like, Icelandic DJs, and that was about it.” Or as Charlize Theron told Howard Stern’s supposed replacement Andy Cohen: “Every guy has a Burning Man picture, and they’re a CEO, like, of nothing.”
But there’s no denying that Raya caters to an elite audience. After “cresting its way through different inner circles,” the app was the subject of a 2018 New York Times article titled Can ‘Illuminati Tinder’ Save Us All? That Style section bulletin – which began with the bad news that while the rest of us waste our time on social media, there’s a raging online party “happening just out of view… [where] all the people cooler, richer and better looking… are blowing off steam together in some V.I.P. hideaway” – unmasked Raya’s founder and his goal of turning his elite dating platform into a “digital Davos, a meeting place for influential people to concoct all kinds of commercial, artistic and humanitarian projects.”
Seven years later, Raya is still a dating platform, not a digital Davos. And although it’s much larger, it remains unabashedly elitist. Its “ secret committee of about 500 trusted members who vote on every application” since supplanted by Raya members turned paid gatekeepers like “ a former professional basketball player in Los Angeles, an ex-model and fashion designer in Seoul and a marketing and comms professional who recently moved to Rome.” Photographer Annie Liebowitz’s niece, who found her husband on Raya, told the Journal that Raya is “the Brita filter for New York tap… [or] swamp.” Applicants have tried to bribe their way in. And Raya’s waitlist is now 2.5 million strong.
It sounds icky. Which raises the question: If Raya can maintain its allure with a ridiculous rejection rate, why can’t elite universities do the same without alienating most Americans?
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Every country has its elites. I recently picked up Andrew Marr’s A History of Modern Britain and learned, astonishingly, that Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister from 1957-63, the terminus of dull, grey Britain, somehow assembled a government “in which 35 ministers out of 85, including seven in the cabinet, were related to him by marriage.” Whether this is entirely true remains unclear; the citation is murky and I found little support for the proposition. Regardless, the fact that it got through the editorial process says something about how elites are viewed in Britain which, according to The Sutton Trust’s Elitist Britain 2025 report, remains as advertised.
The Revolution was supposed to get us away from this mess. And while America has done better on the inbreeding front, we’ve more than held our own on elevating dynasties in pretty much every important walk of life. But until about 15 years ago, hope of economic mobility held off resentment and elite universities continued to occupy a hallowed and uncontroversial place in national life. So the answer must lie in the gap between some hope and no hope: most people on Raya’s waitlist have some, while an overwhelming majority of students and families who’d like to attend our most prestigious universities have none.
Why? Look at the admission rate. At Raya it appears to have crept past 10% while top universities remain stubbornly below 5%. Raya also provides members with friend passes; sending a pass to a friend dramatically increases likelihood of acceptance. Ivy-Plus universities offer no side doors besides sports, which require either talent and years of hard work or parents willing to risk jail time. Finally, unlike college applicants who apply once – they can transfer, but it’s usually a one-shot deal – aspiring Rayans can remain on the waitlist indefinitely, hoping for a change in standards or a friend to gift them a golden ticket.
As top colleges reject thousands of supremely qualified applicants every year, their waitlists feel punitive. On the other hand, Raya’s waitlist has the energy of trying to get into a hot new club: at the front of the line, just behind the velvet rope, glimpsing flashing lights inside. As opposed to the doom and gloom of elite college admissions, hope springs eternal on Raya’s 2.5 million waiting list.
Which is crazy, because while there ought to be a wide array of ways to stand out in a college application, there’s only one surefire way to stand out on a dating site i.e., being beautiful. When the Times reporter asked whether his imaginary Uncle Tony – “a hypothetical terrible-looking old man with no public profile” – might get on the app, Raya’s founder was left grasping at straws.
I’ve urged our top universities to dramatically expand access, both by scaling enrollment at home as well as deploying their ample resources to add new campuses. But few have responded with any vigor. Here’s total enrollment expansion between 1995 and 2025 – a 30-year span – at Ivy Plus institutions:
| Yale | 20% |
| Stanford | 17% |
| Penn | 11% |
| Cornell | 8% |
| Dartmouth | 5% |
| Harvard | 5% |
| Princeton | 4% |
| Columbia | 3% |
| Brown | 3% |
| MIT | 1% |
| Cal Tech | 1% |
Even Yale’s substantial effort to add two new residential colleges hasn’t kept up with 30% population growth, let alone three decades of unprecedented wealth creation and increasing inequality that’s ushered hundreds of thousands of additional families down the red carpet; there are eight times as many families worth more than $20 million than there were 30 years ago. It’s not just that these families would like their offspring to attend, they think they deserve it. So while Raya doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone, thanks to 95%+ rejection rates and waitlists that no one ever seems to get off, top colleges have done a good job of alienating the rich and powerful families who should profile as their champions. Disappointed by seemingly arbitrary admissions outcomes, they’re happy to tear down the hierarchy or at least refrain from defending it.
Meanwhile, for middle class families, limited space at these schools and its admissions corollary – the shift to Early Decision, privileging red carpet families who don’t need financial aid – has had much the same effect as hotels, credit cards, and Disney resorts, which have taken to tailoring their experiences to the wealthiest. In a New York Times report at summer’s end, former Under Secretary of Education and cultural commentator Daniel Currell provided a compelling but sad chronicle of Disney World’s 30-year journey from “dream vacations for all” to a “complex, multitiered structure in which a large number of low-wait spots on the best rides are handed to those who pay dearly for a private guide, for a pricey pass or for a room in certain Disney-owned properties.” Both the dream vacation and college are no longer in reach.
Anger from all sides has been directed at admissions offices. But getting steamed at admissions and its alleged internecine preferences is an unavoidable release of unsustainable pressure. The real culprit is manufactured scarcity.
And not to pile on Harvard – let alone troll Harvard, as the current Secretary of Education (and questionable cultural commentator) did last week – but the growers on the above list (Yale and Stanford) have fared better in the current environment than those willfully ignoring demand (Harvard, Columbia, Brown). Perhaps there’s also a connection between responding to the market and being attuned to public sentiment and prevailing political winds. Regardless, growers have avoided federal sanctions and widespread public disapprobation while single-digit super-elitist institutions seem to have aggravated pretty much everybody and been left twisting in the wind.
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Because waiting for elite colleges to grow enrollment has proven to be a fool’s errand, the only alternative is to increase the number of elite schools. This is Jeff Selingo’s purpose in his excellent new book Dream School. Stop dreaming about Ivy-Plus schools, counsels Jeff, particularly because there’s no guarantee of superior economic outcomes. Instead, we should widen our aperture and look for places we can thrive, learn, and become the people we’re meant to be.
Jeff chronicles the maddening admissions experiences of students who’ve checked every box – 4.0 GPAs, high test scores, extracurricular activities galore – but never get off the waitlist. They’re frustrated and their parents are angry. Perhaps parents are being unfair. “Go ahead, admit it,” he tells them. “One reason you want your kid to go to Yale or MIT is so you can tell others that you’re sending your kid to Yale or MIT.” But Dream School also acknowledges that “in middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods… families try to cling to their place in the economic pecking order through the college their kids attend.”
American ambition and economic mobility are too important for there to be a single higher ed hierarchy. Maybe your child can’t get into the top ranked school for engineering, but she can get into the school with the best co-op program for engineering jobs. We need a multitude of hierarchies and Dream School suggests new ones like applying to the best schools for merit aid, student advising, student activities, small class size, first-year seminars, individualized curriculum, participation in faculty research, accelerated pathways to professional schools, innovation, student employment, career preparation, employment outcomes, and return on investment – none of which are monopolized by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Dream School’s 75 new elite colleges are categorized into: (1) Hidden Values (small schools with great student experiences); (2) Breakout Regionals (regional publics doing something special); and (3) Large Leaders (research universities with resources comparable to Ivy-Plus schools). Most important, they’re all accessible, with acceptance rates above 20% and most in the 30-80% range.
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In a nation of strivers, there will always be waitlists. We’ll always have more determined daters, Disneyphiles, and data science majors than our dream institutions can accommodate. There will always be Americans on the outside looking in. We are a Waitlist Nation. And God bless it; it’s a big part of what drives our higher level of innovation, productivity, and standard of living.
But exclusivity is only sustainable when paired with possibility. Raya understands it’s in the business of selling hope, keeping applicants engaged indefinitely. But elite colleges and universities stopped selling hope some time ago. Decades of deferrals, waitlists, and rejections have pushed their relationships with aspiring families to the breaking point.
While American higher education has a number of existential challenges, broadening the definition of elite schools remains a priority. As our most prestigious colleges and universities have proven unable to dream bigger, thanks to their faithful correspondent Jeff Selingo, students and families can now do so themselves. Let’s hope they do. If only so we’ll have more elite college grads who can get on Raya and date people more attractive than themselves.