alt Hacker News> Nevertheless, the average private school applicant had only a 18.3% chance of admission, well below the 25.8% average for public school applicants.
As a parent of a student in a private school, this is how it should be. For the amount of support and resources that private school students receive vs their public school peers, the standards should be higher. My child understands this, and knows that they will have to achieve more to get admission to a UC than a kid at a low income public school.
There should be exceptions, for example: very low SES student attending a private school on scholarship - although such students are usually exceptional or else they would not have qualified for private school scholarship.
The working class shouldn't be subsidizing the higher education of the wealthy.
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You seem to be falsely equating private schools with "the wealthy" and public schools with "the working class". Plenty of people are wealthy and send their kids to public schools. They fund them via property taxes rather than tuition payments.
This seems backwards to me. Colleges should be prioritizing strong students for admission and nothing else. Our country needs the best engineers and doctors. Colleges are a scarce, valuable resource and should be reserved for the best students, regardless of why they are the best students.