Agreed, but not sure if we call this selection bias.
Anyways, here's my perspective from someone who realized this even while growing up in a suburb in the Bay Area. My parents are blue collar workers (we've lived very comfortably through their hard work however), and so are a good portion of the folks in their social circle, but my city is largely made up of upper middle class and wealthy professionals, mostly tech workers.
When I hit junior high/high school, I was taking the advanced classes with the kids of those professionals. I was among the more talented kids in my class, but in my senior year of high school I was working a drive-thru, while one friend had an internship at an architectural firm, getting an awesome chance to learn from a talented and successful architect (the friend's intended profession), and he wasn't the only one doing something like that over the summer. So one difference was that the other parents had connections that mine did not, and were able to give their kids a kind of exposure to the world that I didn't have. Even though the Bay Area has a wealth of resources for those interested in technology, I didn't know what existed, and nor did my parents. Nor did I know that I should have been asking around to dig these up.
The girl that this post is about is undoubtedly gifted and deserves to be recognized as one of the 20 under 20. Even if I did grow up with social, intellectual, economic and/or academic capital, I probably wouldn't have achieved that. But these sorts of differences do make me wonder about how many more geniuses could launch world-changing careers if all students had access to the resources this girl did, as well as being taught how to make the most of them.
Anyways, here's my perspective from someone who realized this even while growing up in a suburb in the Bay Area. My parents are blue collar workers (we've lived very comfortably through their hard work however), and so are a good portion of the folks in their social circle, but my city is largely made up of upper middle class and wealthy professionals, mostly tech workers. When I hit junior high/high school, I was taking the advanced classes with the kids of those professionals. I was among the more talented kids in my class, but in my senior year of high school I was working a drive-thru, while one friend had an internship at an architectural firm, getting an awesome chance to learn from a talented and successful architect (the friend's intended profession), and he wasn't the only one doing something like that over the summer. So one difference was that the other parents had connections that mine did not, and were able to give their kids a kind of exposure to the world that I didn't have. Even though the Bay Area has a wealth of resources for those interested in technology, I didn't know what existed, and nor did my parents. Nor did I know that I should have been asking around to dig these up.
The girl that this post is about is undoubtedly gifted and deserves to be recognized as one of the 20 under 20. Even if I did grow up with social, intellectual, economic and/or academic capital, I probably wouldn't have achieved that. But these sorts of differences do make me wonder about how many more geniuses could launch world-changing careers if all students had access to the resources this girl did, as well as being taught how to make the most of them.