It has never been a secret that the Ivy league schools have been expansive. Its not a secret that sociologist make crap even the most well paid tenured professors. Its no secret that to make money with an literature degree you need to be extremely lucky. Its no secret that there is no jobs for fill in the blank studies majors. So if you are going to take on Ivy league debt but choose to take a non money making major you are going to be broke. The two biggest advantages of the Ivy league are the connections and reputation. The connections are in fields like law, government, medicine, media, and science as there really is no market at all for womens studies or black studies. The reputation requires someone in the market for an employee in that field and again there is not exactly a huge market outside of academia for sociologists.

And that there is the rub: Everyone benefits when the population of a university, especially the best ones in the nation, are made up of the kids who are there because they earned their place based on their own work, not the education or income of their parents. This is democracy 101, folks.

I could not agree more that diversity and actual individual achievement is a good thing but I am having a hard time figuring out how this is democracy 101 though? From my state school education democracy, even stretching its meaning to include republicanism and other systems refereed to when people say democracy, never included the meaning you are giving it here. What I think you are trying to say is meritocracy which democracy is a competing idea. For example my local sheriff is an elected position and the current occupant is hated by his deputies, waste resources, has only an AA in criminal justice and crime has increased during his tenure but has a folksy charm and party affiliation that works wonders on the local demographic. If we had a meritocracy a person like him would have never been appointed and probably would never made it past sgt.

The list I posted of course is the ideal and these are the top half percent in "hottness" and is in no way a complete list of the even the average joe finds attractive. This of course does not take into account all of the other things that make a person attractive.

Most men, no matter what they say about "liking women with meat on their bones" choose to view images of women who are very thin.

This is just pure bullshit. If you want to know what women men find attractive look at mens magazines such as esquire, maxium, complex, source etc. Here are a few from the Maxium 100

1 Olivia Wilde BMI of 18 after losing weight for her role in house since she is playing a dying doctor.

2 Megan Fox BMI 19.6

3 Bar Refaeli could not find her weight but she is 5 8 and her measurements are 35-24-35) and a size 6

4 Marlin Akerman could not find any info for her BMI

5 Mila Kunis BMI 21.4

6 Eliza Dushka could not find info for her BMI

7 Adriana Lima BMI 18

8 Rihanna BMI 20

9 Jordana Brewster BMI 19

10 Jennifer Love Hewitt BMI 22

5 of the 7 I could get figures for all in the healthy weight, both that are below just barely and one has done so for a role.

Here are some other big names that I would say most men find attractive

Salma Hayek BMI 22

Jessica Alba BMI 20

Scarlett Johansson BMI 20.6

In other words men are not lying when we say we don't like skinny chicks (say Kate Moss) and prefer a little meat on the bone.

Body fat percentage, yes. But even BMI can be deceiving. When the whole hype about BMI first started, and everybody was talking about how this was oh-so-revolutionary, someone (I don't remember who) decided to prove a point by asking the entire female crew team at Yale to get their BMI calculated.

When BMI was first introduced no one cared as there was very few overweight people in America in the 1950s. But, BMI is a good enough tool for most people and for the cost (free) the best tool. Unless you are an athlete or have a very high muscle mass it will give you good enough information of your risk factors. With slight modifications such as waist size it is effective for just about every one except bodybuilder and weightlifters. So unless you are doing some form of strength training almost everyday of the week (such as say a crew team) it will give you the information of what you general risk group is. BMI has a very high correlation with almost all of the big killers that effect humans and while correlation does not mean causation blah blah blah it is a black box where the things required to have a healthy BMI are the things that tend either to prevent or not cause diabetes, hearth disease, cancer etc.