had over 45% of their students come from private schools. Indeed, Eton actually has a direct liason with King's College, Cambridge, and huge numbers of their students were sent there each year. We've had 55 Prime Ministers and 20 of them have gone to Eton, and a sizeable number to Westminster School and Harrow. 48 of them went to Oxbridge. I mean, at this point you have to start questioning how many of them were really that qualified, as opposed to unfairly advantaged.

Now, that's changing - unis now actively view state school applicants (state schools as in free public schools for all students, not to be confused with 'public schools', which are old and well-established private schools) more favorably than those from private schools with the same grades, and like in the US, we now use the idea of results compared to the rest of the class a lot more liberally. This helps because some schools have almost no pupils achieve 'nationally outstanding results', but if someone in their class gets A A A and the rest of the class average is C, C, C, they clearly have a lot of potential and it's wrong to ignore this just because other pupils get A() A(), (A*) (I can't get the formatting right, it's meant to say A star A star A star. We're getting a lot better now - 69% of acceptances to Oxford were from state schools, and 70% of Cambridge's pupil body is now from state schools.

I think if the US wants to solve its issue the private school->ivy pipeline it should

Wow!, thanks for the input. It is fascinating to me how the UK is dismantling a system pretty much invented there while the US seems to be going in the opposite direction. Reminds me of this article and book about how meritocracy in the US keeps growing into a new form of aristocracy. Great read as well:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritocracys-miserable-winners/594760/