This is a comment because it’s not actually a justification for EA elitism.
There are some okay-ish ways to quantify where students interested in Effective Altruism might end up. If we assume that, for a student to be interested in effective altruism, they need to have independently pursued some kind of extracurricular activity involving a skill of the kind that Effective Altruism might discuss, we can look at where the top competitors for those kinds of extracurriculars are.
One thing to beware is confounding factors. People who would be good for EA might be too busy to participate in these activities (either because they have busy class schedules or are involved in research or because they work outside of school). People might also be doing activities because they are superficially impressive, which probably isn’t a good sign for thinking in a very EA way.
Here are some brief summaries of where top competitors in different American extracurriculars come from:
This is a comment because it’s not actually a justification for EA elitism.
There are some okay-ish ways to quantify where students interested in Effective Altruism might end up. If we assume that, for a student to be interested in effective altruism, they need to have independently pursued some kind of extracurricular activity involving a skill of the kind that Effective Altruism might discuss, we can look at where the top competitors for those kinds of extracurriculars are.
One thing to beware is confounding factors. People who would be good for EA might be too busy to participate in these activities (either because they have busy class schedules or are involved in research or because they work outside of school). People might also be doing activities because they are superficially impressive, which probably isn’t a good sign for thinking in a very EA way.
Here are some brief summaries of where top competitors in different American extracurriculars come from:
Ethics Bowl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercollegiate_Ethics_Bowl)- no clear pattern among the universities
Bioethics Bowl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioethics_Bowl)- similar to above
National Debate Tournament (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Debate_Tournament_winners)- often but by no means exclusively prestigious US schools, seems to lean towards private schools a bit also? but I’m just eyeballing it
US Universities Debating Championship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Universities_Debating_Championship)- Mostly Ivy-League or similarly prestigious schools
Putnam Exam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathematical_Competition)- Strongly dominated by MIT
College Model UN (https://bestdelegate.com/2022-2023-north-american-college-model-u-n-final-rankings-world-division/)- no clear pattern besides DC-based schools tending to do well
I’m sure other people can add more to this list.
If you think that Putnam results are a strong predictor of Effective Altruism, that could justify more elitism. Personally, I doubt that.