After six years of researching how the higher education system works, Paul Tough has written a juicy, often-shocking book that calls out the College Board, the top universities in the country and politicians who have pushed access further out of reach from those who need it the most.

Tough, as they say, spills the tea on the whole system.

In “The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us,” we meet people like Ned Johnson, president and “tutor-geek” at PrepMatters, the largest test-prep company in the D.C. area. Johnson charges $400 an hour to deliver results like what he did for Ariel, a young woman who had topped out with a score of 26 (out of 36) on the ACT after working with two other tutors.

Ariel’s parents poured money into sessions with Ned, who helped raise her score to a top-tier 32, which helped her get admission to her dream school -- Washington University in St. Louis. Wealthy families spending thousands on test prep is nothing new. The surprising revelation was the descriptions of the lengths this tutor went to to help his stressed-out clientele. In Ariel’s case, she was convinced that she needed to take a SoulCycle exercise class right before taking the test. Ned checked all over the metro area trying to find a class early enough, but failing to find one, he set up and replicated a SoulCycle class in her home.

That may seem bizarre, but Tough argues that parents and students set their sights on highly selective colleges because they know there’s a long-term payoff -- a belief, he argues, that is supported by long-term earnings data.

There are other behind-the-scenes moments that reveal how much money matters in this process.

“The easiest category of students for most enrollment managers to admit ... are below-average students from high-income families,” an admissions director tells Tough. He calls them CFO Specials, because they appeal to the college’s chief financial officer. Readers can see how this wrangling between admitting high-achieving students from poor families and lower-achieving students from rich families plays out in the admissions process.

It ain’t pretty.

So, where’s this meritocracy that Americans hold so near and dear?

The current system of highly selective colleges, aided by the College Board and its gate-keeping tests, works to protect its own interest and replicate privilege, Tough argues. He describes how the College Board, which administers tests like the SAT, distorted and delayed releasing its own data in public relations attempts to stay relevant and manage its own reputation. The College Board denies that they intended to mislead the public and posted a response to Tough’s reporting.

He wishes colleges would de-emphasize test scores in the admissions process, but he’s really advocating for much bigger reforms that would open the doors of opportunity for a larger number of students, like the GI Bill did for previous generations.

Some of the more disturbing details in his book further unmask the myth of meritocracy in a rigged system. Consider that American colleges collectively now give more institutional aid to each student with a family income over $100,000, on average, than they do to each student with a family income under $20,000. The colleges with the largest endowments that could actually afford to admit more low-income students, in fact, admit the fewest.

Tough also reports that the total black population at elite colleges has remained the same for decades -- 8 percent. About 15 percent of American high school graduates are black, but the percentage of black students at Princeton, Cornell, Brown, Yale and Harvard has never budged past 8 percent.

So, are these the years that matter the most when it comes to future success?

Tough makes a convincing argument that they are. He also shows us an uncomfortable picture of a system that is badly broken.

But most importantly and hopefully, he reminds us that it can be fixed.

Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg has triggered conservatives to the point where they have called her “mentally ill” on national television, and compared her to “Children of the Corn” and Nazi propaganda. Even the president of the United States resorted to mocking her on Twitter after she spoke to world leaders at the United Nations session on climate change.

That’s quite a reaction to a teenage activist trying to save the environment from catastrophic harm.

Perhaps they don’t realize that their attacks only make her message more powerful with the young people she’s inspiring.

Milo Marsten, an 11-year-old in St. Louis, missed school to attend a climate strike protest last week.

“I think she’s amazing,” he said. “She’s speaking the truth. She’s convincing people to do things. She organized an absolutely massive climate strike around the world.”

Milo became interested in environmental science when he was 7 or 8. Over the years, he’s prompted his parents to become more engaged with these issues and re-evaluate their choices. His advocacy at home has prompted discussions about reducing their household waste, evaluating whether new purchases are truly necessary, and even opting to buy a hybrid when they needed a new car. He takes note of the environmental practices of the companies they buy from, said his mother, Amanda Doyle.

“He does make me think more about that stuff instead of being so resigned to it,” Doyle said.

Milo believes in the power of individuals to help bring about change. “Certainly it has a lot to do with the people in power’s decisions,” he said. But, “we need a lot of people to make the small decisions. We can slowly change how we act and how producers of goods act.”

That’s an 11-year-old, remember.

Still, he also believes individual actions will not be enough to stem the impending climate crisis.

“I think it will take a lot of direct structural change, like the Green New Deal,” he said.

Greta spoke to these same concerns when she implored world leaders to take action.

“People are suffering. People are dying,” she said at the U.N.’s Climate Summit. “Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” she said, fighting back tears. “How dare you! For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.”

It’s jarring -- but also hopeful -- to see young people speak more passionately and intelligently about climate science and policy implications than some of the adults in charge of making these decisions.

Milo brought up the president’s past tweets about freezing cold winters in an attempt to discredit the fact that the Earth is warming. He took a deep sigh and spelled it out like you might for a 5-year-old.

“Weather,” Milo said. “That’s weather.”

It’s not the same thing as climate change, on which scientists have near universal agreement.

I asked him if this is the biggest issue facing his generation, and he paused a moment before answering.

“There are a lot of issues -- like poverty, not everyone has access to things, and we are under kind of a corrupt government. But if we keep releasing this ever-increasing amount of carbon into the air, all that’s not going to matter,” he said.

It’s something that kids as young as elementary school have started to accept.

“In fact, I have never met a kid who does not believe this is an issue,” Milo said.

The adults attacking Greta might naively believe they can scare her -- or other children -- into silence.

They might want to take note of her response. She took the president’s mocking description of her and made it into her Twitter bio: “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

These kids aren’t afraid.

The email arrived like a temptation.

An invitation seducing me to take part in a questionable game. I quashed my misgivings and filled out the form from my alma mater, noting that I have a child who might apply as a legacy.

Studies have shown what everyone knows to be true: Students who apply to colleges that a family member attended have an unearned advantage over those who don’t. It can be used as a tie-breaker when deciding between two well-qualified applicants, or it can add additional points to an application. A handful of elite institutions -- MIT, Oxford, Cambridge and UC Berkeley -- do not consider legacy as part of admissions, but the vast majority of American colleges do.

Legacy preferences were originally designed to favor white, Protestant men at the expense of Jewish and immigrant applicants who scored higher on entrance exams in greater numbers. And to this day, studies show that the people who benefit from this boost the most are the ones who need it the least. The New York Times editorial board recently described it as affirmative action for the wealthy.

Universities defend the practice because they say it increases alumni donations and engagement with the institution in the long term. It’s almost funny to hear universities with billion-dollar-plus endowments defend a system of privilege because it ensures their own wealth. Plus, there is research that disputes that very claim. If Oxford, Cambridge and MIT do not need to rely on legacy preferences to maintain their world-class status, what does that say about Harvard, Yale and all the other elite institutions who feel compelled to hang on to it?

In reality, colleges and universities will not willingly dismantle legacy preferences simply because they know it would upset too many alumni. Some parents believe that their commitment and relationship to an institution merits bonus points for their child. It’s unclear why a parent’s love or devotion or financial support for anything should translate to her child being entitled to any special consideration for it. In the case of access to higher education, all it does is perpetuate the inequalities built into a rigged system.

Unlike becoming an exceptional athlete or musician or student, being born to parents who attended a particular school required nothing of the student.

I say this while admitting that I was not willing to unilaterally disarm in the current admissions arms race. But if my college or graduate school asked in an alumni survey if I would favor eliminating such consideration entirely from their admissions process, I would support getting rid of it for everyone.

Part of the reason families might be unlikely to give up this advantage for their children is because of how competitive and unaffordable higher education has become in the past few decades. There’s no way I would be accepted to the graduate school I attended under today’s admissions standards. And the current costs at these same places would have put them completely out of reach for me back then, even when adjusted for inflation.

Most middle-class families worry about being able to afford college for their children, and higher education is increasingly seen as a prerequisite to surviving in the global economy. The parental anxiety about securing your child’s place in the middle class or maintaining a place in the upper class may be too great.

Equality is great in theory -- until it impacts your own privilege.

And, interestingly, the public debate about eliminating legacy preferences is gaining steam at the exact moment when historically underrepresented groups might finally benefit from it.

It would be fascinating to see current survey data on how many alumni would support ending legacy preferences at their own institutions. Is there an overlap among those who rally against affirmative action programs yet support legacy preferences?

Don’t expect to see colleges asking their alumni these questions anytime soon.

They may not want to hear the answers.