This book attempts to overcome the limitations of previous large-scale studies by focusing on educational inequality in a systematic case study. This is the first study to describe the opportunity structure in a socially homogenous school; consequently this study is able to discover the pure effects of selection on socialization-quite apart from the effects of social class and racial biases. Being a detailed case study, this research is also able to discover the mechanisms underlying school selection: the subtle procedures that a school systematically uses to structure and define all students' opportunities. Furthermore, this study discovers a new model for the selection process, the tournament mobility model, wherein selection operates in successive stages. This model has important implications for students' awareness of selection and for the way they are socialized. This study also investigates some of the assumptions underlying the 'meritocracy' controversy, and it confronts the questions of whether or not meritocratic criteria exist and whether or not they are likely to be implemented. This study finds that, despite its meritocratic pretensions, the school actually uses different criteria than it claims to use. A theoretical chapter and a policy chapter conclude the book. (Author)