In society, exclusivity creates desirability. Whether it’s that special country club or elite college, privilege is defined by the rejection rate. In the previous era, the Ivy League was one of those prized organizations, and McDonald’s was the exact opposite. Now, the New Normal has seized our social convention and turned it on its head.

In 2011, McDonald’s announced it would hire 50,000 new employees on April 19 for its National Hiring Day. They eventually hired 62,000 people. Over 1 million people applied. This is noteworthy because many commentators have accused the unemployed of being lazy and unwilling to work.

With 62,000 hired out of more than 1 million, that leaves the McDonald’s acceptance rate at 6.20%. Let’s see how that compares with the Ivy League acceptance rate in 2011.

The results are not good. Of course, some commentator will inevitably scold me for comparing the two, as the difficulty of these two tasks are obviously very different. When I say it’s “harder” to get a job at McDonald’s, I mean it’s harder statistically speaking, as if you were a gambler in Vegas playing the odds. From this perspective, the results are indisputable. It would make more sense to bet on the Ivy League applicant than the McDonald’s job seeker.