This article focuses on the admission committees of an equal opportunity program created by a selective French higher education institution. It analyzes its effects on the renewal of modes of access to the elites via education. We highlight the hybrid nature of this selection process by identifying two frameworks and judgment modes: professorial and managerial. We show how the apparent opposition of the valuation criteria mobilized by jury members does not prevent the emergence of a consensus regarding a new model of upward mobility. This model is built on their shared representations of both meritocracy and the lower classes.