cream the crop

From cream of the crop.

cream the crop (third-person singular simple present creams the crop, present participle creaming the crop, simple past and past participle creamed the crop)

1. (idiomatic) To pick out the most valuable or desirable things or people from a group for one's own interests.

   Synonym: cherry-pick

   • 1968 July, Maurice F. X. Donohue, “Manpower Problems—Five Ways”, in Mountain Life & Work, volume 44, number 6, page 11:

     In the past, most agencies assumed that the other agencies were “creaming the crop,” training (or placing) the easiest or most docile or best-educated clients, manipulating data (or losing it if necessary) to look good: promising to do next year what they had promised to do the year before.

   • 2002 July 11, William L. Hamilton, “Seizing The Throne Of Good Taste”, in The New York Times‎:

     Taking new designs and young designers upmarket can take them out of context, though, killing idealistic ambitions with adult realities and removing them from the wider audience that might stand to profit from the value of their solutions. Mr. Pucci risks criticism that he could be creaming the crop.

   • 2011, Mark R. Warren, Karen L. Mapp, The Community Organizing and School Reform Project, ““A Match on Dry Grass”: Organizing for Great Schools in San Jose”, in A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 52:

     Principals of nearby schools felt they had students “taken” from them, other teachers thought small schools were being given special treatment and more money, and some thought the small schools were “creaming the crop”—taking the best students from other schools.