The `Selected` property **is** being set by the `SelectList` constructor. The image you have shown is for the `items` argument (i.e the collection of `SelectListItem` that you passing to the method), not the result of calling the method.

The constructor does not modify the collection passed to it, it creates a new `IEnumerable<SelectListItem>`, and if you inspect the value of `var x`, then you will see that the 2nd `SelectListItem` (the one with `Value = "2"`) will have its `Selected` property set to `true`.

However, the purpose of the `SelectListItem` class is for use in one of the `HtmlHelper` methods that generates a `<select>` (`DropDownList()`, `DropDownListFor()`, `ListBox()` and `ListBoxFor()` methods) which accept an `IEnumerable<SelectListItem>` as either the 1st or 2nd argument.

Unless you specifically not binding to a model property (e.g. `@Html.DropDownList("NotAModelProperty", Model.YourSelectList)`), then setting the `Selected` property is ignored because the method sets the selected option based on the value of the property your binding to (refer [How to set “selectedValue” in DropDownListFor Html helper](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41719293/mvc5-how-to-set-selectedvalue-in-dropdownlistfor-html-helper/41731685#41731685) for more detail), therefore creating a new `IEnumerable<SelectListItem>` from the first one by using `new SelectList(...)` is pointless extra overhead.

The reason for using the `SelectList` constructor is to create an `IEnumerable<SelectListItem>` from an existing collection of objects, for example

    IEnumerable<SelectListItem> options = new SelectList(db.Flavors, "ID", "Name")

which would get the records from the `Flavors` table, and set the `Value` based on its `ID` property, and the `Text` based on its `Name` property. It just provides an alternative to using (say)

    IEnumerable<SelectListItem> options = db.Flavors.Select(x => new SelectListItem
    {
        Value = x.ID.ToString(),
        Text = x.Name
    });



I'm creating a `SelectList` to pass to a `Html.DropDownList`, but the correct value doesn't seem to be populating

    var x = new SelectList(new[] { 
        new SelectListItem() { Value="1", Text="Vanilla"}, 
        new SelectListItem() { Value="2", Text="Chocolate"},
        new SelectListItem() { Value="3", Text="Strawberry"}
    }, "Value", "Text", "2");


[`SelectList`][2] should take a constructor that takes in the `selectedValue`:

    public SelectList(
    	IEnumerable items,
    	string dataValueField,
    	string dataTextField,
    	object selectedValue
    )

But this only sets the SelectedValue on the entire collection.  The individual `SelectListItems` haven't been set as `Selected`

![Inspector][1]


Do I need to iterate over them individually and set selected for each as in [this question][3]?

[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I6zt3.png
[2]: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.mvc.selectlist.selectlist#M:System.Web.Mvc.SelectList.#ctor(System.Collections.IEnumerable,System.String,System.String,System.Object)
[3]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1390874/1366033