Originally Posted by Wren
I disagree with one thing you said potatoes. The kids in Davidson Academy are outliers. Just being PG doesn't make you an outlier.

It makes you a statistical outlier. DA has strict admission requirements. Students who are capable of being admitted there are exactly the same sort of students who end up with great college prospects.

Originally Posted by Wren
And I am not sure about outcomes from state colleges and Harvard or Yale. They wouldn't have the endowments they have if their grads had the same outcomes. The endowments are just donations from their alumni..

Of course we know that there is a long legacy of privilege associated with the Ivy League. I'd suggest you take a look at the book The Price of Admission.

I'm not talking about the average graduate of each school. I won't argue that the average graduate of Ohio State and the average graduate of Harvard are likely to make the same amount of money. Rather, that the student who could have been admitted to Harvard but chose to attend Ohio State is likely to have the same outcome. In other words, it isn't something about about attending a college in the Ivy League athletic conference that is changing students into people with top prospects. And, of course that isn't even to get into the many fantastic liberal arts colleges (Kenyon, Macalester, Reed, etc.) that many people on the East Coast have never heard of. Graduate school admissions from these colleges are fantastic probably in large part because in an undergraduate only environment students are in small classes, no TAs and plenty of nurturing. These are factors that parents may assume their child will be getting for their $50,000 at an Ivy League college but it depends greatly on the school. At some students will be in large classes and get very little attention from faculty.