Not to mention the fact that people who aren't wealthy are at a big disadvantage in this game.
The Ideal Overprogrammed Non-Introspective Young Adult problem is actually only possible when you have enough wealth to run the program at a high level to create the Perfect Shiny Resume(TM)
Kind of counterintuitive, isn't it?
But true, for all that.
That
is the problem, bottom line.
It isn't that colleges are using "unfair" screening processes (though that is also a side-effect of this phenonmenon), so much as that they are selecting for things which
should be a proxy for high potential, but all-too-often are only a proxy for high SES, and are becoming ever moreso.
That I find objectionable, yes. I find it objectionable because it is disingenuous as a process to select for high SES when you
say that you are selecting for "best and brightest" instead.
Guiding a child-- even one with the capacity-- to the levels evidently necessary to be Ivy-league material as a high school student is frankly beyond the means of most lower-middle-class households. Please note that 'means' there signifies much more than financial means. When both parents work full time and the student attends a low SES public school, the resources are simply not there for that child. I was one of those kids. If the climate had been what it is now, there is no way that I'd have racked up the elite college acceptances that I did. I simply had a regular kind of job and band as my extracurriculars, I had no leadership or travel, no volunteer hours, etc. That, coupled with very high SAT scores, was enough. At least it was then.
I agree with Val's assertion that "exotic" has come to mean something in this process that really isn't backed by any kind of research on outcomes.
