Let me say at the outset that certainly DD has room for improvement, in terms of manners and being outgoing and extroverted.
It’s important though that I put forward a conspiracy theory here. See for example The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Blacks, women, Jews, were historically discriminated against. And now, Asians. (DD is half Asian, which is probably an even worse sin).
So the theory is simply that these schools are of, by, and for the 1%. I’m just the 5%, just upper-middle-class, not upper-class. The last thing they’d want is some outsider taking over the debate team… bumping one of “their” kids out of their allocation of 12 slots at Stanford.
At the college level, there is more public scrutiny, more release of statistics. At the prep-school level there is more room for bias. But still there is a bit of chicanery. They say they select on test score. Certainly the 1% have full scope to pay for tutoring and courses. But even then, Stanford rejects 71% of applicants with perfect scores. They fall back to saying, they want applicants who are “well-rounded”. Who did community service. Certainly, at an elite boarding school, the children are offered easy access to practically a resort with a smorgasbord of extracurriculars. And this is extended to hand holding them into service projects.
One counselor at DYS warned me off of Ivy League schools. I think it is not implausible that the gifted are suffering some discrimination in private school, prep school, and Ivy League admissions. The goalposts are always moving, with some plausibly deniable excuse: extroversion, "fit", test score, legacy, service, or "well-rounded". In the end, its the golden rule: the people with the gold make the rules.
Last edited by thx1138; 03/17/16 08:55 AM.
