Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research The Elite Illusion (public exam schools)

Detractors may argue all they want, but if nothing else, graduates of theses elite school are disproportionately represented at the Ivies, at least when I was in college in the eighties.

I would suggest that their representation in the Ivies may demonstrate the social benefits of these schools rather than any academic benefit. In other words, the Ivies actively recruit from these schools. Therefore, there is a social capital advantage to attending them, rather than a purely human capital advantage to doing the coursework there.

So do they make a difference? Yes, but not simply because of the academic program, but because attending one gets you into a certain social world that includes the Ivies, which someone may not otherwise have access to.

Unless things have changed from the mid-1990's, it's never been that hard to get into an Ivy if you are in the 140ish+ I.Q. range (and used this ability in high school).

Affording an Ivy? That's a different story.

That may be true, but the school setting and that social cultural knowledge ABOUT the Ivies plays a role. I grew up in rural South Texas in a town of about 6000 people. No one I knew went to an Ivy and they seemed VERY far away. Even with the academic ability to get in and succeed there, you need a certain amount of social and cultural capital to know how to go about it and even see it as a possibility. Now, most of the kids from these schools probably already have this from their families, but attending an exam school just adds to that social capital because the Ivies are already actively looking for students from these schools.

If you lived in an urban area on the East Coast in a middle to upper middle class family, a 140+ IQ may be all it takes and an exam school can only enhance those opportunities. But without those social benefits, one's intellectual ability and academic success can easily go unnoticed and unsupported. To me, the representation within the Ivies and the findings of the study that these students do not perform significantly better (methodological questions notwithstanding) suggest that any "value added" by these schools is social/cultural not academic.

And then of course, there's the money...

Isn't there's some sort of quota system within Ivy admissions, so they are allowed to take X number (generally) from these schools, whereas other regions have a lower quota?

I think there is often a benefit in the application process for being "geographically diverse". Is this what you mean? So if I had applied from my rural Texas school, I would have gotten a boost for being diverse on that count. But that is because it is so much less common for such students to apply. But I would have lost out in any legacy points or letters of recommendation from alum or esteemed educators. Plus my school did offer less in terms of extracurriculars and more advanced curriculums (no AP classes offered at all). So I think, despite my IQ, my application would not have looked as good as someone with a lower IQ and more access to these social and cultural extras.

For the most part though, I would guess that private prep schools and magnet schools across the US are the usual pipeline to elite universities. I went to the University of Chicago for grad school and I know they recruited alot of their undergrads from particular private schools across the country.

That was part of what I meant. I also expect that the pipelines are "known quantities" so I would guess that there is some sort of soft quota where you don't have to do as well as your peers as you would at a standard issue school.

I think that things have changed a lot.

Last year ~35,000 students applied to Harvard and only ~2,100 were admitted. The Ivies reject straight-A students and students with perfect SAT scores. This page has admissions statistics for all the Ivies.

If you scroll down the page at the second link, you'll see how admissions statistics have changed in the last few years alone. For example, Harvard used to admit around 10% of its applicants, and now takes only around 6%. Cornell is down from 30% to 18%. Etc.

College admissions have become an arms race, with increasing students enrolling in SAT prep courses, seeking summer experiences for use as application essay fodder (as opposed to personal development or learning), and so on. I have actually seen advertisements for college essay writers (and PhD thesis researchers and writers) on craigslist. I flagged one of the ads, but craigslist didn't take it down. It's reasonably common.

Anecdote: someone in my family is very bright, had amazing scholarship offers for two good private colleges, graduated at the top of her class, had lots of extracurriculars and awards, and was admitted to exactly ONE Ivy out of five applications. And that was several years ago.

That's the kind of person I was talking about, meaning what would be expected of a 140+ish person.

And she got into an Ivy (I didn't say "get accepted to all the Ivies").

So, while things are harder, you should still be able to get into an Ivy.

The story was more complicated than that. Sending a PM to avoid giving out too much info publicly.

At any rate, the statistics I provided tell much more than a single anecdote. As the news story said, "Valedictorians are a dime a dozen" in the applicant pool.

Add the quotas (they want the same proportion of racial groups each year, they reserve places for alumni children, etc. etc.), plus a higher bar to acceptance for financial aid applicants, and it's easy to see that a high IQ, good grades, and high SAT scores are no guarantee of admission.