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[quote=Anonymous]A "smart qualified Caucasian kid" is just one out of thousands with nearly perfect scores and grades and just isn't smart enough or different enough or special enough or lucky enough to pass through the Ivy admission process.  He/she'll do fine in life going to Chicago or UVa or Duke or Carnegie Mellon. But please don't cry about the extra burden she/he carries for being a white, upper-middle-class, prep schooler.

First, keep in mind that a very large proportion of the students at the elite private schools are going to be legacy at an elite college. There's a reason why a number of the schools ask applicants where their parents and grandparents went to college. I am guess that there are more "hooked" students at the Big 3 than students who are not.

Second, no one is getting admitted to an Ivy/Stanford/MIT unless they are at the top of their class and took the most rigorous classes available at their school. The top few kids will get their first choice of schools. The top 10% of the class will end up at one of the Ivies but there is no guarantee of which one unless the family has a building named after them on campus. That leaves a large majority of the students at the selective privates with a very small shot at getting into an Ivy and more realistic chances at excellent SLACs and public Ivies like UVa.

If a kid is not among the best students at one of the Big 3, do you really think they would have been among the best students at a public high school? In DC would that kid beat out the Banneker student growing up Trinidad? How would a Cleveland Park kid show greater drive and purpose and mission?  There may only be 2 or 3 Ivy admits at a typical suburban DC high school (non-magnet). Those kids tend to stand out for lots of reasons, both academic and non-academic. They are captain of their sports team (though not good enough to be recruited), class president, and aced every AP the school offered. I would be surprised if many of the middle-of-the-pack Big 3 students had much in their application packages that demonstrated as much drive and leadership.

An average student at a Big 3 school will have a huge advantage over the average student at a suburban high school, however. Average public schools students go to 2nd tier public universities while average Big 3 students go to smaller, highly selective colleges. The really good liberal arts schools know that an average Big 3 student is going to be really well prepared for college and has the social capital to transition well and the financial resources to pay full freight.  [/quote]

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