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[quote=Anonymous]I graduated high school in 1998. I grew up in a small town out west where around 60% of graduating seniors went to college, and the vast, vast majority went to state schools, with a significant number going to community college. Getting into and attending the state flagship meant you were smart and middle or upper middle class, because you could afford to travel across the state to attend instead of living at home.

While I was in high school, I remember two transfers who moved to our town from out of state, one from California and one from Texas, both from big cities. Both had been attending "top" suburban schools before they moved (my town had only one high school and no private options beyond MS, plus the private schools were very religiously focused).

I became friends with both of these students, in part because we were similar -- all honors classes, very academically minded, definitely going to college, all had plans for grad school as well. Their approach to college was incredibly foreign. They'd both already taken the PSAT multiple times in order to maximize their SAT score. Both took formal test prep classes. Both engaged in resume-building -- selecting extra-curriculars and elective classes specifically to brand themselves for college and to balance their resume. Both sets of parents hired professional editors to help prepare their college essays. One wound up at Stanford (where she was a legacy) the other at a Seven Sisters school where she was very unhappy but graduated and went onto med school.

I did none of that stuff (and had parents who would never have paid for it or understood what even was the point). I attended this state flagship on a scholarship and went on to a top law school.

I think these approaches have been around a long time, they've just spread. Those big, wealthy suburban high schools have been playing this game for decades, and of course elite private schools basically invented the game. But there are more people and the intensity has gone up. I think for people like me from more rural/isolated backgrounds, if you didn't have an experience like mine where you encountered kids from those schools in high school, you might think "everything changed." But you were just sheltered from it.

In my home town, it's pretty similar to the way it was when I was there. Plenty of kids don't go to college at all -- they go work on family ranches or go to vocational school and start working. Plenty of people still attend community college or small, non-competitive (and inexpensive) state schools. The "smart" kids still go to the state flagship with a small number heading out of state. A lot of this still comes down to your socioeconomic status and your parents' education levels. It honestly has not changed much, even if the exact test scores and GPAs have shifted and there's stuff like test optional and kids applying to more schools. It's really amazingly consistent almost 30 years later.[/quote]

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