Reply to I believe that admission to elite schools were much more meritocratic 20 years ago versus today

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[quote=Anonymous]I am old enough to remember how, during the period OP describes, the same was said about the previous 20 years... not to mention the 20 before that.

I was a scholarship student at an elite New England prep school. My year around 20 students from the school went to Harvard, while now 5 would be considered a good year. Overall, across the country, the trend in the last 40 years has been to to accept increasing numbers of public school students, rather than private.

I am a university professor and agree with my colleague PP - at least in the humanities. Writing skills have especially plummeted. I don't have enough knowledge to discuss the sciences, but I will say that overall academic expectations tend to be lower. I believe that students, especially at high achieving colleges, feel pressure to be involved in many extra curriculars. Add to that time spent on phones and social media and students seem to spend less and less time on academics. I am often surprised by how comfortable students are offering extracurriculars as an excuse for later papers. Priorities have changed.

That said, I think the overall move to accept more public school students is a very good thing for too many reasons to list. Correlation not being causation, I am definitely NOT arguing for a return to more prep school acceptance. The quality of student at those schools has declined even more than at colleges.[/quote]

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