Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there a school that most of these extraordinary kids are going to now? It seems the Ivies are mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.

You are spewing inaccurate nonsense.
Specious arguments and assumptions.
The Ivy League schools are not mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.
Further, you assume that NO athletes, legacies, and URM picks are extraordinary kids.

Some extraordinary kids can be found in every school.

The highest concentration of extraordinary kids can be found at:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
UPenn
Cal Tech
Duke
Columbia
Chicago
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona

Harvard
athletes - 20%
legacy - 36%
URM - 14%
donors - 5%

There is overlap but a good percentage of the class does fall into these categories.

More than half of the Harvard athletes and legacy happen to be very strong students too. So it's not as you fully expect. You'd be mistaken if you believe Harvard admits large volumes of mediocre legacies. On average the legacy admitted pool is worse than the non-legacy admitted pool, but it's still quite strong and they tend to flock into top consulting, law, finance, and NGO jobs later on.

Anonymous wrote:Is there a school that most of these extraordinary kids are going to now? It seems the Ivies are mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.

OP is bored with her life and hoping to start a flame war.

MLB baseball player Craig Breslow went to Yale. Biophysics major and STILL does genetic research

NFL football player John Urschel has a PhD from MIT (mathmatics)

There are many others

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there a school that most of these extraordinary kids are going to now? It seems the Ivies are mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.

You are spewing inaccurate nonsense.
Specious arguments and assumptions.
The Ivy League schools are not mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.
Further, you assume that NO athletes, legacies, and URM picks are extraordinary kids.

Some extraordinary kids can be found in every school.

The highest concentration of extraordinary kids can be found at:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
UPenn
Cal Tech
Duke
Columbia
Chicago
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona

Harvard
athletes - 20%
legacy - 36%
URM - 14%
donors - 5%

There is overlap but a good percentage of the class does fall into these categories.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there a school that most of these extraordinary kids are going to now? It seems the Ivies are mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.

You are spewing inaccurate nonsense.
Specious arguments and assumptions.
The Ivy League schools are not mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.
Further, you assume that NO athletes, legacies, and URM picks are extraordinary kids.

Some extraordinary kids can be found in every school.

The highest concentration of extraordinary kids can be found at:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
UPenn
Cal Tech
Duke
Columbia
Chicago
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona

+1

Anonymous wrote:Is there a school that most of these extraordinary kids are going to now? It seems the Ivies are mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.

You are spewing inaccurate nonsense.
Specious arguments and assumptions.
The Ivy League schools are not mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.
Further, you assume that NO athletes, legacies, and URM picks are extraordinary kids.

Some extraordinary kids can be found in every school.

The highest concentration of extraordinary kids can be found at:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
UPenn
Cal Tech
Duke
Columbia
Chicago
Williams
Amherst
Swarthmore
Pomona

I recently listened to this podcast -- good conversation with economist David Deming, who analyzed elite college admission data and found that extra-curriculars and other non-academic factors were far more likely to advantage the wealthy than test scores.

https://www.theringer.com/2023/8/1/23814588/why-elite-college-admissions-are-biased-toward-the-superrich-david-deming

Anonymous wrote:Is there a school that most of these extraordinary kids are going to now? It seems the Ivies are mostly athletes, legacies, and URM picks.

Disagree with your premise - the research shows that the legacies/athletes/URM are just as brilliant as those that didn't get in - but there are only so many seats, so the seats go to the brilliant ones who have the above hooks. Regardless, here's my off the cuff answer.

MIT, Stanford, Berkeley.

MIT, CMU, and CalTech. They don't f#ck around with legacy or "whole person" nonsense.

None of the globetrotting trust fund kids incessantly posting on social media are at those schools. They are - however - at Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, U of Miami, Penn.

Make of that what you will.

Anonymous wrote:the very smartest kid I've probably ever personally known of is going to VaTech

same, an objectively-measured, profoundly gifted, and all-around great kid

University of California w/ the Regent's Scholarship

I'm most impressed with MIT. They don't do legacy. They don't do athletic recruits. They don't care if you're rich or famous. You'll notice that none of the offspring of the American elite go to MIT. They require test scores. They don't care much about race. They do strive to have gender balance, but that's a good thing. Anyone going to MIT has earned their spot. It's obviously a STEM school, but they have an outstanding creative writing department. Also great at economics.

As for a more humanities oriented school, that's a tough one. Humanities have been really decimated over the past thirty years. Lack of student interest and faculties that are lost in stupid ideological battles that no one outside academia cares about. Thirty years ago Yale was probably the place to go. But back then the Ivies were generally meritocracies. That's no longer the case. And Yale in particular is very heavy into the DEI stuff. You need to watch what you say at that school. I think these days, Chicago is probably the best for humanities majors.

Anonymous wrote:They attend schools that their families can afford.

This. My genius kid when to a school DCUM mocks but it was free. (Defining genius by IQ test not some Hollywood idea of what a genius is)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know one real genius, she is high on work life balance since graduating college and living a relaxed life working in a fortune 500 making good money working from home and enjoying life. She feels chasing ambition has no bounds, finds similar satisfaction helping at homeless shelters.

Where did she go to college and did she like it?

A T10 college. Loved it there but realized that there is more to life than chasing "full potential" and being genius is as much of a burden as its a blessing.

A lot of quirky geniuses at places like Brown and Penn. Unhooked geniuses these days tends to end up here rather than the legacy-heavy likes of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

The truly exceptional people I know have attended a variety of schools. Their choices were driven by interest and budget.

Brown
Princeton
VA Tech
Duke
Random small school in IL
JHU
SUNY (forget which one)