From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Conclusion

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated how elite prep school graduates have, historically, generally lived in exclusive U.S. neighborhoods; and have, historically, undemocratically monopolized—in disproportionate numbers--the most lucrative and powerful executive positions within the U.S. business, media, political and foundation world:

“…In the period between 1962-72, 70 percent of the grooms whose wedding announcements appeared in the New York Times were from private schools. Of those grooms that were listed in the Social Register, 20 percent were from St. Paul’s alone; 8 percent were from Exeter, and 6 percent were old Grotonians. A private school, and particularly a prep school, education appears to be still important in establishing social pedigrees…

“…In some exclusive neighborhoods in New York, Boston, and Washington, preps could be said to have achieved a critical mass, insulating themselves against outsiders through high prices and high taxes. Preps are particularly fond of Connecticut suburban areas such as Darien, Greenwich, and New Canaan. In fact, Connecticut is probably the prep state…

“…Do the interpersonal relationships of preppies become interorganizational and institutional, linking corporate boards, banks, industries, government cabinets, and philanthropic organizations?...Michael Useem’s study (…1984)…found that 13 elite boarding schools [Andover, Choate, Deerfield, Exeter, Groton, Hill, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Milton, St. George’s, St. Mark’s St. Paul’s, and Taft] educated 10 percent of the members of the boards of large American business organizations. Considering that these 13 schools enroll fewer than 1 percent of the population, 10 percent is striking. Even more so is the fact that 17 percent of those who become directors of two large companies (rather than just one) attended one of the thirteen elite boarding schools, as did 15 percent of those who are directors of 3 or more large companies…

“Select 16 boarding schools provide a `booster shot’ for success. Nearly half of the senior corporate managers who achieved the high corporate position…had prep school or social register backgrounds…There is considerable impressionistic evidence to suggest that substantial numbers of boarding school graduates enter banking…In a period of economic scarcity and contraction, we might expect the prep experience to become relatively more important, as those already holding power try to cling to what they have…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 20

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated how some of the tax-exempt and “non-profit” elite prep schools profit from the current U.S. economic system:

“…It is not unusual, for example, for the alumni and wealthy friends of an elite school to give annual gifts in excess of $1 million…Endowments can be impressive; as of 1982, Andover’s endowment was over $82 million, St. Paul’s’ was over $61 million, and Hotchkiss’s over $$20 million…

“Elite boarding schools invest heavily and their cash reserves attract brokers and other money market managers. Exeter’s Third Century Fund was worth $20,453,001 as of September 1981…

“:The collective portfolio of America’s most elite prep schools is impressive…Morgan money helped to finance Groton, Taft was founded by Horace D. Taft, brother of President Taft, Hotchkiss, whose deceased husband perfected the machine gun, and St. George’s School was helped by John Nicholas Brown, the Rhode Island industrialist whose family helped establish Brown University. Choate can count Mellons as benefactors, and a Lowell and a Forbes funded the Middlesex School in Massachusetts. The Kent School was given an early boost by several DuPonts…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 19

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated why student applicants who attended elite prep schools apparently have an undemocratically-obtained advantage over student applicants who attended U.S. public schools in obtaining admission to U.S. power elite universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton:

“In addition to cooperating with the colleges, a group of select 16 school college advisors cooperate among themselves, sharing information and developing common strategies for dealing with colleges…College advisors, especially those at the select 16 schools, use their close personal relationships with college admissions officers to lobby for their students…

“Most public high-school counselors do not know elite college admissions officers, nor do they have the resources to call them up or drive over to talk with them…The elite prep school advisors are still listened to more closely by college admissions officers than public school counselors…

“…Nationally, only 2 percent of all college students attend the most highly selective colleges in the United States…and much less than 1 percent nationally attend one of the 8 eastern Ivy League colleges…Almost all boarding school students attend 4-year colleges immediately after graduation…Half attend the most highly selective colleges in the United States, and 1 in 5 attends an Ivy League college. The colleges they attend are heavily concentrated on the East Coast and in California…

“When four sets of application pools to Ivy League schools are compared, the acceptance rate is highest for select 16 boarding school applicants…Prep schools, especially the select 16 schools, offer…students…a tremendous boost in gaining acceptance to the colleges of their choice…The organizational support that the schools offer to students is matched by few, if any, public schools…Prep schools open doors for students…

“Compared to their public school peers, prep school students start the race for college with substantial advantages… The advantages prep schools students enjoy raise some complex and disturbing issues. How fair is it to public school students to allow prep school students to be consistently given the competitive edge so that they win a disproportionately high number of coveted acceptances?...”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 18

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated how U.S. power elite universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton apparently favor student applicants who attended elite prep schools over student applicants who attended U.S. public schools:

“…In 1982, 34 percent of the freshman class at Harvard, 40 percent of Yale freshmen, and 40 percent of Princeton freshmen were from nonpublic high schools…

“Being a legacy—having one or more parents or other relatives who attended the college to which one applies—is a decided bonus for admission. 17 percent of the Princeton class of 1983 were alumni children…Several college advisers said that legacies were 2 to 2 ½ times as likely to be admitted to Ivy League colleges as nonlegacies…At Yale during the 1960s about one-quarter of the entering class were legacies, a figure that dropped to 13 percent in the 1970s, but returned to between 20 and 24 percent in 1984…

“The help the elite prep schools give their students…reaches into the informal, interpersonal world of `horse-trading’ that exists in friendly phone calls, beers, and dinner with college admissions officers…The close personal relationships between select 16 college advisors and college admissions officers have been built up over a considerable number of years…

“Often prep school college advisors are invited to sit in on admissions committee decisions, to see how a college puts its class together…Such information…may suggest strategies they can use inputting their candidates forward. They learn other useful information from personal contacts as well, such as which colleges are having an `admissions pinch,’ and hence might be receptive to somewhat weaker candidates…Inside lore about the admissions process helps boarding school college advisors sell their students more effectively than advisors without such knowledge can…”

“…At least one Ivy League college (Harvard) puts the applications from certain boarding schools into different colored folders. Hence, the admissions committee knows immediately which applicants are from certain boarding schools…Being from one of those select boarding schools was positively related to admission to Harvard…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 17

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and their specially privileged student body:

“Preppies are a perfect market for drug dealers because they have the money and the need. The generous allowances many boarding school students receive make it relatively easy for them to buy drugs. If they do not have money, others often share their drugs…Alcoholism is also prevalent at boarding schools….In effect, prep school students come to believe that they are entitled to privilege because they are true aristocrats…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 16

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated why the U.S. power elite continues to maintain an exclusive, undemocratic, separate, private educational system in the United States:

“…As our data [from the early 1980s] show, boarding schools are stil a man’s world [in the 1980s]. In the Porter Sargent sample of 289 schools, 92 percent of the heads are male; even at girls schools, 64 percent of the heads are male [in the early 1980s]…None of the select 16 schools has a woman head [in the 1980s]…

“Male authority is a deeply entrenched tradition of prep school life…In the prep school world, strong women usually find their mobility blocked. Leadership positions within the elite schools are something like a men’s club, where women are not made to feel particularly comfortable nor considered truly acceptable for membership…

“…Preps are taught to camouflage their interests in the rhetoric of morality and community service…There are no…protected enclaves at boarding schools, no unions, and in most cases no tenures. In some schools, there isn’t even a written contract. Teachers are simply invited back or not invited back…

“…Most heads come from middle-class or upper-middle class backgrounds in which a guiding principle is to enhance one’s status, not change the rules of the game…

“…Giving information to the administration that is detrimental to one’s peers is considered a form of treason by nearly all prep school students…

“…While the style of the schools has changed, their missions have not. If they abandon their goal of socializing students for power their very purpose is open to question…Leadership training is as much a part of the prep school mission today as when Endicott Peabody founded Groton to train leaders in 1884…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 15

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated what kind of folks control most elite prep schools:

“…Prep school educators often depict themselves as mentors to the next generation of the power elite…Like other power structures, the prep power structure is hierarchical…

“At the top of the prep school power hierarchy is the board of trustees…These trustees are not elected…Instead, trustees select their own members…Most board members are successful in some area of the business world…The real power of most boards is exercised by an executive committee, which includes the president, the most influential board member…

“…An analysis of available data [from the 1980s] on 538 trustees from 22 schools indicated that 41 percent of the trustees of these schools are listed in either the Social Register, Who’s Who, or both…At a socially elite school like St. Paul’s in New Hampshire, 63 percent of the trustees are listed in the Social Register…

“…Trustees cannot be controlled by the faculty, and quite often they will take the opportunity…to root out difficult cliques or individuals. Part of looking to the future is knowing when to clean house…Much of the power of the trustees is difficult to detect within the school community because they tend to keep low profiles…The unobtrusiveness of most boards is an example of how power can be exercised without publicity; they are indeed the power behind the throne, and many students may only be dimly aware of the board’s importance or even presence…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 14

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and indicated how prep school academic life differs from academic life in most U.S. public schools:

“…Children of wealthy or powerful families…may worry, `Did I get these grades because of my work or because of my parents?’…

“…On average, the class size in boarding school is 12 to 15 students, with some being as small as 4 or 5, compared to 32 students per class in New York City, for example…Most public high-school teachers have 5 classes each school day in which approximately 30 students are enrolled, a total of 150 students a day. Boarding school teachers usually have 4 classes of 15 or fewer students, totaling 60 students or less…There is no back row at prep school, as almost everyone sits around a table or in a circle…Students who need individual attention can find it at prep schools…Forty-eight percent of prep school students watch no television, and only 12 percent watch more than 2 hours per day during the school week…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 13

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system, prep school teachers and working conditions for teachers at the U.S. power elite’s prep schools:

“…A high proportion of boarding school teachers are prep school graduates…Boarding school teachers have very little job security, certainly no union to represent them, and in almost all cases no tenure. At most schools their relationship with the head borders on the feudal, and they have little recourse if they fail to receive promotions or are dismissed, even without a stated cause…

“What prep school teachers like least about their job is paperwork, committee work, and busy work—including `administrivia’…Teacher evaluation was conducted by rumor, gossip, how much damage there was in the dormitories they supervised, and general impressions along the grapevine. Basically you either `fit in’ (a favorite administrative phrase) or you did not…

“…Since the 1960s, in particular, the profile of the boarding school teacher has changed considerably. Teacher prospects are more likely to be married, have children, have some public school background, and consider themselves professionals who expect some privacy and time for a personal life…Wealthy bachelors and spinsters are in short supply and the schools have had to adjust to the new boarding school teacher…

“Salaries are still low by public school standards…At many schools, the casual armchair evaluations so favored by generations of heads have been replaced by more systematic methods of evaluation…

“…Schools are particularly leery of college and university teachers when they try to `trickle down’ from higher to secondary education, feeling that the lonely, self-interested scholar usually lacks the flexibility required to cope with boarding school life or adolescent antics…In searching for teachers, heads will rely on informal networks as well as formal channels. Personal references and recommendations from other boarding school heads or teachers are taken seriously…Applicants…will have to meet and impress a small regiment, including in most cases the department head, dean of faculty, and the head…

“If the shape of boarding school faculties were drawn in terms of the age differences of the teachers, it would resemble an hour glass. At the bottom are the young `short-timers’ who come to work at the schools generally right out of college, spend a year or two, then move on to other occupations or go back to graduate school. Those that do remain join forces with the older faculty already in place, causing the upper bowl of the hour glass to swell out. The senior faculty are the role models…for the other teachers…

“Few schools have adequate pension funds…Some older faculty…have no marketable skills with which to start a new profession…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 12

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about counter-cultural student radical activism and student rebellion within the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system:

“Not all students, of course, participate in school politics…The guerrilla leaders who emerge and flourish in the student underlife—or counter-culture—may have far greater real power than the `superschoolies” that tend to get elected to public office…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 11

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and how the prep schools’ sports programs differ from the sports programs of most U.S. public school systems:

“Prep teams compete with college freshmen teams, other prep teams, and occasionally with public schools, although public school competitors are picked with care…Some schools, known as `jock’ schools, act essentially as farm teams for Ivy League colleges, consistently providing them with athletes who have been polished by the prep experience. Many prep schools take public high-school graduates for a post-graduate year, as a way of adding some size and weight to their football teams…Prep girls also love sports…

“…Few public schools can afford a hockey rink so prep schools can attract the best players without much competition. Some prep schools import a few Canadians each year to fill out the roster…

“The athletic facilities at prep schools are impressive, and at the larger schools, lavish. Acres and acres of playing fields, scores of tennis courts, one or more gyms, a hockey rink, a golf course, swimming pools, squash courts, workout rooms—all can be found on many prep school campuses…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 10

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and its undemocratic admissions process:

“The exact percentage of whites in the questionnaire sample of 20 schools is 90.3, of blacks, 4.3, and of Asians, 5.3…Some boarding schools have as few as one percent black students and, on average, 4 percent of boarding-school students are black…29 percent of the black students in the sample had a relative who had attended boarding school…

“…Today [in 1985] one-quarter of all boarding-school students are now Catholic, close to the 27 percent of Catholic-Americans…Episcopal and progressive schools have the fewest Catholics…Today [in 1985] 11 percent of the students in our sample of 2,475 are Jewish, compared to less than 3 percent in the general population…In our sample there were no Jewish respondents at either the Episcopal schools or the Catholic schools. Jewish families have fewer legacies than any other group except blacks…65 percent of Jewish fathers own their own business, and 22 percent of Jewish mothers own their own business…

“In sum, boarding schools are overwhelmingly from high-income professional and managerial families…7 percent are non-citizen, 5 percent are Asian, and 4 percent are black. More than half (54 percent) of the students have one or more relatives who also attended boarding school…

“Boarding school students, by any reasonable standard, are elite…The select 16 boarding schools can be particularly selective in who they admit…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 9

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and its undemocratic admissions process:

“Foreign students are as affluent as the Americans, as are the Asian-American students in our sample. Among black students, there are also affluent families, 15 percent come from $100,000 or more [in 1981] a year homes…A wealthy group of students come from Jewish homes, 41 percent having incomes of $100,000 a year or more [in 1981]…

“…50 percent of the fathers are professionals and 40 percent are managers. Specifically, 12 percent of our sample’s fathers are doctors, 10 percent are attorneys, and 9 percent are bankers…Slightly more than one-third of…mothers are professionals and 1 in 8 are managers or administrators…

“…On average, 7 percent of American boarding school students are non-citizens…Many of these students come from high-income families in the Middle East, South America and Asia…

“…`Legacy’ students create a critical mass at many boarding schools, especially at the Episcopal, girls and academy schools whose student bodies are between 55 and 75 percent legacy students…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 8

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and its undemocratic admissions process:

“…Boarding schools must retain a firm grip on who they admit, because, if the `wrong’ students are admitted, then the historical mission of the schools to mold patrician and parvenu into an elite cadre will be jeopardized. The raw material must be suitable to the `treatment.’…

“46 percent of the boarding school families in our sample of 20 schools have annual incomes of more than $100,000 a year [in 1981]…By contrast, in 1981,…the median family income was slightly less than 24,000 a year [in 1981]. 41 percent of American families made less than $20,000 a year [in 1981]…

“…The families that send their daughters to girls schools are very well off indeed…58 percent have incomes in excess of $100,000 a year [in 1981]. Students al all-boys schools also come from affluent families; 53 percent have incomes in excess of $100,000 a year [in 1981]…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 7

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system and its undemocratic and secretive admissions process:

“A school filled with `brains’ stands the risk of driving away the less brainy but wealthier families. A school that is entirely `prepped out’ may find its reputation…slipping. Too many `jocks’ make teachers unhappy…

“Part of the screening process is to weed out those who will not fit in…Merit is only part of the criteria for admission…Family wealth and social standing, also count for a great deal…

“…The admissions process remains relatively secretive…Children of alumni have certain advantages…”