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]…”