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…”