Friday, September 23, 2011

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?...”

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