<p>Hanna, the evidence for that inclusiveness this year is pretty slim. Students from colleges ##1-9 on the all-time list represent 19 of the 32 2014 Scholars (and of those nine colleges only ##6 and 7 had no representative this year). Of the remaining 13 colleges, at least two, and possibly more, would be in the top 10% all-time, and all but six would comfortably be in the top 25%. So, 59% of this year’s Scholars are from the top 3%, at least 2/3rds from the top 10%, and over 80% from the top 25%. It’s hard to call that very inclusive.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think it was a lot more inclusive in the olden days. The Universities of Montana and Oklahoma are both in the high 20s all time, slightly higher than Vanderbilt, Cornell, and WashU. That reflects a time when you didn’t have a lot of people from Harvard and Yale competing in District 13, and when the best students in Montana or Oklahoma rarely bothered to apply to Harvard or Yale.</p>