<p>the first kid gets an edge becoz at a top boarding prep school 4.0 means a lot as opposed to a lousy public school... a 4.0 kid in public school (not necessarily) but may end up just an average 3.0 kid in the prep school...</p>
<p>can I just interrupt for a second... the american dream means your kids will do better than you generation after generation, but if you go to a super wealthy college and your kids go to that same school, the path has leveled out, hasn't it? I live in CA, and the Bay Area, where as many of the kids I know are first generation immigrants who can't even afford a 20,000 per year education in one of the cheapest private schools in NorCal, and honestly, from a lot of the people around me, people from prep schools are penalized because they can afford a better education since they have money. Even though I do agree with bearcats that if the public school kid goes to a prep school, s/he might not adjust and not get the grades from before. So it's not fair to anybody, right? CA is one of the worst states in terms of its public school system, but there are some schools that are really good, aside from private schools that cost enough money that you can buy a car with that tuition...<br>
-I feel like someone's going to chuck something at me...</p>
<p>true if u r talking about those random prep schools i m talking about prep schools of the philips andover, exeter, st pauls and hotchkiss calibre...
i used to be 4.0 in a rather competitive school but i m right at the bottom of second quintile now while working my ass off though I have 2250 SATs</p>
<p>and for example at hotchkiss, 40% kids receieve needblind financial aid and almost 15% are on full ride...so it doesnt mean u have to be rich</p>
<p>I do understand what you mean, after all, I almost went to Phillips Exeter freshmen year, but I don't think money is everything. Many colleges now are needline needbase colleges (such as Yale, for example), but going back to my very first post, the disadvantaged child always get priority first, and I am so sick of having people telling me that because of my family backgroud, I'm penalized for it instead of getting into a good college since I have **** other people don't have.</p>
<p>did i make a comment about some kid scoring 2400 and a 4.0 not deserving to go to harvard or whatever? no i don't think i did. What i said was poor people shouldn't get an advantage over a middle class person or a rich person simply because they're poor. Theres no reason why 2 equally qualified people should apply to a school and 1 person gets an advantage cause he's poor.</p>
<p>yes, they should. someone getting 2400 on their sat's by going to an elite prep school etc is in no way as good as someone getting a 2400 on his own in a poor school with no help.</p>
<p>poor people should get an advantage.</p>
<p>that's why the system is messed up. A student who goes to an elite prep school deserves the priority because their courses are harder and they've gotten more work dfone, where as the poor kid getting A's has probably breezed through school with out ever learning how to write a temr paper. So poor kids shouldn't deserve the weight. It's like with affirmative action.</p>