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<p>I don’t believe that. In fact, I specifically said that their concentration of academic talent is better than the average public, but not so extreme as to justify the number of admits that they get. In fact, I was shocked when I found out that up to 40 get in Harvard. For comparison, the public magnet that I went to had 4–despite the fact that we had the highest performance in the country in the US math team tryouts (with 6 in the top 100 alone) my senior year with similar performance in science and even humanities competitions. We had 70-something NM finalists. In short, I get what you are saying in general. </p>
<p>Recruitment for weird sports may play a role, but a bigger role is the fact that prep schools like Exeter have a long-standing relationship between them and top ivies, a relationship that doesn’t exist for randomn prep schools in the midwest (or probably California).
I am familiar with Chicago Latin school, and I don’t think it has any special pull in the admissions world, especially for east coast schools. As you are from massachusetts, i think you are making a big logical leap here in saying that they are feeder schools like East Coast prep schools. </p>
<p>I’m familiar with this area, but if there is any special advantage to going to Chicago Latin, people in Chicago aren’t aware of it. It’s a good place to go if you actually live in the city, where the public schools generally suck. Wealthy people in the suburbs don’t send their kids there, because there are publics which are even better respected educationally and no one thinks that there is any special admissions advantage. My gut feeling is that private schools in the midwest don’t have that type of pull. I don’t know about those two Minnesota schools, but I think my friend went to one of them and I think he was the only one to get in from his class. Maybe he went to a lesser-known one, though. I’m not sure.</p>
<p>In any case, I think you are making a big logical leap to make these blanket statements about the advantages of wealth, unless you expect that kids to move to the northeast for prep school. There are better ways to get at the problem. Maybe they should limit the # of recruits for these weird sports and get the rest from people that have shown athleticism in other sports. This would work for crew, which doesn’t involve a lot of skill. As for prep school advantages, maybe they should stop taking 40 people from Exeter, instead of saying all people above a certain income should have a tougher time getting into schools. Of course, I suspect that HYP doesn’t really care that much about the whole socioeconomic issue.</p>