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<li><p>Life isn’t fair. The expensive prep schools have always had an advantage and 50 years from now I suspect they still will.</p></li>
<li><p>The Ivies are an infinitesimally small subset of the available openings at strong colleges. The obsession that people have with the Ivies (especially here on CC) seems to assume that there is some sort of secret education you get at those 8 schools that you can’t get anywhere else. That is patently false. </p></li>
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<p>2a. The Ivy obsession is invariably about prestige and little else. I actually heard a parent say “Oh he got into Cornell. It’s Ivy, not one of the top ones but still Ivy League”. If you are obsessed with prestige you’ll always be looking up at who’s in first.</p>
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<li><p>Personally I think the private school advantage helps most for those kids who are between top 10%-20% in their graduating class. The top kids from any school will get considered at the best colleges. I think the kids at the next rung down get a bigger boost from the prep school name with the assumption being that 15th%tile at LottaBux Academy has to be a stronger candidate than 15% at middle of nowhere public.</p></li>
<li><p>It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. If you’re a top tier student and you continue to put in the work in college you’re still going to succeed regardless of where you go to school.</p></li>
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