Ah, the Ivy League. Its name evokes a kind of mythical vision of endless success, money, and happiness; fame and fortune; success or failure. I'll never get a good job if I don't go to an Ivy League school.… How many times have you heard the same refrain? Our son is very smart—he's applying to Ivy League schools. What well-heeled parents wouldn't kill for that Ivy League sticker for their rear windshield? After all, the Ivy League is the ultimate status symbol, the privileged club, the in conversation at cocktail parties. And then there are those families for which the very name Ivy League conjures up images of a privileged world or an exclusionary society that will, on the basis of some extra-academic criteria, issue an automatic rejection to their children. The unfortunate result of this bit of out-dated image making is that many bright students from modest backgrounds will eliminate themselves prematurely from a selection process in which they definitely have a chance.
On first view, perhaps the fear expressed by these families is understandable, since the Ivy League can be—and I must stress the superficial nature of this assessment—the hallmark of snootiness for the high-toned set. In an often-quoted cover story in New York magazine, one mother summed it up as follows: “There's almost a fetishistic sense of power, being able to associate your child with one of these schools … especially at one of these East Side dinner parties … the women don't work, so all they talk about is school. It's like belonging to the same country club or something.”,* Somehow, if your child goes to an Ivy League school, or so goes the theory, others will naturally assume you must be smart, too, for how else could your kids have done it themselves without a little help from the gene pool? Clearly, there is an aura imparted to those who venture forth into Ivy League territory.
The process slowly evolved through minority recruitment in the 1960s in the wake of the civil rights movement, and steadily increasing competition, but not until the last five years has the selectivity increased to such a dramatic level. In order to set the stage for the following chapters, let me provide a list of the most highly selective colleges in the United States, along with their acceptance rates. First, there are the Ivies, in order of selectivity:*
Harvard: | 13% |
Princeton: | 13% |
Columbia: | 17% |
Yale: | 18% |
Brown: | 18% |
Dartmouth: | 22% |
(University of Pennsylvania: | 31%) |
(Cornell: | 34%) |
USMA (West Point): | 14% |
Stanford: | 15% |
US. Air Force Academy: | 15% |
US. Naval Academy: | 17% |
Amherst: | 20% |
Georgetown: | 21% |
Williams: | 21% |
Cal Tech: | 23% |
Swarthmore: | 24% |
MIT: | 25% |
Rice: | 27% |
Northwestern: | 27% |
Duke: | 30% |