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If you have the money to pay for these services, your children’s “success” (defined professionally by prestige roles) is preordained to be fine because they hav

If you have the money to pay for these services, your children’s “success” (defined professionally by prestige roles) is preordained to be fine because they have a fallback cushion and it’s not that hard to buy your way into these professions. The reason parents do this is so that they can burnish their personal reputation by saying that their kid is good enough for these schools. Viewed through that frame, the whole thing is rather sad… The biggest surprise to me is that: 1) Enterprising wealthy parents haven’t figured out that the value of elite schools is only based on their own value of it. I’m surprised they haven’t decided to make another school “elite” that they could control by deciding en mass to send their kids there. 2) Elite institutions haven’t decided to capture the value of these services that hack their own admissions by acquiring them or offering paid “on-ramps” and “bootcamps” themselves.

electriclove 3y ago
“ I’m surprised they haven’t decided to make another school “elite” that they could control by deciding en mass to send their kids there.” They kind of did this with USC over the past few decades.
anon373839 3y ago
> I’m surprised they haven’t decided to make another school “elite” that they could control by deciding en mass to send their kids there Schools like Harvard and Columbia are older than the country they sit in. They’re also very wealthy. It’s hard to imagine them losing their status anytime soon.
nwah1 3y ago
There are on-ramps to elite schools. Harvard runs pre-college and summer school programs for high school aged kids. Yale has something similar. University of Chicago runs a full high school called the Lab Schools. Which is considered extremely elite, and was started by John Dewey himself in 1896
- mathisfun123 3y ago
  > University of Chicago runs a full high school called the Lab Schools. lab school is for university faculty primarily though and in addition the school's own admin (ie the lab school's teachers and etc) can get reduced (zero?) tuition for their own kids. it is a feeder for sure though.

electriclove 3y ago

“ I’m surprised they haven’t decided to make another school “elite” that they could control by deciding en mass to send their kids there.” They kind of did this with USC over the past few decades.

anon373839 3y ago

> I’m surprised they haven’t decided to make another school “elite” that they could control by deciding en mass to send their kids there Schools like Harvard and Columbia are older than the country they sit in. They’re also very wealthy. It’s hard to imagine them losing their status anytime soon.

nwah1 3y ago

There are on-ramps to elite schools. Harvard runs pre-college and summer school programs for high school aged kids. Yale has something similar. University of Chicago runs a full high school called the Lab Schools. Which is considered extremely elite, and was started by John Dewey himself in 1896

mathisfun123 3y ago
> University of Chicago runs a full high school called the Lab Schools. lab school is for university faculty primarily though and in addition the school's own admin (ie the lab school's teachers and etc) can get reduced (zero?) tuition for their own kids. it is a feeder for sure though.