> Poor rural white kids don't go to Harvard. Only because they don’t know to apply, in my experience. I grew up in a rural, mostly poor, 97% white small town,

> Poor rural white kids don't go to Harvard. Only because they don’t know to apply, in my experience. I grew up in a rural, mostly poor, 97% white small town, which happened to have a few excellent teachers who pushed strong students to apply to the ivies. In most years 3-6 or so students are accepted. We had 4H and JROTC. Those groups never did anything interesting or challenging to speak of. They certainly weren’t developing “leadership” skills, and participating in those groups took time away from doing far more interesting things. The kids in my class who went to the ivies weren’t in them because they were doing those more interesting things, which tended to be endeavors requiring personal initiative, not just showing up for activities. Maybe 4H and JROTC aren’t a joke in other high schools, but I’m not surprised that they carry no weight in college admissions from what I’ve seen of them.