It is worthwhile to note that as data from ACT/SAT board of the last 2 decades indicates, the pool of candidates who are qualified enough to get into Ivy league

It is worthwhile to note that as data from ACT/SAT board of the last 2 decades indicates, the pool of candidates who are qualified enough to get into Ivy leagues are considerably richer than ones who are not[1]. I graduated from an inner city school in the midwest, no-one in my class was admitted to a top tier school (or even a second tier school, now that I think about it). But there were actually quite a few many who actually applied to Harvard or Princeton and such. I wasn't able to appreciate until recently that activities like band afterschool, cross country, and 4's on AP tests aren't good enough to land a spot in any big-name university. Presumably the number of dead-in-the-bucket applicants like this have gone up, so I'm less inclined to interpret the drop of acceptance rate as some indication that it's suddenly much more difficult for rich kids to get accepted than it used to be a decade ago. [1]: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-income/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-...