<p>…"Shamus Rahman Khan, a conference organizer and assistant professor of sociology at Columbia, seemed to be most at ease with the conflict. The son of a Pakistani father and Irish mother who both emigrated to the United States, he said he came from a wealthy but not elite family. His father, a successful surgeon, paid his sons way to the St. Pauls School, a top boarding school.</p>
<p>Yet when Mr. Khan arrived there in the mid-1990s, he said he lived in the minority students dorm. He used that experience and a later teaching stint at St. Pauls to write a book on the nature of advantage, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Pauls School, which will be published by Princeton University Press in January.</p>
<p>Is it morally responsible for you to get your kids into very expensive schools if it will advantage them? Mr. Khan said. Its hard not to do it. But by doing it, youre not explicitly squirting some other kid in the eye with pepper spray. Its more subtle.… </p>
<p>Very interesting article. Thank you for sharing it. One thing the author repeatedly mention that makes me cringe is that BS is helping get “comparatively less qualified elite high school students into elite colleges”. Less qualified compared with whom? Kids from PS that also get into these elite colleges? Wait, that’s not right - not as we see it here on CC. Who are these less qualified?</p>
<p>That was an interesting read. Thank you emdee.</p>
<p>I agree DAndrew that it is hard to believe that there are “less qualified student” at BS. However, Khan went to SPS, he must know such people personally in addition to the research he cited. A general possibility is some rich, famous, legacy type with lower SAT scores. one specific example is George W. Bush? Should we argue about if W. could have gotten into Yale if he went to a PS?</p>
<p>If I recall what I read this morning, the study he cited in support of the claim that boarding school students are less qualified was from 1979. I bet a lot has changed since the 70’s with boarding school admission.</p>
<p>Hmmm. An uncle attended Harvard decades ago. He always told me, it’s not what you learn at Harvard, it’s the people you meet. If these studies date from the 70s, it would make sense that the graduates of selective boarding schools would out-earn their college peers. So much of adult and professional success is not based upon academic skills. (Shocker, I know.) </p>
<p>I’m a geek, my husband’s a geek, neither of us attended boarding schools, so this hasn’t been our personal life story. It is true, though, that the most successful and generous alumni of my college were not those who took home all the academic honors. They were the students who networked continuously, who learned how to think on their feet, and who learned how to talk to people. </p>
<p>(There is one career track in which grades matter. In medicine and the sciences, the most successful graduates, I presume, would be the students with the highest grade point averages. Does anyone know how many boarding school graduates of the late 70s became doctors or research scientists?)</p>
<p>Lots of parents and applicants get all tied up about SSAT scores and grades, and complain when candidates with “sup-par stats” get in. They don’t understand that, past a certain point, it really doesn’t matter. The student is bright enough to do the work. </p>
<p>Boarding schools emphasize leadership, and character. They also place a high value on sports prowess. There are reasons for that. They are, and have been, places to educate leaders.</p>
<p>The students described by Periwinkle are not really less qualified. They may be less qualified in terms of SAT, but Khan did not specify that. </p>
<p>Good point about medicine and sciences. Earning power is not everything. On the other hand, BS educated geeks may outperform all others as Mark Zuckerberg did.</p>
<p>No surprise I guess. All the more reasons to pursue elite schooling… I am just so used to the idea that prep schools prepare their students better for college, and they’d feel college “easier”, etc. So I was surprised to learn that as a trend the elite BS students are “less qualified” and “out-performed academically” in college as he put it. Also, note that although some of the research he referenced was from 1970’s, his personal experience as a SPS student was in 1993 and onward, and his teaching experience there in 2003ish. It sounds like he’s not casting any doubt on the findings in that research so that he made similar conclusions.</p>
<p>Funny how “perspective” clouds someone’s conclusions about BS. The fact that he was stuck in a “minority” dorm is telling. I have a friend who graduated SPS the same year I graduated Exeter and we have had some interesting exchanges about campus culture “back then.” Which isn’t the same as “here and now.”</p>
<p>Wonder how much his perspective is clouded by other aspects of his background and family expectations.</p>
<p>The reality is that some students of “wealth” may actually be less qualified then the people tagged as such based on appearance or economic situation. It’s pretty surprising that the “haves” are often the “have nots” in many ways tangible and intangible.</p>
<p>Still - students are not widgets and can’t be lumped into stereotypes and statistics.</p>
<p>One thing for sure is that overall he is critical about elite schools and the “previleges” of people who are associated with those schools. He thinks that they are taking unfair advantages even if they can afford pay the tuition of the elite boarding schools. What I wanted to see was more research from him on how elite boarding school students are “less qualified” and “out-performed acadmically” in college. It doesn’t make clear sense to me when he says Harvard is just like St. Paul full of rich/previleged people, how can some are “less qualified” than others of the same kind?</p>
<p>I just got around to reading the Khan article and found it very interesting. Parts of it made me wonder “What would Pulsar think about this finding/conclusion?”</p>
<p>The most interesting notion in the piece, to me, was how prep schools build an entire class of top 5-percenters…</p>
<p>On the other hand…(just substitute “boarding school” for “college/university” in the following piece, which my wife forwarded to me…think she’s trying to tell me something? ;-P)</p>
<p>Good article. Our generation has to remind itself that:</p>
<p>(a) it’s much harder to get into today’s marquis Universities/colleges than it used to be and I’ll bet that at least 50% of us parents would be denied by the colleges we once attended
(b) that for our generation, marquis names are way too tied to our self-esteem - and we’re probably modeling that destructive thinking to our kids without even knowing it!
(c) there are tons of great schools out there, perfect schools for our kids, if we can just tamp down our snob reflex
(d) the vast majority of movers and shakers do not hail from the top 1% of Universities and Colleges.</p>
<p>But then the whole purpose of going to a school like Stanford is that instead of having a good teacher teach about DNA, you had Paul Kornberg and Linus Pauling, etc. ie the guys that did the work.</p>
<p>PDad - do you think that Paul Kornberg and Linus Pauling only attended schools where other Kornbergs or Paulings taught them? Please… It doesn’t work that way.</p>