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To provide the academic rigor and extracurricular opportunities to challenge the brightest minds that would not otherwise properly challenged, and help them be the leaders of tomorrow? I assume kids who apply and get admitted to top schools are the ones - to varying degrees - bored byand would outgrow his “regular school”.</p>
<p>Oh, I thought the “top” schools were doing that in the past…maybe today’s brightest are brighter than yesterday’s – but I don’t think that’s the case.</p>
<p>At least in technical fields the world is much more competitive and educational expectations are much higher. For example, entering engineering students are generally expected to have had at least one, and often two, years of calculus and post-calculus mathematics. That was not the case when I went 30 years ago. My daughter is covering ground in freshman classes that I covered as a sophomore or even a junior. </p>
<p>While technical fields may represent the extreme, I have to believe that other disciplines have also experienced some knowledge acceleration since I attended secondary and post-secondary schools.</p>
<p>St. Paul’s and Groton have so many legacies. It’s a fact. There are over 30% at SPS for example. Don’t dispute that. It’s fact.</p>
<p>Andover and Exeter both have lots less</p>
<p>bumpin this
I think that it’s not that legacies will be automatically accepted over not legacy kids, but more that the school has to find more reason to say no to legacy kids. And also, on the waiting lists, where all the kids are qualified to be students at the schools, legacies definitely get preference.</p>
<p>They also take legacies because the fact that a family member got in means that
the “smart” genes probably have been carried down to their little child who wants to go to BS.
In Exeter it is 13% legacy.</p>
<p>oh yeah. the smart gene.</p>
<p>Uh, don’t forget the money gene.</p>
<p>Would “legacy” include uncles, great grand-parents, great-great grandparents, etc. or do you think it has to be more direct, as in immediate family (parents and siblings)?</p>
<p>Believe legacy to be a sibling, parent , grandparents and so forth. Cousins would (IMO) be more of a hook. Any parent that has been through this once before knows full well there is no guarantee their second child will get accepted. Every Spring Admission officers gets some pretty irate phone calls from alumni who’s kids didn’t get in.</p>