Most interesting thread. The pattern that @hebegebe describes (i.e. some elite high schools are definitely feeders to some elite and near-elite colleges), is very real. It’s right there in the Naviance data for my D’s high school. There must, therefore, be a flip side. Students from merely above average high schools like the one I graduated from years ago (“Northwest Podunk High”) must be disadvantaged in today’s admissions derby. This despite the fact that the NW Podunk may well have delivered a better education to the student than the elite high school did. I think back to my own experience, and I am certain that NW Podunk was better in many ways than my D’s elite high school. And yet there is no way that two “average excellent” students, one from NW Podunk and one from my D’s elite public high school, are facing the same admissions landscape. I thought holistic admissions would act as a kind of a leveling-out process, but that is just not the case.