The final chapter on how smart Eddie Lambert is has yet to be written. He’s the one who runs Sears/Kmart.
Anyway, these schools certainly have some extraordinarily smart students, but labeling all, or most, or even majority, of them as being “the very smartest” is a gross exaggeration. Being able to rub shoulders with the “rich and famous” there is an entirely different story, however.
Hard to tell from public information, but I think Eddie will remain a billionaire no matter what happens at Sears.
The kids at these schools are admitted for all kinds of reasons. Some are among the brightest in the world, but they’re a relative small slice. Most of the rest are really bright and/or talented, though - and a noticeable minority are children of really wealthy/prominent people. It serves the interests of the school to have some number of those kinds of kids, which is why they’re there - and sometimes their classmates also benefit from their presence.
Their is a reason these colleges reject better qualified and well suited candidates, they need to keep room for “special interests”.
The usual assumption with medical school admissions is that there is an automated screen by college GPA (overall and BCPM) and MCAT score to see which applications move on to human readers, who then read the application holistically to decide whom to prioritize for interviews. Based on threads in the pre-med forum, the effect on undergraduate college prestige on human readers is not that great.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22089350/#Comment_22089350
@ucbalumnus Are there any stats showing undergrad prestige or rigor doesn’t matter for good medical schools or is it just a wishful assumption?
“I assume that the admissions process weeds out students just there to make connections.”
They did not weed out my daughter who wrote in her “Why X” essay that her pedigree sucks and she needs a swanky degree and connections to improve it. X obliged.
From what I have seen over the years here, threads like this one do not actually die at all. They get reincarnated as another thread with essentially the same subject matter, the same arguments made by the same people (typically repeatedly) with an occasional new participant. This thread (and its brethren) are among the most common threads here. More commonly its the "my kid got into X (elite – however that is defined keeping in mind to many here # rankings are absolute and hugely significant by each ranked number such that the difference between #2 and #3 is very significant) college but I am not sure if he/she should go to Y (non-elite again however defined) college. Reading those threads you often see the discussion continue for 10+ pages after the OP last appeared in the thread. The phenomenon is pretty fascinating.
@Riversider The BMW driving “middle class” is a very, very specific subset of people. I don’t know anyone who fits into this.
@bluebayou That number has me gasping.
Re: Eddie Lampert: I read the NYTimes article on him. Guy honestly sounds like someone without any context. Retail is just not finance, it is a different material, it doesn’t take a degree from Yale or the genius credentials you use to get there, to tell you that. It just doesn’t. Finance trades, retail sells, manufacturing makes. Why is Boeing facing the issues it has now? Financiers can’t run a manufacturing firm. Drrrrr. I’m sure Lampert is brilliant in some ways, so Yale took him, but did they make him into anything more? Unless he is intentionally driving the business into the ground, which is even worse, I don’t think they did.
One wonders if Lampert would have received better advice from old money. They might have had the wisdom to realize that reviving Sears would be nothing like finance.
The original thread title was such an easy question to answer in a broad sense.
People that can’t afford things see them as worthless as a defense mechanism. Schools, cars, handbags jewelry, shoes, designer anything, nicer/bigger home, vacations, the list goes on and on.
It’s easier to not feel bad about yourself if you don’t find or attach value in things you can’t attain. Human nature.
And if one has never experienced of any of those, they have less ability to understand them, but it is usually more about willingness to understand than ability (again, defense mechanism).
Answer to OP’s question:
Because elite private schools offer the same kinds of privileges this economic class is used to and expects, that’s why. Example on the K-12 level: One private high school I am well acquainted with has a full staff in their college counseling department. For a senior class of about 150 students, there is one head of cc, three associate heads, one full-time person devoted strictly to assisting with testing accommodations and scholarships, and one admin assistant. Compare that with your typical public high school, where one single director of cc and her/his assistant is assigned to the entire school, and the senior class size ranges from 300-500.
In addition, teacher load accounts for similar differences and can affect the availability of the best teachers to write recommendations for applicants. My public school students find it much more difficult to secure teacher LOR’s for all kinds of purposes (college, summer internships, competitive summer programs, etc.)
It’s not just about “prestige.” Abundant resources in K-12 schools are more likely to ensure a smooth transition to a college with abundant resources. And some of this has much to do with simply daily life for the student. Consider Princeton University, a campus which is so clean and beautifully maintained that it literally looks like a Hollywood set. When you visit, it’s difficult to believe it’s “for real.” Never have I seen a skating rink so utterly pristine. Paradise comes to mind.
Dorms are immaculate. They could be compared with this:
https://alt1053.radio.com/blogs/kcbs-radio/uc-berkeley-stern-hall-and-foothill-hall-are-infested-rats-and-insects-students-say
http://www.ktvu.com/news/berkeley-students-encounter-mice-mold-bed-bugs-in-dorms
@blueskies2day I could honestly not disagree more. I’m sure some people out there are bitter, green with envy haters who are so blinded by inferiority that they refuse to see the value in anything they can’t afford, but come on. I can maybe agree with the not understanding aspect of your post, but not that it is based on a willful lack understanding. Just way to much of a generalization.
My older son attends our state flagship public university in its honors program while my younger son attends a private. I don’t know which of my sons will do better in terms of career success (both are pre-med), who’ll make more money, more happy or whatever. One thing that I’m very sure of is that there’s a world of difference in their experiences at their respective schools, along with vast differences in resources as @epipany pointed out above. For some families, like us, it’s also cheaper to send a child to a private over a public.
Re: “Dorms are immaculate” at Princeton? You must have seen them only from outside, LOL. But students there don’t pay for their laundry, and they do offer a chocolate fountain with strawberries and whatnot on Sunday brunches…
You couldn’t be more wrong. I am a Princeton parent.
Okay, I won’t argue with another Princeton parent. 
That’s typical of many HS kids. Instead of nuance they like to divide the world into simple black-or-white categories. Makes things simpler.
And less accurate.
“Why rich people prefer elite schools when most others doesn’t see any wort in it?”
I think the answer to this question - as it is stated - is quite simple, Because “worth” is in a large part relative to what you can easily afford. For a household making $50k a year, almost nothing could make $75k a year “worth it”. For a household earning in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, a year, the cost of tuition is not really going to move the needle. (Similar for those of somewhat lower income who’ve managed to put full or most tuition in a 529 plan, where spending it won’t impact daily life or long term plans.) It’s just another version of the Nine West vs Gucci handbag, or Leaf vs i8 electric car, or x suburb vs y suburb, etc decisions. Bottom line: “I want it, I can afford it, why not?”
When I went to high school (a public high school from which about a third of graduates then went to four year colleges) decades ago, there was no dedicated college counseling department. The regular counselors (probably about one per hundred students in each class, so each one handled about four hundred students total across the four classes) handled all of the college related advising then, in addition to all of the usual high school counselor tasks. Fortunately, back then, the state schools did not require counselor or teacher recommendations (same as now), most of the state schools were not selective (or not much more selective) beyond the published baseline GPA and SAT score tables, and cost was much lower and therefore a limiting factor to fewer students.
I could see that attending a luxury class private high school would be helpful to a student who needed more college counseling or similar services to stay on track, or was aiming for (or being pushed by parents) toward luxury class private colleges (whose admission processes require or favor more support from the school like recommendations), even if the more self-motivated high school students could do well without luxury class amenities.
@ucbalumnus
It’s not about need. It’s about comfort. People without need still enjoy comfort.