Your comment immediately reminded me of Bill Murray's speech in Rushmore -
"You guys have it real easy. I never had it like this where I grew up. But I send my kids here because the fact is you go to one of the best schools in the country: Rushmore. Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and you're going to stay rich.
But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you." - Herman Blume, speech to Rushmore Academy
I went to Exeter and Yale and found it the opposite. Yale was smarter and the students weren't quite as well off.
Re:1 Billion Dollar High School
by mynameishere on Sunday January 27, 2008 @07:07PM
(#105203)
What is "it"? What is "it" the opposite of? You're getting a lot of upmods for a very badly constructed sentence.
(EDIT: I guess I sound like a jerk. I'm just wondering actually...)
I think it's clear that these schools are using their endowments to pick up smart, but (relatively) poor kids. To a lot of people, that's no comfort, as a cognitive aristocracy is no better than a financial aristocracy. The strategy at the ivies has been to filter for both the very smart and the very rich. This gives aptitude access to capital.
If this article was about a high-end public school that got its budget from seized money (eg property taxes), then rest assured that the private-school-educated NYTs editors would have suggested some forceful "fixes" for the "problem".