Every American high school student knows the so-called secret to a life of success: admission to an elite university. The competition for coveted spots is so fierce that while an admission victory cannot be guaranteed, it can be played, if you know how to play.
It worked for me: I attend a prestigious university, Stanford, which accepted less than 4% of applicants last year. There, more than a quarter of the current undergraduate population comes from private schools, even though only 14% of American high school students attend one. The numbers would be similar at most Ivy League universities. Harvard is one of the worst of them: a survey of its 2019 class found that 35% of respondents came from private schools.
Some of these students probably attended parochial schools. However, many of my peers and I attended elite private schools: nationally-ranked outperformance factories designed to produce catnip for college admissions offices.
These schools are so effective in influencing the admissions process that they further benefit the select few in our society and leave everyone free to believe that only the most accomplished and brilliant students enter prestigious universities. The idea that admission to the most selective colleges and universities is based on merit assumes that there is no fast track to comfort, status, and wealth. But this is only an illusion.
I grew up in the Bay Area, where, according to an analysis by Niche, a school ratings database, private high schools outperform even the most competitive public schools in the state. Niche compiles data from the Department of Education, the Census Bureau, and reviews from students, parents, and teachers to determine school rankings. Access to the high schools he places at the top of his list often comes with a college-sized price tag. In the United States, the average private high school costs $16,040 per year, and tuition for the best often exceeds $50,000.
(There is no federal student aid program for high school; schools may offer financial aid, but many families pay the list price.)
Given rising tuition fees, the number of middle-income families sending their children to private schools has declined since the 1960s, while the number of students from high-income families has remained relatively constant.
States like Massachusetts and New York, which have top-notch private schools, also offer top-notch public options; the private schools operating there must prove their worth in a competitive market. But in California, some of the best private high schools in the country compete in a state where public schools rank in the bottom half of the country. Private high schools help the wealthy isolate their children and give them the best secondary education possible – while everyone else struggles to keep up.
Pursuing the best secondary education available has one obvious goal: getting into a prestigious university. Private high schools openly sell themselves on this goal; many top school websites offer college enrollment listings that show dozens of alumni at top universities nationwide. I’m sure my high school’s obsession with academic achievement stems, on some level, from telling expectant parents that another senior entered Stanford that year.
Even the structure of these schools seems designed to serve the college admissions process. They often provide access to more advanced classes than a typical school and offer a multitude of extracurricular programs. At my high school, a club period was even built into our class schedule so robotics or Model United Nations could meet during the school day, presumably to help polish the activities section of our common app. After school, we had time to add even more activities, like sports practice and theater rehearsal.
Where I grew up, attending a private school was likely to facilitate a significant increase in test scores. Private school students in my area will likely get 33 or 34 on their ACTs (out of a possible 36), as opposed to the top 31 or 32 public school students. At the top of the pecking order, that slight increase can help snag an acceptance from a school like Stanford or Harvard. After all, elite universities are supposed to strive for perfection – or within three points of it.
But looking good on paper is just a drop in the impenetrable bucket we call college admissions.
Counselors at elite private high schools get behind-the-scenes access to demystify their students’ admissions. When I was kicked out of a school I applied for early action, I was told my high school counselor called the college admissions officer to ask why, and the person simply replied that I should keep my A in honors calculation, implying that if I did, I would enter ordinary decision making.
These counselors frequently call admissions offices at elite universities to advocate for their favorite students. In 2020, Swarthmore College ended this practice after finding that more than 90% of counselors calling were from private high schools. Private school students have personal connections to their counselors, who in turn often have the ears of admissions officers at elite universities across the country.
Private high schools systematize the creation of the consummate college candidate. When the American educational landscape is so obviously a pay game, how dare you call it a meritocracy?
The admission of a high proportion of students into private schools serves the interests of elite universities. During and after college, private school graduates are likely to outperform their public school peers. For example, in 2020, the Daily Princetonian reported, two-thirds of American Rhodes Scholars at Princeton attended private high schools, and the Boarding Schools Association boasted in 2010 that its alumni were “3,000% more likely” to become Rhodes Scholars than the average. student. Prestigious graduate scholarships — or fancy postgraduate jobs — can help make a college more attractive to its deep-pocketed alumni and the next generation of potential students.
On top of that, these exceptional students are often more likely to pay the full tuition. When colleges see private school students, they’re surely seeing high-performing moneybags with test scores that are going to blow up those sweet, sweet US News and World Report rankings.
Private high schools operate to perpetuate cycles of privilege. They also work. If you had the financial resources, would you deny your children the education and opportunities that private high schools can provide?
“Don’t complain; you got into Stanford” echoes in my head every time I reflect on my high school experience. I am, after all, an example of the student these private schools strive to create: a high-achieving student at an elite university with a crippling fear of failure.
But when I look back, my high school’s culture of achievement was more of an endless competition created by the prestigious universities that reaped the rewards, the administrators that facilitated it, and the parents that funded it.
The pursuit of prestige — in high school, college, and beyond, forever and always — causes students like me to willfully ignore the mental and physical toll that each stage of our “meritocracy” demands. After all, we have earned it.
Sophie Callcott is a student at Stanford University, where she studies history. She wrote about education for The Stanford Daily, a student newspaper there.
The Times undertakes to publish a variety of letters For the editor. We would like to know what you think of this article or one of our articles. Here is some tips. And here is our email: [email protected].
Follow the Opinion section of the New York Times on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and instagram.