“I am presently spending the summer in rural Vermont and I have to say that I have been shocked by the level of poverty up here. I’ve been told there are two classes here: rich New Yorkers with second homes and the rural poor.”

Ugh!

This is kind of like your post on not letting other people tell you who to vote for. In an attempt to make sense out of this, I actually went to the underlying article and then to the comments to the underlying article..

..and am now am actively (passively?) trying to get my blood pressure under control.

This is not a disparagement of your post but rather an indictment of the truly worthless subject of discussion OF ANYTHING BACK EASTY — particularly schools, particularly Ivy League Schools, particularly someone in the NYT discussing same.

Why I don’t click on Obama and Pelosi viddies; fifteen minutes of my life I’ll never get back, etc.

Ooooooooommmmmmm; Ooooooooommmmmmm; oooooooommmmmmm..

I think you need to find out who this guy Dean is and how many other young wimmin he has on his list…

If any of my kids are ever accepted to Harvard and the like, I’ll break both their legs before I’d let them go.

Snob factor aside, one is tempted to ask if Ross can compete with your daughter’s femininity, but that seems a cheap shot.

Had she the calling, your daughter might have picked a National Service Academy, two of which, USMA and USCGA, are the “highest ranked college” and “hardest post-secondary school at which to gain admission,” respectively. And USNA, USMMA and USAFA are not far behind in either category.

USMA in particular has always prided itself on admitting, based on merit, from the entire socio-economic/social spectrum. The evidence proves it.

But national military service is a calling, a profession, not a job, and few have/are it. Those who do/are, ipso facto hail from all facets of the nation’s demographic. The Holy Spirit respects not the conventions of man.

Nor may Cadets or Midshipmen be married or have responsibility for children.

Harvard’s a lousy undergrad school anyway — any of the other top schools does better.

But yes, as an “Asian”, I feel your daughter’s (hypothetical) pain.

(Incidentally, precisely because you’re not rich, Harvard might have been cheaper than State. Tip for the grandkids or the younger offspring.)

[Still, those schools tend to make people obnoxious. So flagship state universities might be a better pick in any case.]

Okay, finally read Douthat’s article.

One factor not considered is how terrible life in the Northeast is, compared to the rest of the country.

You say ,”My daughter makes the deans list every semester” and all I hear is “Brag brag brag brag brag”, lol. Congrats Stacy! More power to her!

Quoting from a Pat Buchanan column today:

Princeton Professor Russell K. Nieli has recently come out with a study that found:

Writes Nieli, there seems an unwritten admissions rule at America’s elite schools: “Poor Whites Need Not Apply.”

For admissions officers at our top private and public schools, diversity is “a code word” for particular prejudices.

For these schools are not interested in a diversity that would include “born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lower- and middle-class Catholics, working class ‘white ethnics,’ social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children or older students just starting into college and raising children.”

“Students in these categories,” writes Nieli, “are often very rare at the most competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League.”

“Lower-class whites prove to be all-around losers” at the elite schools. They are rarely accepted.

*sigh of relief* – Not wanting your kid to turn into Ross Douthat, isn’t that every parent’s hope?

Well, here’s something:

Go to Harvard and Ackerman will exempt you from preemptive charges of racism –

http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/3/

(Unless Fred Barnes too went there. And what did Fred Barnes do, piss in his cheerios or something?)

Harvard Inbred

The Ruling Class of Useful Idiots.

No wonder The Ruling Class at the National Review failed to stand athwart history yelling stop.

For the last thirty years their Ruling Class of Useful Idiots were too busy telling the Country Class that they are uneducated and should ‘leave the room’ and ‘go home and do homework’.

Further; George Will’s 30% ‘highly educated whites’ will never recognize just how foolishly ignorant they are when it comes to the meaning of Freedom.

This breeds paranoia, among elite and non-elites alike. Among the white working class, increasingly the most reliable Republican constituency, alienation from the American meritocracy

Note to Douthat: a meritocracy does not discriminate against people because of their religion, parent’s income, or home state. That would be the antithesis of a meritocracy, in fact.