[nitrogen]

My mediocre high school used to give presentations about how pointless it was to go to a big name school. One of the claims was that, after ten years, all differences in median incomes were gone. Curiously they didn't break it down into percentiles.

Everyone in the advisors' office bought into this public-school-to-public-university pipeline. My dream in junior high was to go to MIT. When I mentioned this to my guidance counselor, they said, basically, "Don't bother, you'll never get in." Self-fulfilling prophecy.

[tomp]

They were just managing expectations. Partially the kids’, partially the parents’

[nitrogen]

Managing expectations would be "Here's a plan to maximize your chances, but the chances are still slim, so pick several schools."

[Spooky23]

They were right.

The 90th percentile earner from the Harvard class of 2010 didn’t come from some random high school in Missouri with an 1000 median SAT score.

Guidance counselors suck every where. Mine was a national guard major, 18% of my class joined the military.

[nitrogen]

Medians are misleading. Some random high school in Missouri probably has outliers that it just doesn't know how to deal with. Additionally, maintaining low expectations perpetuates a cycle of underachievement.