[robertha]

I don't think it's about intelligence, I'm from Chicago, I know a lot of incredible people from the top schools, but I've also met plenty of the "less intelligent" people from Northwestern and University of Chicago.

I believe it could be about being able to get your way in into the right circles. Getting in into an ivy league school is usually challenging, unless you're born into money, you have to figure out a plan and correctly execute it in order to get in--just like meeting the right people, starting a business, and then getting funded.

Also I think we like to associate and surround ourselves with people of the same background. So when a successful Harvard graduate sees another Harvard alumnus, there is an automatic desire to help out.

[pixelmonkey]

"Getting in into an ivy league school is usually challenging, unless you're born into money, you have to figure out a plan and correctly execute it in order to get in--just like meeting the right people, starting a business, and then getting funded"

You do realize that the planning for getting into an Ivy League school has to start at around age 14, right? At that age, whether you'll be able to "execute a plan" to get into a school (or even have the perspective to care what school you get into) will 100% depend on whether your family is rich and privileged itself.

Poor kids don't think about going to Ivy League schools at age 14. And neither do rich kids. Only rich kids' parents do.

Get real.

[hga]

How sure are you of this?

I was thinking about getting into a top school at this age, although I was thinking CalTech and MIT for science instead of the Ivies, and while they were a special case (as in, not really planning on spending anything to speak of on our educations), my rich parents were very much not. Of course, one of the reasons for that was I'd been told for as long as I could remember that I had to study and make good grades or I'd end up "digging ditches" as a career.

Heinlein wrote a book, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel that you tend to read at about that age which has a hidden sub-agenda of telling you exactly what you need to do to get into one of those schools. Hmmm, his first juvenile also touches on it, but its much more of an aside.