[follow on to Superb Student essay]
The job of a Dad is to extinguish false hopes; but it is also to excise false cynicism. It is conventional, after analyses of this sort, to lament the hard road facing an ordinary middle class student. Gary Gazillions, Nerd Geekson, Jean Le Savant, Joe Quarterback, and Suzy Cello take up so many places! And Megan Smythe III, daughter and granddaughter of Princeton alums, and her compatriots take almost as many more places.
But let’s be clear: Princeton did not let in weaker applicants in place of your child. Megan Smythe III was a 99th percentile student too; being an alumni child simply allowed Princeton to select her from among the 50-60 equally qualified non-alumni children. Same with Gary—you don’t think a billionaire’s child gets every resource needed to succeed in school? Joe Quarterback’s standardized test scores may be a few points lower than your child’s (or maybe not); but he still compiled a very strong academic record by any measure. His athletic achievements simply allow him to stand out from the dozens of other applicants with equally strong records.
Heed the math: Princeton is somewhere between a 99.9th and a 99.99th percentile university, depending on how many universities across the planet you think should count; but your child is only a 99th percentile student. She’s more than qualified to do the work at Princeton, and to benefit greatly from the wealth of learning opportunities there; but she can only pass through the portal of admission by means of a lottery. There are too many thousands of 99th percentile students, relative to the few slots available each year at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton.