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To the Editor:
I rarely agree with Ross Douthat, but this time I found myself cheering "The Secrets of Princeton" (column, April 7), which acknowledges the self-replicating imperative of American elites.
Having spent my life in law and academe — two meritocratic professions — I can attest that one's path is already laid out on the day that one graduates. It's not that one cannot succeed by graduating from a no-name university, but rather that Ivy Leaguers don't have to struggle so hard.
All the right assumptions are already in place, and they're enforced by people to whom such things matter.
In one sense, the system is efficient: it saves a lot of time, and liberates some people to focus on work. But in the sense that Mr. Douthat describes, it makes a mockery of our pretensions to egalitarianism.
SANDRA SHERMAN
New York, April 7, 2013
To the Editor:
Ross Douthat asserts that Susan Patton, a Princeton alumna, leaked an elite secret: college is a source of potential spouses. As in any place where young adults gather, relationships, and ultimately spouse-finding, will occur, whether you are going to a community college or Yale.
Mr. Douthat's assertion that admission offices prefer "résumé-padding and extracurriculars over raw test scores or G.P.A.'s" also diverges from reality. These schools must maintain very high SAT and grade point average levels to maintain their status.
Competing with this goal is the desire of these schools to present themselves as microcosms of egalitarian diversity, driving elite college admission offices to accept both the super-academics and a variety of other applicants who offer geographic diversity, or are underrepresented minorities or first-generation college attendees. They track and publish all of this.
These schools do need to keep the alumni money coming, but the number of athletes who serve this purpose dwarfs the legacy admissions.
LYNNETTE C. FALLON
Beverly, Mass., April 8, 2013
To the Editor:
I will never forget the day my political science teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, where I earned a degree, said to the class, "We all know that most of the girls are here for their Mrs. degree." All of the women put their heads down and pretended to be writing in their notebooks. The year was 1956, and no one complained about this insult to feminine integrity (Penn had long accepted women). Finding a husband preoccupied some of the women, but they were also pursuing a degree and a career at the same time.
Today, no professor would think of making a comment like this. But apparently not much has changed, according to Susan Patton, a Princeton graduate who encourages women to seek a mate while in college.
Ross Douthat writes that Ms. Patton is simply reflecting a truism that "elite universities are about connecting more than learning." I think that it displays the same condescending sentiment expressed by that political science teacher more than 50 years ago and should be ignored now as it was then.
DOLORES GIESMAN
Milford, Conn., April 7, 2013
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