Thanks for posting B, being the parent of an aspiring Ivy leaguer I understand what the author is saying but the quote below does apply to my daughter. Of course she could easily go through the state university system and she can have a free ride at MSU and UofM, she is driven to go Ivy League she accepts nothing less than A's and runs a rigorous diversified after school schedule. Saying that the ROI for Ivy League education is hard for me to stomach because statistically Ivy League, MIT and Service Academy graduates blow standard university graduates away on almost every metric. I may be just an average educated former ground pounder but if my child is so driven that she wants to go Ivy League I'm not going to tell her otherwise.

So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error. Once, a student at Pomona told me that she’d love to have a chance to think about the things she’s studying, only she doesn’t have the time. I asked her if she had ever considered not trying to get an A in every class. She looked at me as if I had made an indecent suggestion.