Maggie's Farm

Many of our younger friends, and my colleagues at the firm, spent the week before last visiting colleges with their high-school age kids. Ambitious kids often aspire to our venerable, prestigious Ivy League colleges, but the Ivies do not have the space for all of the smart, curious, motivated and talented kids who apply.

These days, you need a hook. A very big hook, if you have the misfortune to be a white male with 1600 SATs.

Why? Because nowadays, the most competitive colleges "construct" a class. They don't simply take the kids they like; they take the best applicant from each of a large number of columns. The best violinist, the best oboeist, the best squash player, the best quarterback, the best legacy applicants, the kids of the biggest donors, the one who won the most international math tournaments, etc. Plus their prospecting for ultra-talented kids is world-wide now: Just look at the names on Ivy tennis, soccer, or fencing teams - globalization at work. They might have a category for smart, well-rounded kids, but they keep that secret.

Fortunately, in America there are tons of equally good alternatives for kids who would like to excel, many which have not become commie propaganda mills yet, and many of which are far less expensive. In education, you do not get what you pay for, you get what you can take in.

In our firm, we have associates from all sorts of colleges and from all sorts of top 20 law schools. We realize that it's a big world out there, and that it's not like my day, when having an Ivy pedigree seemed like a social and professional requirement (and admission was less selective). Those days are gone, and it might be for the best, but I am not sure. I prefer values to brains, assuming the brains are adequate.

Editor's Note: A reader sent in this photo of Harvard's University Hall, taken on a college visit with a child a week ago.