Privilege:
Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class.
Ross
Gregory Douthat. New York: Hyperion, 2005. Pp. 288. $24.95, hardcover. ISBN:
1-4013-0112-6. TEL: 212-456-0175 o FAX: 212-456-0176
Every
year, thousands of high school seniors painstakingly produce college applications
that would guarantee them acceptance to almost any university in the country.
Every fall, prodigies, geniuses, accomplished people whose high school careers
are more award-laden than the entire lives of many adults, stampede the Cambridge
campus of Harvard University for prospective student weekends.
They are hoping to be admitted into the university’s ivy-covered walls.
But every April, despite perfect SAT scores, high GPAs, and endless extracurricular
activities, most of these brilliant teenagers are turned away.
Harvard is synonymous with success, class, and intelligence. Many of our leading
politicians, writers, and thinkers matriculated there. Its list of professors
reads like a who’s who of academia. Harvard is a school everyone has
heard of—even toddlers bumble through Boston wearing "Future Harvard
Freshman" T-shirts.
What is it about Harvard that causes such dream-filled longing? What exactly
does a Harvard education promise? And, given the elite aura surrounding Harvard,
what is the reality of being a student at the school?
In this book, Harvard graduate Douthat explores the university and the place
it holds in American culture. Part memoir, part social critique, the book
is a frank look at a school that seems to have contributed to—or helped
create—the elitism that pervades Ivy League universities and much of
American society.
Raised in a New England middle-class family and cognizant of the wealth and
status that pervade the region’s college towns, Douthat had "wanted
Harvard" since he was small. In the prologue to this book, he writes
of his desire to escape his middle-tier private school for the Ivy League
gem:
"I wanted nothing more than to get away from the nouveau riche pretensions,
the thoughtless prejudices, and the gleaming parentally provided SUVs of my
classmates…. Once I reached Harvard, I told myself, I would never again
have to endure the sneers of the high school jockocracy, the dismissive glances
of the in crowd."
In short, he believed the university would be the place where his wit and
academic talent would propel him to the center of the crowd. He believed,
too, that Harvard’s student body would be comprised of those admitted
solely on merit and brainpower. "At Harvard," he writes, "I
would be happy. At Harvard I would be cool."
Yet Douthat quickly learns that Harvard has an elite group more impenetrable
than anything he encountered in high school. His romantic notion that merit,
and not privilege, opens Harvard’s doors is quickly crushed. Here, most
students are brilliant and interesting, and athletic prowess, a gorgeous appearance,
and fancy clothes are only part of the equation.
Here, students come from families who have been educated at Harvard for decades,
families whose connections are so old and run so deep they feel no need to
discuss or broadcast them. High school hierarchies, Douthat learns, have nothing
on Harvard’s social stratosphere, and the clamor to fit in is even more
cutthroat—as is the competition for honors, awards, and eventually high-paying
jobs.
He writes: "At its crudest, a Harvard education is a four-year scramble
to ingratiate oneself" with peers, professors, and eventually potential
employers. This book is about the endeavor to better oneself socially and
intellectually and the pitfalls that lurk along the way.
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