>Hm. I guess you'll need a new excuse.

I don't, because it doesn't matter what the authors of that paper assert / wishcast in regard to decades old admissions standards.

The only people that take virtually any social science paper seriously are people without science training. Or people with an agenda who are willing to overlook the fact that the so-called science is garbage.

There's no way that these authors were able to meaningfully statistically parse that elite school non-academic credentials / athletics are negatively correlated to outcomes in comparison to low income SAT only students. How you know is that they aren't even parsing the "three key factors" to arrive at their conclusion.

The other part of this that you are missing is that public school academic credentials and private school credentials are in no way 1:1.

As someone from a poor background I went to an elite prep school when the academic standards were still as high as ever, but attended a public college that was known for its academics. Prep school was much harder than college, and college was no cakewalk.

Good students, most of whom went Ivy and who were about 15-20% of my graduating class, had estimated IQs in the 140s and all were athletes. As the school had a sports participation requirement. Two sports per year until high school, at which point it dropped to at least one sport per year. I played three sports per year. The top students had estimated 150+ IQs, though it gets hard to estimate at that level. Also athletes.

You aren't dealing with dumb jocks in the Ivy league. You're dealing with hyper-smart, well-rounded leaders who deserve to be there. Because everything that they've done since kindergarten has made them impressive people by high school. And not just in the classroom.