Stratification exists in society, that is a fact. It is also a fact that from this stratification one child does not have the same opportunities as another. If you are born into a family with little money, you may never get to embrace your true academic potential.

Students from schools reserved for the wealthy get unfair advantages in their admittance to top colleges over the rest of the educational world. According to “Preparing for Power: Prep Schools and Higher Education,” by Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Caroline Hodges Persell, students who go to boarding or prep schools have an almost guaranteed spot at an Ivy League school — even above public school students who have better grades, SAT scores and are more well rounded individuals.

This problem can be blamed on a few different things. One is the relative sizes of the schools and the number of counselors per student. A prep school college counselor will have perhaps 50 students, while a public school college counselor could have as many as 500. When it comes time for letters of recommendation, which counselors do you think will be more of an aid to their student?

It doesn’t hurt either that the college counselors of elite prep schools have very close relationships with admittance officers of Ivy League schools and can “call in a favor” when needed.

Students of prep schools are also much more likely to be legacies, having parents who attended the Ivy leagues they are now pursuing. Cookson and Persell found that when asked, college advisers admitted that legacies were “2 to 2 1/2 times as likely to be admitted to Ivy League colleges as nonlegacies” (Page 4, “Preparing for Power …”).

Call me old-fashioned, but I always believed that a student’s mind and work ethic were the most important factors in their educational life.

Prep school college advisers are also often granted access to sit in on admissions committee decisions so they can see how certain colleges are going to make up their class. Now, heaven forbid, if all of the given advantages are not enough to get a prep schooler into the Ivy League, prep school advisers often still negotiate with the college to make sure their student is the first on the waiting list, or call in a favor.

It is not an equal playing field for students, and no one has done anything significant enough to change that.

Some elites argue that stratification is inevitable and that not all children are going to have equal opportunities at getting the education they deserve. But what if it was your child? What if you knew your child was brilliant and could put any prep schooler to shame, but you couldn’t afford elite schooling? Wouldn’t you then wish your child had just as good a chance at getting into the school they deserve and are capable of going to?

Stratification seems inevitable because of its history and its commonality, but many people said that about slavery and the lack of equal women’s rights, too. This is our children’s educations we are talking about, the future of our country. Do we not want to be sure the brightest minds are getting the best opportunities to better our country in the future?

Every child deserves to embrace their full academic potential, no matter what social class they were born into.

Julie Kenworthy is a student at the University of Washington and a former Sammamish resident.