Looking from the outside in for the past 1.5 years, I sort of agree with this. My son went to an inner city public school but he has three close friends from his HS class that are in Ivies and they compare notes. The classes themselves at USNA appear to be as challenging as the Ivies. However the academic “competition” at the Ivies is quite a bit higher. Most of the classmates of these Ivy guys/gals were IB/AP scholars with ACTs in the 34-36 range. That is definitely not the case at USNA. There are some really, really smart mids. But they are fewer in number compared to Ivies. Absolutely nothing wrong with that because that is only one piece of the puzzle. None of my son’s friends could cut it at an SA - they aren’t physical fit enough, not physically competitive enough, not driven to serve, and not demonstrated leaders. But I think it needs to be admitted that from a scholastically competitive point of view, the Ivies are significantly more challenging. My son has not found the academics challenging and he knows several mids who were not academically prepared coming in. But they figure it out. It’s the combo platter of everything that are the SAs that makes them incredibly challenging and impossible to compare with Ivies. The education that SAs provide is top notch. Academics are really important but too much emphasis is placed on them in our society. There’s a whole lot more to being a great citizen, employee, leader, human than academic prowess.
