A recent Newsweek article titled Falling Through the Cracks poses an interesting question: Are rural kids falling off the radar of elite colleges?

Tulane admissions chief Richard Whiteside says, "Unfortunately, we go where we can generate a sizable number of potential applicants." Whiteside recruits aggressively -and in person - from metropolitan areas. Kids in rural areas get a glossy brochure in the mail."

The article talks about how elite schools tend to only recruit rural students from local areas. Schools readily admit that without having an "in" at a school (be it a legacy, a connected guidance counselor, or living in the university's town), most qualified rural kids go it alone when applying and are usually completely overlooked by admissions.

I know the private lower/upper school I worked for in Florida prided themselves on the yearly amount of graduates that went on to Ivy League schools. You can be sure the upper school's guidance counselors aggressively lobbied for their students at these universities.

An article a few months back in The New Yorker gives pause to be sure about the admissions process at Ivy League schools, most notably Harvard. The old tradition of touching John Harvard's shoe for academic good luck won't cut it these days.

It's a branding world. Who we know, where we live, where we go to school defines us in America. Can it be overcome? Can qualified students in rural public high schools even get a chance to jump into the ring of elite education? I'd say not without a lot of support from dedicated parents and educators and I am just talking about during the application process. Huge academic support during the eighteen previous years goes without saying.