I'm not at all surprised by this and it's a bit of a dilemma for conservative parents and their children who have been raised in a conservative family.
Really smart people come from both sides of the political spectrum. I happen to have grandchildren all around the beginning, middle, and very soon stages of college. A few of them are of the academic caliber to be choosing and attending schools at the very top level. And it's a problem right now because their brains and capabilities compete with what these schools now represent politically. It's not like there is a set of very top universities that lean right. But luckily, there are majors in these top universities which largely prevent the student from the worst of the political brainwashing (like engineering, physics, applied math, chemistry, etc.)
The left has effectively taken over the entire U.S. educational system from start to finish, and the brainwashing is rampant at all levels. Shame on the right for allowing this to occur and not noticing it over all the years this has been well underway. At the lower levels, school choice is now really gaining momentum and spread and that's a wonderful direction and change IMO. But the top universities are still from really far to quite far left - nearly all of them.
So, the kids from conservative families have to set that aside when their academic goals are of the highest nature. Acceptances to these schools is an enormous honor and only the very smartest and best have any chance. For now, it's actually a big help if the applicant is a minority and poor. These schools are really after upping the number of such students in their application process. And once upon a time, it was useful to be a female but that's switched now. The best of the best "smarts" are now more often coming from girls than boys so the enrollment numbers have gotten skewed toward girls - so now it's actually an acceptance advantage to be male rather than female. And these schools are simply loaded with money/endowments, so they don't care how many students pay full tuition, part tuition, or go to school on full financial aid. Money isn't helpful and poverty isn't harmful.
As I've closely watched this application/acceptance process very firsthand in several recent years, I well understand the hard work, dedication, desire, stress, and anxiety these very top students go through and the enormous pride in their accomplishments. Left or right, these kids have so much potential and, those at that level, just set politics aside and plunge themselves into their academic endeavors.
Attacking Vance (Obama, DeSantis, Hillary, Bill and more) for their impressive academic successes is asinine and will only make those who engage in it look petty, defensive, stupid and jealous. Chances are, no one who succeeded like this rare group has, will be doing the bashing. That group doing the bashing is likely the type like Walz, who has embellished their own past and pretended they were more successful than they really were. The type who has blamed others for their DUIs and has a history of calling themselves by a rank or label they never achieved, accomplished or finished. That's pathetic. Few of us can academically do what Vance did but bashing those that did - is pathetic. There is everything right about being just who you are and taking pride in that but there everything wrong with pretending to be something you aren't and bashing others who accomplished things you didn't.
yaledailynews.com
gazette.com
