"If you made a good impression on the basis of several interviews [with the counselor], there would definitely be a bias in your favor," says Janet S. McIntosh '91, an Andover alum.

"College guidance counselor input has much greater weight proportionately at a place like Milton," says the Harvard senior who asked not to be identified. "They understand each other."

Even Tougher?

Despite the potential advantages of going to a feeder school, some prep school alums now at Harvard maintain that on the whole they didn't receive an edge in the admissions process. In fact, they say, due to the competitive nature of the prep schools, it might even have been tougher for them.

"You're competing with very highly qualified people who would have gotten in had they applied from an ordinary high school," McIntosh says.

While Ted Caplow '92 says that having Groton on his resume was definitely an eye opener, he says that made no difference when competing against his high school classmates.

"It obviously helps you in the application process to have gone to Groton, but everybody has that advantage," Caplow says.

Lewis flatly says that prep schools are no longer an advantage. "We recruit a diverse pool of applicants and the good candidates always appear to rise to the top," she says. "It isn't really linked to the schools."

Indeed, besides the fact that the numbers of prep school students at Harvard have declined, many public schools are rapidly catching up--and some have already caught up.

For example, magnet schools in New York City like Hunter College High School, with 10 students in the College's Class of 1993, Bronx Science High School, with eight, and Stuyvesant High School, with 15, have all joined the large feeder school list.

And Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, a former dean of admissions himself, says that suburban high schools, not the older schools of New England, have become the true feeder schools these days.

"There has been a steady progression away from there being a defined set of feeder schools with a move towards a particular kind of school," Jewett says.

Citing the competitiveness of Ivy League schools these days, counselors at the traditional elite feeder schools say that the prep school advantage bears little resemblance to that of the past.

Carl Beewig, a college counselor at Andover, says that while his school enjoys a "good, close relationship with Harvard," he attributes whatever special treatment Andover students may receive to the fact that many are legacies.

Says Beewig, "We're still appreciated, but we're not in the same small circle of feeder schools as before."

Beong-Soo Kim contributed to the reporting of this story.