Youth who want to go to Harvard or Stanford know they’ll have some stiff competition. Thousands of teens are turned away from America’s most elite universities every year, and those who gain admission to such schools are the best of the best—or have the best of connections.

For some, the competition begins far earlier—when students probably don’t even know how to tie their shoes.

In New York City, the competition begins in preschool. Parents who would love to get their kids into an Ivy League school often figure they need to get into prestigious high schools and elementary schools. That means getting them into a top preschool program. The top private preschools in the city can cost $40,000 a year, and while admission figures are hard to come by, uber-prestigious Trinity school revealed in 2011 that 2.4 percent of those who applied for its kindergarten program were accepted, technically making Trinity harder to get into than Harvard. (New York Times)

Paul Asay has written for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for PluggedIn and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He recently collaborated with Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, on his book The Good Dad. He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and his two children. Follow him on Twitter.