Wizard society/magical ability/Arthur's house/Widow

[Jennifer Piersol]

No: HPFGUIDX 13003

<Snipping lots of text relating to the quill submitting names based 
on their placement on the magical scale...>

Christian said:

> But where does this leave the muggle-born/-raised students?  The 
> continuum would be just as visible with muggleborn children with 
> magical ability.  Going to Hogwarts school is very important to the 
> muggleborn/raised - it is the only way they have to learn about 
> living in the magical society.  The ministry cannot simply leave 
them 
> to their own devices - they would have to send out officials to 
erase 
> memories rather too often.  

Here's my take of it.  Let's say we have a muggle-born child, who has 
*some* magical ability (let's say level 4 on Steve's scale).  Perhaps 
a 4 isn't enough to break through a "hard candy shell" of 
muggleness... you need something more powerful.  Chemists among us 
(my husband included) can consider this as a catalyst.  There are 
reactions that just *can't* take place unless you have enough of the 
catalyst.  So to become a wizard if you're a muggle-born, you HAVE to 
have enough magic in order to be considered for Hogwarts admission.  
Make sense?

<more snipping>

> 
> Also, separating a large quantity of people with magical ability 
from 
> being able to go to Hogwarts seems to make Hogwarts some sort of 
> elitist school, which does not resonate with Dumbledore's attitude 
to 
> things in general.
> 

Dumbledore isn't elitest in the sense that you have to either be (for 
example) a rich pureblood.  You just have to have a goodly amount of 
magical power to get in.  I mean, I can't see Harvard accepting 
someone with an "average" SAT score (standardized tests, for non 
US-ers), either.  I mean, even my alma mater (University of Arizona - 
a "state school") has a cut-off point for grades and such.  It's a 
matter of making sure that students will do reasonably well in their 
environments, and won't get so discouraged that they go out and shoot 
someone (or themselves).

It makes perfect sense to me that Hogwarts would only accept the 
cream of the crop, so to speak, and that the ones that didn't make 
the grade (a majority, I would think), though they may be 
disappointed, would just move on and make some other future plans.  
I mean, not every muggle out there among us would have been accepted 
to Cal Tech, or Oxford, or Yale, or Cambridge, right?

- Jen (who went to Harvard for a summer, and decided that she would 
never be able to handle being *that* stressed out full-time)