I wouldn't dismiss the other poster out of hand because i have observed a similar phenomena.

In my army days, we were in a frontline vocation which was considered somewhat 'garang' ... or at least we were brainwashed into believing so. The specs and the officers were from the poly batch while the men were JC batch. We had selected the men with the best results both academically and in ippt. There were a good many govt scholars in the batch and a heavy majority got ippt gold.

What was evident in army days was that the personality of the poly group was v different from the jc group. For instance, if u told the poly group not to do something , they'd either sneak away to do it while u are not ard or find a loophole in your instructions to do what they want, and then spread the word on how to circumvent the instructions . The jc batch, on the other hand, would not only adhere to instructions to the letter, but would also help keep everyone else in line.

Now, 10 plus years have passed and its interesting to note how their careers have panned out . For the jc batch, many are in steady govt jobs like reporters, teachers, researchers. A couple have soared in govt service as they got prestigious scholarships and have performed well. The poly group has a more disparate experience. Most went on to get their degrees. A few have become v rich via insurance, a few started their own businesses and have done v well, some work for mncs and are now drawing in excess of $10 to 15k per month (via multiple job switches) others are in govt or sme jobs. On balance, there is no doubt that the poly batch has done better than the jc batch since ord.

I was from jc (tho i ended up w the poly intake in army) so i hv no bias here, and i share the above as an interesting empirical observation. Am i saying poly prepares u better for life? No. What i am saying is, eithin my life experience, i have seen evidence of a poly group do considerably better than a top jc group of the same vintage.