<p>Rizzle, SevenDad answered the question earlier in the thread.</p>
<p>Oh. Now I feel stupid.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that Phillips Exeter Academy is not a member of Gateway, basically the Common App for prep schools. This explains the higher admit rate for Exeter (compared to Andover) since Exeter receives fewer applications. Applying to Exeter is more than just clicking a submit button after filling out a common application. </p>
<p>Notice how Columbia’s admit rate plunged to a shocking 6.4% as soon as it joined the Common App.</p>
<p>Not true, socalisgood. Gateway is not the same as the common app for prep schools. Gateway gathers basic candidate information, but the essays are different for each school. </p>
<p>Last year only a handful of schools, including Andover, Deerfield, St. Paul’s, used Gateway. These schools, like Exeter, do not allow the common app. You are required to complete their application. </p>
<p>Admisssion rates have been consistent over the years and did not change significantly with the use of Gateway for the first time last year.</p>
<p>CKSABS: Yes, but how is that any different from Common App colleges asking for different supplement essays? It’s all about convenience. Essays and Recs can all be written and submitted via Gateway with a click. The Candidate Profile is a HUGE component of the application with its questions about extracurricular activities and whatnots. That is to say, it is not a simple, “write name here” sign-up sheet. The Gateway saves significant amount of time and energy. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it could even reduce mistakes. There is no question that this is an effective organizing tool that makes the application process much more convenient for the applicant (as is the Common App.)</p>
<p>I remember recycling my essays for most schools when I applied anyway, so the “different essay topics” shouldn’t even be a problem. As I said, it’s no different from the supplement essays on the Common App. (A minute of Googling showed me that the essays can be submitted via Gateway as well—brownie points for convenience!)</p>
<p>As for admission rates, the gap between rates for Exeter and Andover has never been so great as in the past year. The year I applied, it was something like 19% for Exeter, 18% for Andover. My observation is simply this: Exeter is the ONLY (YES, ONLY) HADES school that is not using the Gateway app, and it is also the only school that reported a stagnant admit rate (and only a slight increase in applications) this past year.</p>
<p>CKSABS, don’t think I’m biased about this argument as an Exonian. But I must admit I definitely applied to some of the schools on Gateway merely because of convenience purposes. SPS and Groton to be exact. I mean I had looked at their sites and liked them, but didn’t LOVE them. I wouldn’t have applied to them if their applications weren’t one click away from the Andover, Deerfield, Hotchkiss, etc. apps. So I don’t know how much of a difference it makes, but it most definitely brings SLIGHTLY more apps to schools.</p>
<p>Socialisgood,</p>
<p>I am afraid that your analogy to Columbia and the Common Application does not apply. Columbia has consistently been one of the most selective Ivy League colleges for the past decade. Moreover, the number of applicants using the Common Application has proportionately increased at all the Ivies, not just Columbia, in recent years. Hence, the 6.93% admission rate last year at Columbia is not idiosyncratic. In fact, the admission rates at Harvard (6.1%), Yale (7.35%), Princeton (8.39%), Brown (8.70%), and Dartmouth (9.73%) were all extraordinarily low for the Class of 2015.</p>
<p>Your argument about the Gateway application is not persuasive either. As pointed out above, the Gateway process is not comparable to the Common Application. Where the Common Application has a general information section and generic essays that apply to every college, the Gateway application has a general information section and unique essays for each school. </p>
<p>While the Gateway application thus provides applicants who use it the convenience of having to fill out their general information only once, that convenience is likely not statistically important for several reasons. First, filling out the general information is the least time-consuming element of the prep school application process. Second, factors such as fit, prestige, sports, academics, etc are far more important to applicants than the ease of the application process. Third, some applicants to Gateway schools apply directly to the schools of their choice and thus do not use the Gateway application. Fourth, if being a Gateway school would improve Exeters admission statistics, one can safely assume that Exeter would elect to be a Gateway school. </p>
<p>Given the overlap in the applicants who apply to HADES’ schools, the fact that Exeters admission rate of 19% is considerably higher than the 14% admission rates at Andover (14%), Deerfield (14%), and SPS (16%) is surprising. So, too, is the fact that Exeters admission rate is 1% lower than Hotchkiss (20%). These statistics do not, of course, categorically define Exeter. They do not diminish the fact that Exeter is an outstanding school; they do not minimize the wonderful education you have received at Exeter; and they are one metric, among many, by which Exeter can be judged. Nevertheless, they do intriguingly indicate that Exeter is not quite as selective as many of us heretofore believed.</p>
<p>A reason for Andover’s lower admit rate may be better marketing attracting more applicants. Their AOs on-road schedule rivals those of the Fortune 500 CEOs. The more bushes you shake, the more rabbits that come out. :D</p>
<p>Invent, you may be right, but do you know for a fact that Exeter is doing less or worse marketing than Andover? Also, in your opinion, what explains Deerfield and SPS’s low admit rate?</p>
<p>BTW, do you plan on enrolling in whatever prep school you were admitted first before dropping out of it to start your company? 
I figure that way, you’d at least have some association with prep schools.</p>
<p>Isn’t it obvious when you look at Exeter AOs travel schedule? Deerfield and SPS are smaller schools that can’t be compared with bigger schools like A, E, ie comparing apples and oranges.</p>
<p>Just thought I would point out that my daughter’s acceptance letter from Hotchkiss this year stated that their acceptance rate this year was 16%, yet other numbers are for Hotchkiss are quoted here as fact, based (I would guess) on old information on boarding school review or maybe they are just rehashed again and again from posts from previous years. I wonder how many other schools stats are based on years old information.</p>
<p>You all need to get a life. Really, who cares about whether Andover or Exeter or Hotchkiss’ admit rate is x% below one of the other schools?</p>
<p>or maybe people are trying to find the most updated acceptance rates because they are only looking at schools within a certain range. I for example am only looking at schools with about a 28-40% admit rate.</p>
<p>Three things to consider:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>All top-tier boarding schools compete with one another for elite students throughout America and abroad. </p></li>
<li><p>This competition serves the salutary purpose of promoting economic, racial, ethnic, and geographical diversity in prep schools.</p></li>
<li><p>The fact that some prep schools consistently attract more applicants than others simply means they have a better and more desirable product.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Buyers of a perceived better product can have buyers remorse as reality sets in.</p>
<p>
What? What did people do to deserve that? Admit rate is a most straightforward way to assess how hard it is to get admitted to a school, and a good indicator on what kind of peers you may work with. In this day and age, to pretend that admit rate is a ridiculous thing to talk about is ridiculous.</p>
<p>JMILTON: I hate repeating facts, especially since Gateway’s effects on the landscape of prep school admissions is not a matter of “right or wrong” or being “persuasive or not.” All of these are FACTS.</p>
<p>First of all, here’s a FACT that you seem to have missed.
Columbia joined the Common App only last year and saw an explosive 34% increase in the number of applications received–a rate UNPARALLELED by any other college’s. 34% increases don’t happen everyday. Also, notice that Columbia has school-specific supplement essays (conveniently available on the Common App), much like, prep schools that each have their own essay topics either conveniently on the Gateway app or inconveniently on the school website.</p>
<p>FACT TWO: Your emphasis on admissions statistics this year for Columbia’s Ivy League peer schools could be <em>very</em> misleading. Note that just by joining the Common App, Columbia’s admit rate plunged from 9.2 % in 2010 to a shocking 6.9% this year (6.4% if you only look at Columbia College.) I say shocking, because that rarely happens in college admissions, if at all. 6.4% is even lower than the reported admit rate for Harvard in 2010.</p>
<p>In other words, you need to look at admit rates BEFORE the use of Common App and AFTER. If you compare admit rates for schools in a year where ALL of them used the Common App (which is what you did), of course, you’re going to find that the admit rates are similar across the board. In fact, before the use of Common App, Columbia was not on a level playing field with the other Ivies. The admit rates this year actually seem like a much better representation, if you will, of the Ivy League, with HYP and Columbia taking the top unlike last year when Columbia hovered in the bottom half (for Ivies) around 9%. </p>
<p>FACT 3: You mention “unique essays” for prep schools as if there exists no equivalent on the Common App. Don’t forget that for the most competitive colleges, you have to write UNIQUE supplementary essays. As the Columbia statistics suggest, convenience seems to have played a substantial role in admissions. Even with “unique supplementary essays” to write, it seems that thousands of applicants decided to apply to Columbia as soon as it became conveniently available to them via the Common App.</p>
<p>FACT 4: Exeter made it clear that it decided not to join Gateway to make sure that all of its applicants are students who are dedicated and interested enough to elect effort over convenience. “If Exeter wanted to improve its admissions statistics, it would have joined Gateway” is an invalid argument. Exeter simply wants students who are <em>actually</em> interested in coming. Of course, the underlying assumption there (which I disagree with) is that students who apply via Gateway are less committed applicants.</p>
<p>FACT 5: You listed admit rates for HADES (all of which, except Exeter, use the Gateway app) and kindly pointed out that Hotchkiss reported an admit rate higher than Exeter’s, despite using the Gateway app. As one poster noted, that was old data since Hotchkiss reported an admit rate of 16% this year, lower than Exeter’s. This seems to be a common occurrence among top tier prep schools that have decided to join the Gateway app–again, to prove my point.</p>
<p>In conclusion, Exeter’s admissions statistics could be misleading, because like Columbia before it joined the Common App, Exeter is not exactly on a level playing field with its peer schools. So don’t be misguided into thinking that it’s easier to get into Exeter, than to Deerfield, Hotchkiss, or Andover. At Exeter, your application will be thoroughly dissected and examined with other applications from the supposedly more committed pool of applicants who took the extra time and effort to write a whole application, entirely specific to Exeter.</p>
<p>Who are you kidding DAndrew? This whole thread, which started out honestly, has devolved into the usual small-minded, ranking-obsessed, “my school is better than yours” because its admit rate is 2% less etc. These are all great schools and any applicant academically qualified for one is qualified for all, the only difference being fit and finish. So, please, spare me your faux outrage.</p>
<p>I agree with Parlabane that DAndrew’s outrage is a faux pas.</p>
<p>Do me a favor, Invent. Don’t help me.</p>