<p>Here are the 2014/2015 USA boarding school rankings that was released by Top Test Prep just a few days ago.</p>
<p>Go Lawrenceville! Third place baby.</p>
<p>Not bad, not bad.</p>
<p>There are so many things wrong/misrepresented/statistically inconsistent with this list, I’m not sure where to start!
I hope new applicants do their homework in researching the best matches for themselves and their families. And don’t rely on this list. There might be other lists out there more accurate statistically, but this one fails on many levels.</p>
<p>Oh, so being “prepared for college” means getting into a few name-brand ones?</p>
<p>Don’t think so. </p>
<p>And as @MoreACubMom indicated, these acceptance rates are all off. Did they get their info from Boarding School Review?</p>
<p>Phew! Thank goodness for Lawrenceville rounding out the high test-score schools… #:-S</p>
<p>GLEAMS is a so much better sounding acronym than is formed by just
St Pauls, Milton, Exeter, Groton, Middlesex, Andover</p>
<p>I wonder what this list would look like if the following stats were incorporated: voluntary withdrawals, expulsions, and percent of children being treated for depression. I suspect that we’d have a very different looking group of “top” schools. Everything comes with a cost, even if that cost is swept under the rug or marginalized on this site. Happiness and life balance are squishy concepts. Since they cannot be quantified, they get ignored by WAY too many parents and kids, at their peril, of course.</p>
<p>Sigh. </p>
<p>I think we all agree that these rankings are fundamentally flawed (even when all data are accurate), as criteria can be weighted a million different ways. </p>
<p>But do we have to start attacking the schools at the top of the lists EVERY time a new list comes out? What you describe as the ‘peril’ and ‘cost’ of one school may be the exact thing another family is looking for in a school.</p>
<p>Can’t we just continue to remind applicants to make sure their lists are weighted according to their OWN criteria?</p>
<p>^ Except that the lists only ever contain a selection of cherry-picked stats that paint a rosy picture. You can talk about weighing school choice according to individual criteria, and I couldn’t agree more, but the cost and peril of these stupid “top” lists is the absence of other important criteria. Would you object to the inclusion of attrition stats were they made available? I think it would make a difference in how people thought about “top” schools. </p>
<p>I agree with Parlabane. Happiness and life balance are indeed quishy concepts but also WAY overlooked. Those of us who have been on this board for years have seen so many questions regarding best school for ________. It’s not very often that I see people ask, “Where do the kids seem happiest?” Look, I get the fact that there are kids who are most happy when focused and intense. I’ve got one like that. But SAT scores, Ivy admits, and endowment are not going to tell you anything that is even remotely relevant to whether a kid with be happy there or not, regardless of whether the kid is the hyperfocused intense type or the happy go lucky type. How do we rate how nice the kids are? How willing they are to help out their friends? How accepting are they? What about the faculty? Does having an advanced degree make you a better teacher? hardly. You can dig and try to understand the culture of a school by talking to enrolled families, current students, reading the school paper, but you really won’t know until you’re a student there what it’s like. </p>
<p>I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it, the vast majority of boarding schools in this country will kick your ass academically if you take advantage of everything. So pick the one where you’re most likely to be able to smile through it.</p>
<p>Ok, I’ll bite on Neato’s topic. So if we were ranking schools based on best “school community” (by which term I include how happy the kids are, how supportive the teachers and staff are, how nice the kids are to their peers, etc), what schools would be at the top of that list?</p>
<p>Can you describe how a list should be tabulated using qualitative data? Isn’t that sort of impossible?</p>
<p>“How do we rate how nice the kids are? How willing they are to help out their friends? How accepting are they? What about the faculty? Does having an advanced degree make you a better teacher? hardly. You can dig and try to understand the culture of a school by talking to enrolled families, current students, reading the school paper, but you really won’t know until you’re a student there what it’s like.”</p>
<p>How can a list be created from the answers to these questions? </p>
<p>NOTE: I agree: The lists are faulty. The lists are not as useful as visits, interviews, conversations with students and parents, etc. in choosing a school. </p>
<p>What I am saying is that it always seems like the reaction to the narrow/faulty list-making translates immediately into an attack on the schools at the top of the faulty list. </p>
<p>That fact that A and E are on top of a list that uses criteria you don’t think are helpful just means that you shouldn’t give it credence. If you want to be helpful, just point that out to potential applicants as well. </p>
<p>But if your argument is that the academic stats considered for this list don’t necessarily define what makes a school a “top” school, wouldn’t it also follow that it’s unfair to assume that those same stats can be used an indicator of unhappy students? </p>
<p>Attrition (voluntary withdrawal and expulsion) can be quantified and yet tells a qualitative story. You know how many posters on this site got themselves in a twist about Deerfield not publishing annual score cards about college matriculation? Well, why not attrition? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I’d like to have that stat when making a four year decision for my child. What percent of kids drop out or get expelled from a school? If you found out a top school had great college matriculation, but had a 10% attrition rate, you might say…ok, Darwin is fine with me, let’s have at it. Or you might say, wow, how happy can a place be if 1/10 kids leaves or gets the boot - I don’t want my kid in an environment like that. You’d have all the data and what constitutes “top” might be suddenly different.</p>
<p>Then why do you suppose attrition stats made available on these lists? They seem to be shared by schools when asked…</p>
<p>Before everyone gets further bent out of shape, consider the source of the ranking. It’s a company named “Top Test Prep”. Read the description of the schools on the list; the emphasis is on test scores. It’s an info-mercial.</p>
<p>Breathe calmly now…</p>
<p>I’m chill…really. But I have always liked the idea of schools publishing attrition stats, so let me flog the issue a moment longer. Booklady, schools don’t want to discuss attrition because it opens up a line of conversation that questions community health and might steer would be applicants elsewhere. Some schools might be consciously choosing a more Darwinian approach and would be perfectly ok with lots of attrition. Or there will be the occasional year when a lot of kids might get expelled and the school thinks that a rare occurrence shouldn’t color a parent’s opinion (although if the rare occurrence was 20 kids admitted to Harvard it would be on the school’s web site in about three seconds.) That’s why I believe attrition should be broken down by voluntary withdrawal and expulsion and published every year. It would be easy to get a sense of normal that way. And it would a great lens into whether the school community is the happy place of brochures or something else. Wouldn’t you want to know?</p>
<p>No I understand I why <em>schools</em> wouldn’t want to talk about attrition (although at the few schools we looked at this question was asked and answered without much hedging, so I guess I am not seeing it as the elephant in the room?)</p>
<p>My question was why would a third-party list would not include them in criteria. </p>
<p>And to the same degree - I agree that a very low attrition rate seems like it would be a great marketing tool for schools. You would think those school <em>would</em> offer it. </p>
<p>Also, to GMT: I agree with Parlabane. I don’t think we were debating merits/intentions of this list, more people’s reactions to it (and other like it). </p>
<p>One question: why is everyone in a flurry about a ranking from a questionable source? The Lawrentian wants to promote his/her school - this ranking supports this. So what? (Okay, two questions) There are better things to do than argue over an arbitrary ranking. I am going to vacuum out my car. </p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with this list ( they’re all great schools and offer something for everyone). It’s fun ( like the ranking games over on the Café threads ) as long as students and families looking at BS for the first time don’t take it too seriously- or think these schools are the only schools worth applying to. They’re not. But I must say- the breathless college matriculation blurbs are a hoot! Like these schools are the only schools ( Top 15 !) that send kids to Ivy ( or other wonderful colleges) . Let’s not get carried away… LOL.</p>
<p>And I think it’s great that OP has tremendous school spirit and wanted to give his (or her) school a shout out. Woot! </p>
<p>I am comparing this to the annual rite of USNWR. The top schools at each educational level will admit the limitations of these lists and insist that the consuming public dig deeper about their institution. But they won’t give up on the lists either. They will continue to support the questionable practices (like hyper-marketing for ever-increasing applications and ever-declining admit rates) that are rewarded by the lists in order to preserve their prestigious positions. Are any of them willing to buck the system and risk seeing their ranking drop? Aren’t the others (say, Chicago) trying to claw their way up, if anything? So, for these top schools, the “product” is very much about perception, the kind that self-perpetuates ever higher consumer demand. (To yield the “best possible” class from strongest pool, naturally.)</p>
<p>Do you, the consumer, chase the illusion and apply to this 8% admit school? Do you “game” yourself and the system because (you think) you are the very best and only the very best is for you? </p>
<p>Or will you be a more rational consumer? Reason dictates that the “best” school for you may very well be “ranked” #10-#100. Or “lower”. </p>
<p>No rant against A&E or HYPSM. I just think that the tasks of furnishing your mind, growing your character and enlarging your soul – well, they aren’t bought, and they’re just as possible down the list as at the top. </p>
<p>I’m also fine with these lists, as long as people realize that the difference between #4 and #10 is truly negligible. </p>