A new (and larger) Chetty study on elite college admissions is released today

Parents Forum
933

The college counselors at the elite private high schools are also likely to have more of an idea which “reach for everyone” colleges are more likely than others to see a given student as a fit, and encourage the student to apply there. In contrast, the high achieving students at the public high school may all apply to the same HYPSM and overlook other “reach for everyone” colleges that may see them as better fits and admit them.

The college counselors at the elite private high school also probably know which teachers the student should ask for recommendations for applying to a given set of colleges, while public school students often face competitive recommendation rationing by overloaded teachers and have no idea which teachers are better recommendation writers.

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934

The two current college counselors at the private school I attended are former admissions officers - one from an Ivy and the other from an elite LAC. I see kids I know from the private school - the kids have good grades, good test scores, “nice” but not spectacular ECs - get into Ivys and elite schools. “Equivalent” kids from the area public schools do not get into the same colleges, and some of the public school kids with better grades, scores and ECs don’t get in either.

These college counselors know the game, and they have buddies still in admissions. Those connections make a difference.

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935

I realize the quoted text appears in the paper, but it is a referring to an analysis with a variety of controls, including for test scores, athletes, and legacies. The author writes,

“The resulting high school fixed effects can be interpreted as the difference in Ivy-Plus admissions rates across high schools for students with comparable test scores and demographics.”

After you control for test scores, athletes, legacies, and demographics; non-academic ratings still has a notable influence beyond these factors, but influence from academic ratings does not. They found academic ratings are well correlated with the referenced test scores control, but they did not find that private school kids had similar average test scores to public school kids. Instead some things they did find include:

  • After controlling for test scores, gender, race, legacy, and athletic status; non-religious private HS applicants had a higher rate of admission than average. Advantaged public HS applicants had a lower rate of admission than average. Other types of HSs fell near the average .

  • Students attending private non-religious high schools averaged higher non-academic ratings than average, after controlling for test score qunitic – 31% of non-religious private HS kids received a high non-academic rating compared to the overall average of 25%.

  • Among applicants who did not have top 2% income, there was very little difference in admit rate with and without controls for non-academic rating, compared to baseline controls for scores, academic rating, and legacy/athlete. Similarly there is little difference with and without controls for HS type for applicants not in top 2% income.

  • Among applicants in top 2% income, non-academic rating controls do appear to have a notable correlation with admission, after baseline controls. The largest difference in admit rate by non-academic rating controls occurs for applicants from top 0.1% income. Similarly there were substantial differences in admit rate with and without controls for HS type among top 1% income families, and the largest difference occurs for top 0.1% income families.

  • Controlling for test scores, academic ratings, non-academic ratings, legacy, athlete, application rate, and yield explains the vast majority of the top 1% and top 0.1% overrepresentation.

This suggests some of the reasons why private high school kids are overrepresented include:

  • Average higher test scores and things well correlated with test scores, including academic ratings
  • Average higher non-academic ratings
  • Average higher rate of legacy and athlete
  • Average higher rate of wealthy families (top 1% or top 2% income)
  • Average higher application rate
  • Average higher yield
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936

Yes, it is an incredibly well-organized effort to try to get every student a great outcome. The harder edges can involve strongly discouraging some students from applying to some colleges where the high school could not give them the support they would need to have any sort of real chance. But that is always coupled with lots of help finding alternatives that would be great opportunities for that student.

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937

Where does that suggestion come from? Yes, the study control for test scores, but nowhere did it suggest that students from non-religious private high schools had “higher average test scores”, or “higher academic ratings”, that I recall.

Some of your other suggestions don’t make sense either. Private high schools tend to limit the number of applications of their students, so they don’t have a “higher application rate” to Ivy+ schools. And they don’t necessarily have a “higher yield” than “advantaged” public high schools like Scarsdale HS.

938

You are right, but the publics have a ton of these kids. As I’ve written elsewhere, the top 80 kids at our local public have higher average academics than the 80 students of the graduating class of the expensive private. And so do the top 80 kids at the public district adjoining ours to the North, and so do the top 80 kids at the public district adjoining ours to the East.

Take away the hooks and the “personality” scores, and suddenly the kids from the expensive private would have to compete with a HUGE pool of higher-on-academics kids.

939

I obviously can’t address your area, but in our area there is going to be a real problem norming grades.

At a high level of generality, the top-rated publics in our area have mostly gotten into the model of offering a lot of APs as their top-level honors/advanced classes in most subjects. Our private HS is instead offering very few APs, but argues its top-level honors/advanced courses are more rigorous and advanced than APs.

OK, so how to norm this? Class rank doesn’t really make sense because we are a selective HS to begin with. College AOs are given the usual general school report and then individualized counselor reports, but that doesn’t really tell you exactly how to compare to area public high schools.

What I do know is basically every selectivity class of college goes way deeper into our class in terms of percentiles than at the top area publics. But how much of that is because they evaluate our most challenging courses as more challenging? That is very hard to say.

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940

The study mentions the greater affluence of kids attending private HS many times, with statements such as, “children from the top 1% are much more likely to attend private high schools” and “private high schools that have affluent student bodies”. The study also mentions a much higher rate of high test scores among affluent students, particularly top 1%. This suggests a higher rate of high test scores among the “affluent” students attending private HSs than the less affluent students on average students attending public HSs. The study also implies that academic rating is well correlated with score.

While this “suggestion” is based on inferences, I wouldn’t expect private HS kids averaging higher scores than public HS kids to be a controversial clam. For example, back when the CB reported mean SAT scores by school type, their averages were as follows. The study suggests the differences would be much larger, if looking at portion with 1400+ scores or 1500+ scores since the study indicates portion with top few percentile score shows a far stronger correlation with income than mean scores.

Private, Independent – Mean Score = 1654 (out of 2400)
Private, Religious – Mean Score = 1594 (out of 2400)
Public HS – Mean Score = 1453 (out of 2400)

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941

Again, this study controls for test scores. We’re talking about relatively affluent families here (whether they’re in public or private schools). The students in private schools were probably more affluent than their public school counterparts, but test scores don’t scale with the level of affluence. If you take any private school in Westchester county, NY, their top students wouldn’t average higher test scores than those from Scarsdale HS.

942

How about test scores? Last year our local public produced dozens of NMFs, ~20 ACT=36 and 2 SAT=1600.

Or how about IB scores? IB offers a standardized way to compare even internationally. Our school produces about 50 kids with a full IB diploma.

Or how about AP after all? Certainly 5s across multiple tests ought to count for something?

But first they need to be willing to eliminate hooks and that pesky “personality” rating. That, and the belief that being captain of the STEM or Mandarin club is less indicative of leadership than being captain of the soccer team.

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943

By the way, some concrete illustrations may help illustrate the problem.

At our HS, it is fairly “normal” for the top academic students to take AP Calc BC as juniors. And in fact, the kids will say, and the Calc teachers will agree, that when they get around to reviewing for the BC exam, that is the “easy” part of our AP Calc BC course, because most of it was more challenging than the test required. Then as seniors, they will take post-BC elective courses like multi-variable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations.

Not all the good students will do that in their four years, but nor is it just the odd math specialist. Indeed, the actual math specialists–the kinds of kids who are in the running for what almost seems like a dedicated MIT slot sometimes–will take AP Calc BC as sophomores, and then will likely do either two years of post-BC electives or will take some higher-level university courses.

OK, so tests like the ACT or SAT are testing math knowledge and skills that are years behind what these kids are doing as juniors and seniors. Obviously if, say, you get a 5 on your AP Calc BC exam, that gets you to a certain level. But our HS will argue that just our “normal” outstanding students are going to go significantly past BC. And then our actual top math students will go even further past that.

Comparing notes with my colleagues who use the top local publics, AP Calc BC as a senior is really the normal outstanding student outcome. They may have partnerships with local universities to go beyond BC in select cases, but that isn’t the in-school senior year norm for outstanding students like it is at our HS. And it is extremely unusual for people to do BC as a sophomore and then do two years of advanced math beyond that, whereas we expect at least a few students in each class to do that.

So how is a college admissions officer supposed to compare this? I know they say they will not punish you for doing whatever is available at your HS. And yet, if someone has gotten a 5 on their AP BC exam as a junior AND is then getting As in post-BC electives as a senior, how do you compare that with a student who is only taking BC as a senior?

Particularly if that kid is applying as like a French Literature major (or whatever), and just happens to toss in those Math credentials too . . . .

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944

Depends on the test.

I just covered this in another post, but our “normal” outstanding students go a year beyond Calc BC. The SAT and ACT are years back, and the AP is also at least a year back. So those tests are not really going to be all that helpful for this particular task.

I think IB HLs are a much better testing scheme than APs, and I think most people would agree. However, usually the “full diploma” in IB means only 3 HLs. Our top students are often doing more than 3 subjects we would argue are at or beyond the IB HL level.

So personally, I think the real issue is whether a leadership role truly involves demonstration of the social skills necessary to be a high level team leader. Humans are social animals, successfully managing team dynamics requires social skills, and social skills are like any other form of skill in that some people are naturals, but most people require years of dedicated practice to develop their social skills to a truly high level.

So I don’t think working up to leading an important academic-related club is necessarily less indicative of high level social skill development than working up to captaining a varsity sports team. And in fact, Harvard and its peers frequently mention things like being debate team captains and such.

But I think a reasonable question in all cases is whether getting that position required a high level of social skills. Including usually, although not always, years of dedicated practice to develop those skills. I know some people don’t like to hear this, but if you found a club in order to give yourself a President title, that doesn’t really do much on its own to show you have done the years of work necessary to develop such social skills.

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945

Our private school and the other main top one nearby could be described in the same way. However, the top 25% of our HS has test scores that correlate to the top 5-10% of the local public schools. The AP pass rate is much much higher at the private schools compared to the suburban “best” publics. The most difficult classes are available to a much higher percent of the grade, and often a year or two earlier. So the selective colleges going deeper into the class makes sense. The much larger unhooked percent going to ivy-plus makes sense. Where it doesn’t make sense is the test-in public magnet: the top 50% of kids have scores on par with the top 25% of the privates, the AP pass rate is even higher, yet the state flagships do not admit as deeply into the class and the T10 unhooked matriculation is the same % as the top private.

It would be very interesting to be a fly on the wall in the admissions offices and hear how the decisions are made among kids from the same region yet different schools.

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946

Yeah, I don’t know exactly how everything lines up. But according to one source, our HS has a 32 average ACT. The top-ranked local publics have a 29-30.

Roughly speaking, this means the top half of the top publics is in like the top 10% of test-takers, which is good. But the top half of our class is in the top 5% of test-takers.

Again, different areas could be different. But in our area, I am deeply skeptical shifting more weight to standardized tests would do much to stop the most selective colleges from going deeper into our private HS classes. Particularly once we had adjusted to that system.

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947

The author splits public schools in to 2 groups. One group is “disadvantaged.”, which the author simplifies as “typically lower-income.” The other group is “advantaged”, which the author simplifies as “the types of schools most Ivy-Plus applicants from the middle class or upper middle class attend.” Neither group is typically affluent, which is the author’s primary point . The author claims that wealthy kids have an advantage because they often attend instead attend different, private schools.

Test scores do scale with affluence in the study. For example, the portion receiving 1500+ scores by income level, as listed in the study, is below. There is no ceiling at any income threshold. Instead the higher the income, the greater chance of 1500+ score, up to top 0.1% income.

Top 0.1% income – 6.8% get 1500+ score
99th percentile income – 4.8% get 1500+ score
98th percentile income – 3.9% get 1500+ score
97th percentile income – 3.4% get 1500+ score
96th percentile income – 2.8% get 1500+ score
95th percentile income – 2.5% get 1500+ score
90-95th percentile – 1.7% get 1500+ score
80-90th percentile – 0.8% get 1500+ score
70-80th percentile – 0.4% get 1500+ score
…
0 -20th percentile – 0.0% get 1500+ score

The first one I looked up was Rye Country Day School. Average ACT is listed as 33 at Rye Country vs 30 at Scarsdale. I don’t know about the specific distribution of their top students, but there is a notable difference in the average students.

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948

My kids attended a nationally-ranked public HS choke-full with ambitious students, the majority of which came from a background of immigrant, highly educated, and super ambitious parents.

It is very difficult to be a stand-out in such an environment in a class of 500 kids and get one of the handful leadership positions, such as student body president or editor in chief of the student newspaper. My daughter was EIC of the school newspaper which had a staff of 60
and won multiple national and regional awards (as did my daughter personally for creative writing and journalism). She was, and still is, naturally talented in writing but also an extremely
motivated and dedicated kid. She got into multiple other ivies and Stanford (applied only to Y from the HYP but did not get in). I suspect that it is much easier in a private HS school class of 80, with very involved counseling since grade 9 that can guide the kids according to their talents, to become a “leader” of some sort.

We were also quite involved as parents. You have to be in a large public HS where there is virtually no advising and half of the teachers are new, and/or not good at teaching. Maybe in a private HS you can sit back but not in a large competitive HS.

This does not mean pushing your kid into activities that they do not enjoy and are not gifted for. This means, if the child is willing and talented, to nurture, facilitate, enable the child to be the best version of themselves. I found out about opportunities to send her stories to national
competitions (from CC actually) where she won national awards, places she got published, summer camps that she enjoyed immensely and made her a better writer and a more aware person. It was not about getting placed in an advance sequence in math, though she did that too. And in 9th grade, when the geometry teacher was pregnant and mostly absent, my husband got into the trenches, read the textbook, and helped with every concept that
the teacher failed to explain. She did not need help in math afterwards when she got the good teacher. She was lucky as half of the students did not get the good math teacher. It’s a lottery in a public HS and I held my breath every year when class assignments came out.

All we did was not about getting into an elite school but more about raising a confident kid. But she would not have done as well in admission as she did, had she not have this resume. The average excellent and nice kids from our HS do not even get into UCs

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949

My son was one of a couple of students that took Calc BC as a sophomore. He has a gift in problem solving and was doing well in some math olympiad problems (it was math Kangaroo, I think) which his 4th grade teacher gave in class. However, the regular math programming was extremely confusing even for us parents. The way they teach grade-level math in our HS and even in California is to teach the simplest concepts in such complicated ways that everybody is confused. I signed him for Russian math out of school and it was life-changing. In three years going once per week for 2 hrs, he got all the concepts and tested out of two grades in middle school. I could only wish that he had such good instruction in the public (again, nationally ranked) HS where he had math every day.

However, there is no way that you get into MIT from our school only because you skipped two levels in math.

I guess, I am trying to make two points in response to various posts above: a) that it is extremely difficult to get to a HYP as an average excellent kid from a public HS with excellent but not earth-shattering academics, ECs and personality ratings (all three of them), and without hooks; and b) people that say that they did not have to get involved in their kid activities and schooling, and the kid did very well on their own and got into an elite school, have usually sent their kids to private schools.

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950

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get accurate information about why a particular private HS has a good number of matriculations to selective colleges. For example, did they have lots of applications? A selective admission process that pre-screens for kids that are likely to be admitted? Lots of hooked kids? Or was it something special about the school itself? Just looking at the total number of matriculations doesn’t a particular student much about his/her chances and how the HS may effect those chances.

One private HS that does better than most is Harvard Westlake. They provide a booklet that shows admit rate by GPA/rank, split between ALDC (not clear if URM is included) hooked kids and unhooked kids. For example, among class of 2017-19, the Harvard admit rate by GPA is below. The hooked admit rate is tremendously higher than unhooked with similar GPA.

Hooked HW Applicants to Harvard (2017-2019) – 44% Admitted
Above 4.3 GPA – 10/13 Admitted
4.1 to 4.3 GPA – 4/10 Admitted
3.9 to 4.1 GPA – 6/12 Admitted
Under 3.9 GPA – 0/10 Admitted

Unhooked HW Applicants to Harvard (2017-2019) – 8% Admitted
Above 4.3 GPA – 6/62 Admitted
4.1 to 4.3 GPA – 2/20 Admitted
3.9 to 4.1 GPA – 0/7 Admitted
Under 3.9 GPA – 0/10 Admitted

Some colleges show a much more stark difference between hooked and unhooked than Harvard, such as the Pomona example below:

Hooked HW Applicants to Pomona (2017-2019) – 47% Admitted
Above 4.3 GPA – 1/3 Admitted
4.1 to 4.3 GPA – 2/4 Admitted
3.9 to 4.1 GPA – 3/4 Admitted
Under 3.9 GPA – 1/4 Admitted

Unhooked HW Applicants to Pomona (2017-2019) – 0% Admitted
Above 4.3 GPA – 0/11 Admitted
4.1 to 4.3 GPA – 0/4 Admitted
3.9 to 4.1 GPA – 0/2 Admitted
Under 3.9 GPA – 0/6 Admitted

Some Ivy+ colleges show very different patterns from others. Chicago is a particularly unique outlier at HW. Admit rate seems to have little correlation to both the listed GPA ranges and hooked status. I expect Chicago is emphasizing a different criteria in their admission decisions. For example, this pattern might occur if Chicago was focusing on a combination of high test score + applying binding ED/ED2.

Hooked HW Applicants to Chicago (2017-2019) – 41% Admitted
Above 4.3 GPA – 2/3 Admitted
4.1 to 4.3 GPA – 2/5 Admitted
3.9 to 4.1 GPA – 1/3 Admitted
Under 3.9 GPA – 2/6 Admitted

Unhooked HW Applicants to Chicago (2017-2019) – 36% Admitted
Above 4.3 GPA – 13/35 Admitted
4.1 to 4.3 GPA – 12/25 Admitted
3.9 to 4.1 GPA – 3/16 Admitted
Under 3.9 GPA – 3/10 Admitted

951

That’s really interesting. Although we don’t have nearly those volumes, in part that feels familiar to me in that again it is relatively hard (not impossible) for our outstanding but unhooked kids to get into a Harvard, but then a lot of them will find their Chicago. Which of course might not be Harvard and Chicago.

The Pomona thing is a little more strange to me. It is definitely the case that a lot of our LAC kids are either recruited athletes or legacies, but it is also pretty common that the aforementioned kid who can’t quite get admitted to their “Harvard” will have their “Chicago” be, say, Amherst or Williams. And it isn’t uncommon for one of our non-recruited-athlete kids to be legacy at one very selective LAC, but also get into one or more others, and choose one of the non-legacy LACs.

So it was a bit odd to me to see the unhooked Harvard-Westlake kids get blanked by Pomona. But of course I don’t really know how LACs in general figure into their school’s culture/strategy. Here there is usually a pretty decent-sized group of kids with either a mostly LAC application list, or sort of a split LAC and smaller research university list. So in addition to Amherst and Williams, we are sending a lot of kids to other Eastern LACs, but also Midwestern ones, sometimes Californian ones, Colorado College is popular . . . .

And for that matter, I wonder if I could look with comprehensive data like this, would I find one or more LACs where all our kids in recent years had been hooked? Probably! Like we send a good number of recruited athletes to NESCAC colleges, and it would not surprise if that was true for some of them.

952

You misunderstood or misinterpreted what I was saying.

The students in question all have high test scores. What I meant by “test scores don’t scale with the level of affluence” was that a student from a wealthier family doesn’t have a higher test score on average than one from a less wealthy family among this group of students. What you’re saying (that greater proportion of students weathier families have high test scores) is something different, which I don’t disagree with, but it isn’t the point I was making.

Again, the study is about the top students from these schools who applied to (and got into) Ivy+ colleges. All public schools (other than magnet schools), including Scarsdale HS, are non-selective, so they all have students that would bring down the averages (i.e. averages aren’t good comparisons). A better measure would be to take a look at the students who were NMSF. Scarsdale HS is about 1.5x the size of Rye County Day School and it had about 1.5x as many NMSF, but it likely sent far fewer students to Ivy+ colleges (after accounting for hooked students), if the new Chetty study is to be believed.

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