No, I don’t think everybody including me bows to the ivy altar, but a lot (yes, I think I’m right using this term haha), here on CC are asking questions chasing the Ivy admission. And a lot (yes, right term again) who seek elite BS admission are.
yeh…the old transparency…as I stated I think Garamond hit the head on why now, elite bs’s are moving away from transparency on college matriculation ie. less “favorable” results.
It is important for anyone considering BS or any elite high school to understand that these schools do not disclose what % of students are accepted into Ivies that are athletes, URM or legacies. This would certainly illuminate the picture. Quite similarly to the issues raised in this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/10/07/what-vanderbilt-northwestern-and-other-elite-colleges-dont-say-about-acceptance-rates/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.fec84b55a4ef
Boarding schools are selling stellar high school educations, not college results. Anyone who thinks they are buying college results is misinformed and needs to be disabused of that thinking. Perhaps that’s why many boarding schools are not publishing quantifiable data. As we’ve seen here, when they do, many people will crunch numbers to draw conclusions that can’t be drawn. It’s just possible that some boarding schools are trying to disable that useless game. Focus on getting a stellar high school education and college will take care of itself. I’ve looked at Choate’s matriculation lists presented in several ways over the years, and have yet to see a clinker in the bunch. As @doschicos correctly pointed out, you have no idea what is behind any of those college choices. I prefer to believe that each choice was a great choice for each of those students.
You may have already taken this step OP, but imagine you’re meeting your daughter at the end of four years. Describe that woman: how does she feel about herself? What does she care about? How does she interact with others? How does she handle success and failure? Does she try new things? Is she happy? etc Maybe we’re outliers, but aside from knowing that Thacher sent some % of its kids to marquis universities/colleges, we just didn’t care. Our boarding school search was based on the unscientific “who” principle - WHO our child would become at the end of four years. We wanted an academically strong, well-rounded, happy, resilient, well-adjusted son who would thrive in most any situation he found himself, inside or out of the classroom. Whether he got into Penn, Univ of Maine, MIT, Michigan, Yale etc…no where near as important to us as getting the WHO right. The four boarding school years are more important than college in the way your child gets permanently wired. You chose powerhouse, marquis schools to visit. Take plenty of time at each stop to give you and your daughter the chance to develop a sense of fit - not just a quick tour and head home. It’s an imperfect process. I would also urge you to include some hidden gems. Don’t make the rookie, “high achiever” mistake that so many parents and kids do on this site and limit yourself to “top” ten schools.
…re post above: “we just didn’t care” about boarding school as a platform primarily to achieve a particular college outcome.
Thanks for your perspective, @ThacherParent …It is great advice. We are definitely focused on the boarding school experience itself and not as the means to achieve a specific college end. We picked the school our daughter is in currently because of the types of kids we had met there when we toured years ago - we thought that if our daughter came out of this school anything like the kids we met there, we would be thrilled. We will make sure to let our daughter get a true feel for these boarding schools when we tour. We do have some others we are considering because of the great environment they create for learning.
Spot on, @ThacherParent …
Personally, I prefer the term “highly-regarded.” Elite, while often used in the media, is a term I find more appropriate to a school like Le Rosey. But I’m not going to split hairs; instead, I will at least agree, yes, Choate is a highly-regarded school.
Choate is for sure one of the (small number of) elite American boarding schools. It is also highly-regarded. Many folks get nervous when this kind of talk bubbles up again, but that’s racing. Regarding the college stuff, certainly being graduated from Choate and attending MIT or Williams looks way different than from Choate to Elon, but as stated previously, there could be lots of interesting reasons, plus the hard truth that Williams and MIT can’t–and purposely will not if only to annoy the people who post here–take all the qualified applicants from Choate or any other school.
Per a previous thread, we learned that the correct term is “ultra-fancy:”
http://nypost.com/2016/03/13/he-went-from-outsider-to-cocaine-kingpin-at-this-elite-prep-school/
(see picture caption in link above)
as in, “After graduating from the ultra-fancy Choate Rosemary Hall, my kid joined the army.”
Certainly to users on this site and to parents who want to brag to the neighbors. The neighbors meanwhile never heard of Elon and think MIT is in the Ivy League. 8-| Regardless, calling (or implying) that Elon is “mediocre” warrants a trip behind the woodshed, IMO.
We have a winner. 
If Ivanka ended up there, it has to be “elite.”–not to mention a certain senator and President from Massachusetts.
Leaving Ivanka aside, I think we can (please. pretty pretty please) agree that the composition of the student body at Choate (and Andover/Exeter and for that matter Harvard/Yale, etc) in JFK’s time, or even GWB’s time, is a lot different than it is today, which is why I dislike the term “elite” as applied to these schools today. For me, “elite” has a certain negative connotation. But to each his own.
Definitely, the composition is very different, and more diverse for the better. For me, elite means to be top academically
When JFK attended Choate he was just a bootlegger’s son.
He had 2 biological parents, like the rest of us. So on the other side, he was also Honey Fitz’ grandson.
Maybe we should leave the Presidents outta this. Because if not, we might have to talk about the one from Andover who said even C students can become President.
Just gets back to my earlier point that the composition of the schools is different now than it was in 1931 or 1938 or 1960 or 1975. I cannot that anyone will argue that JFK (Sr or Jr) or Bush (41 or 43) was admitted based upon academic credentials.
^ It’s just a leap of faith that there aren’t similar admits today at the “elite” schools. That is, students who are admitted on the basis of family connections, rather than ability.
The admissions process is very opaque. There are obviously numerous “buckets” for admits today that are based on immutable characteristics that one is born with, and, again, it is just a leap of faith that within each of these buckets the school in question is conducting a judging process that people would generally consider “fair” if the true criteria were disclosed.
I strongly suspect that not as much has changed over the years as people would like to believe, although of course the criteria are different today. To admit fixed proportions of kids based on skin color, sex, perceived virtue signalling, athletics, legacy, ability to pay, family connections, etc. - which quite obviously is what is happening - doesn’t strike me as that much more enlightened than what was obviously the case 50 years ago. YMMV, but I am not a big believer in “diversity for diversity’s sake,” and I doubt the student bodies at these places are any more capable as a whole than they were 50 years ago.
We’ll agree to disagree then @SatchelSF It is highly unlikely today that a C student (with grade inflation, I’ll even say a B student) is getting into Andover or Choate regardless of who the parents are.
No change there.