Are there "Prep-Ivys"? If so, what are they?

Prep School Admissions
1

I go to a public Highschool that is slightly above average and is relatively good compared to its surroundings. After speaking with an admissions officer at Columbia, he said that they don’t admit kids from our school because it wasn’t as good as the private schools next to ours. He continued to say more than 60% of they freshman class comes from a prepschool.

I want to know whether there are certain prep-school ivys? I am going to apply regardless, but I want to know I have a fair shot.

Thanks.

2

Someone in the admissions office actually told you that? That’s honestly shocking and unprofessional if true. I’m not sure what you mean by “Prep-Ivys,” but all the elite private schools (Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s etc.) along with the selective public schools (Bronx Sci, Stuyvesant, Hunter etc.) are feeder schools to the Ivies.

Because they’re already selective, their class tends to be academically strong as a whole and very involved in ECs/sports–so, the perfect fit for the Ivies.

That is not to say an equally impressive student from a public school can’t be admitted. Case in point, I went to an practically unknown high school and so did many of my college classmates.

3

I seriously doubt is the Columbia adcom said that.

4

Some schools serve as “feeder” schools to the ivies but there is no direct pipeline – as @aoeuidhtns correctly notes, there are a handful of private and public schools whose graduates are, in a sense, “pre-vetted.” Adcoms know the caliber of students that attend those schools and probably have good relationships with the college counselors. I seriously doubt that an Adcom would make a blanket statement about not accepting students from a school that did not figure among public and private “feeder”- type schools.

5

That’s unlikely. I don’t see any numbers for Columbia, but at other Ivies, the majority of undergraduates come from public high schools. For example:

Obviously this means that Yale and Harvard do have sizable numbers of private high school students, at 42 and 37 percent. But note that “private high school” doesn’t necessarily mean a traditional elite “prep school”. That figure will also include many parochial schools, or other local high schools that have a religious orientation.

6

Princeton provides a full breakdown. As at Harvard and Yale, the majority of freshmen (about 60%) come from public high schools. You can see that there are significant prep school and religious school components, but the public school students clearly outnumber them.

60.5 % public
28.2 % “independent day”/“independent boarding” (these would be the prep schools)
9.9 % religious
0.5 % other (home school, military)

https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics

7

More Ivy data showing majority enrollment from public high schools:

Cornell: 65.1% public
https://admissions.cornell.edu/sites/admissions.cornell.edu/files/Class%20Profile%202019%20.pdf

Dartmouth: 57% public
https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/facts-advice/facts/class-profile

Brown: 56% public
https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/sites/brown.edu.admission.undergraduate/files/uploads/Counselor%20Newsletter%202015%20(1).pdf

8

Harvard: 63.5% public (including charters)
http://features.thecrimson.com/2017/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

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That also doesn’t include homeschools. Also, a decent percent of the populations come from overseas, where public/private mean different things.

10

@abmp22 - I think you got punk’d.

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Harvard: “Less than 1 percent of surveyed students said that they had been homeschooled.”
Cornell: “Other (charter, home-schooled, etc.)14.7%”

Well, we can quibble if 10-12% constitutes decent, but whatever percentage it is, I doubt it moves the needle here.

One should assume that admissions officers at any college, but certainly at this tier, knows the difference between public school and private school, even if “public school” has a different connotation in the UK, as an example.

12

Andover and Exeter literally feed into ivies. Costs as much as/more than some colleges if boarding. If you live in the area, then cheaper. I’m a senior now, but I wish I would’ve gone to boarding school looking back.

There is a school in my city that sends around 25 kids to Harvard, 25 kids to MIT, 25 kids to Yale, 25 kids to Stanford, etc. over the span of 3 years.

Also, the AO said that? Wow…I mean…at least he was honest.

It’s annoying my school is just as challenging/good as the aforementioned school, but ivies barely except anyone from my school each year.

Also, please don’t get stuck in the mentality that only ivies will allow you to succeed big. There are so many schools that are equal. There are state schools with certain programs that are essentially on par with ivies.

Example for business:
UPenn (ivy): Wharton = #1 (I think this is still accurate, but not 100% sure)
University of Texas (State School) McCombs = # 5 (Once, again, not 100%, but pretty sure)

Ok…so…McCombs at UT is still very hard to get into, externally as well as internally (even more so I believe)

I was stuck in the “I have to go to an ivy” mind frame and finally broke out of it when I realized how unrealistic actually getting in is. It’s a crapshoot, so shoot for the stars, but remember to find other reaches/matches that you would happy going to and of course safeties (I would emphasize with caps but a certain someone on thread thinks it’s yelling.

And remember, there’s always grad school/med school/law school!

13

I live in Southern CA and I was very surprised when I found out that this one family here sent two of their kids to a very well known feeder school to Ivy colleges in Connecticut or MA which costs just as much as a private college, when public schools here are supposed to be decent and there are cheaper private schools around here. Can’t argue with the results since both kids got into HYP colleges. I guess I was taken aback somewhat because I wouldn’t do that even if I was super rich because I would want to see my kid on daily basis at this age, go out to eat or watch a movie together or give him a hug before our kid goes to bed each night.

14

Isn’t it more that if they want you then they want you, regardless of the high school attended? I could see how an elite boarding school, for example, would provide an outstanding education, but unless you’re a standout among the extraordinary students there, I could also see how that would potentially backfire and leave a regular, hard-working student left out of some of the top schools since they were prone to accepting their better producing classmates. On the other hand, I also see how that could make a brilliant stand-out shine above all others even more. I mean, if the student is in an ultra-competitive, rigorous environment and makes her way to the top, then I’d think the sky could be the limit as far as school choices. So, I guess what I’m saying is that these schools are great for the most brilliant, but could leave your regular smart kid left out when acceptance time rolls around. Is this true?

15

here is a list (from 2007, so admittedly a bit dated) https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-COLLEGE0711-sort.html of the top feeder schools in the country. While many of them are privates, several publics came in higher on the list than many privates with national reputations.

16

@tdy123 Interesting to see Korean Minjok (meaning “people of one nation”) high school is the top foreign school on that list. Had several clients when working in Korea who lived in Seoul but who sent their kids to this boarding school several hours away. They probably have one of the highest SAT average test scores in the world. I have no idea how they could teach reading comprehension skills that well to non English kids. Anyway, I do know they attract smart kids all over Korea. IMO any kid in Korea smart enough to get into top 5 colleges in Korea is smart enough to get into top 10 colleges (I actually would say top 5) in US, and they probably end up doing pretty well as long as their English level is high. I don’t know how they had time to build up their activities in their limited time. I bet those who got accepted at top US colleges were not even the smartest kids, as many smartest kids chose Seoul National, KAIST, Yeonsei, Ehwa etc. instead of top US colleges.

17

UPenn is an Ivy.

I have read that given a choice between a kid from a prep school and an equally qualified kid from an underrepresented public, Harvard would choose the latter based on the idea they will benefit more from the opportunity because the private school kid was already well-educated. I have also read that professors sometimes prefer the kids who are new to stimulating education versus their more “jaded” prep school counterparts. Sorry cannot cite either because these were from a few years ago.

In my experience, kids from publics sometimes do just as well or better than the kids at private schools in terms of admissions.

Remember socioeconomic diversity is important to top schools.

That said, no one should be fixated on any highly selective schools and everyone should try to find schools that fit them well, not try to fit the schools.

18

@Corbett The public vs private high school breakdown is misleading. Overwhelming majority of the public admits are from top publics like Scarsdale, Stuyvesant, TJHSST, New Trier, Montgomery County. Elite public magnets and high schools in exclusive top one-percenter suburbs are on par with private prep schools.

19

@midwestsahm and others - as a graduate of Yale myself (1982) and with a graduating senior this year (2018) I beg to differ slightly with your premise. Since I know plenty of graduates and current students at Yale, I can say that the students from public schools come from a wide variety of schools. I have met kids from small high schools in the middle of farming country who had to milk cows before going to school each day, kids from urban high schools in high crime areas that excelled despite the craziness going on around them, and kids from just regular high schools that happen to excel at one thing or another (debate, athletics, music, art, coding, STEM). These are the kids the top schools want. Sure there are prep school kids and kids from top performing publics, but they are not the majority. Each year there are kids from schools and communities that have never sent anyone to an Ivy before.

I was that urban public school kid. No one from my high school has gotten into Yale since I did in 1978 despite my recruiting efforts. My kid is that private school kid that came from a “feeder” school. It is indeed a feeder because it is well known to the Ivies, but more importantly, it is full of legacy kids. So yeah, she’s that kid. But her five other suitemates freshman year were kids from farm country, an urban high school and other regular type public high schools. So she was outnumbered. They’re all doing fine and graduating on time so it shows that these schools know how to pluck the right kids out of whatever high school they may be attending.

20

A perspective from California - The best public high schools are in wealthy neighborhoods usually in the Bay Area, and to a lesser extent in LA/SD. I went to one of the famous public high schools - Mission San Jose. We feed a lot into UC Berkeley and UCLA. Many are also going to Carnegie Mellon and other STEM schools.

Public magnets - Whitney, Lowell
Public open enrollment - Mission San Jose, Gunn, Palo Alto, Saratoga, Monta Vista, Torrey Pines

There are also boarding schools in the Bay Area and LA - Harvard Westlake, SF University, Menlo, Castilleja, Harker. They send a lot of kids to Stanford, Claremont Colleges, and east coast privates.