Boarding Schools Placing Most Students at HYPS Annually

Prep School Admissions
1

<p>Are there any boarding schools that place a larger number of students annually at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale? I don't think so, but if you know of any please let me know. I'll post the data below (next to the number in parenthesis are the years concerned).</p>

<ol>
<li> Andover (58) 2009</li>
<li> Exeter (41) 2006-2008</li>
<li> Deerfield (25) 2009</li>
<li> Lawrenceville (21) 2008</li>
<li> Milton (20) 2008</li>
<li> Choate (19) 2009</li>
<li> St. Paul’s (17) 2009</li>
<li> Hotchkiss (15) 2006-2009</li>
<li> Groton (13) 2004-2008</li>
</ol>

<p>Some schools hide their statistics, present it in selective ways while omitting some information, or make them more difficult to find, so if you find that another school should make this list and you have data that I don't have, please provide it. It seems that the top schools though for the most part publish the data. I think applicants/parents/families should have the right to have all information including college placement when making their decision on whether to apply/matriculate. </p>

<p>It's so condescending, misleading, and almost offensive to me when schools purposely hide college enrollment statistics because they decide that potential applicants should not consider that important in their decision. Shouldn't that be up to those applicants/parents/families that are investing so much in secondary education? It's like they are saying you are too foolish to know this information or use excuses like "fit" when in reality they are keeping it secret because they believe it may reflect poorly on the school. In reality, keeping the info hidden itself turns away some applicants.</p>

<p>I'll post the estimated percentages next in this thread.</p>

2

<p>It’s pretty crazy if you ask me that at any of these schools less than 10% of the class attends Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, or Yale. Few schools outside of these four win cross admit battles with these places (the yield data reflects that even more-so at top boarding schools) so it is likely that if under 10% of the class attended these four that maybe only 1 or 2 percent more of students had the option to do so. </p>

<p>Annual Boarding School Placement at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale</p>

<ol>
<li> Andover (58) </li>
<li> Exeter (41)</li>
<li> Deerfield (25)</li>
<li> Lawrenceville (21)</li>
<li> Milton (20)</li>
<li> Choate (19)</li>
<li> St. Paul’s (17)</li>
<li> Hotchkiss (15)</li>
<li> Groton (13)</li>
</ol>

<p>% Attending</p>

<ol>
<li> Andover (19%)</li>
<li> Groton (15%)</li>
<li> St. Paul’s (13%)</li>
<li> Deerfield (13%)</li>
<li> Exeter (12%)</li>
<li> Milton (11%)</li>
<li> Lawrenceville (9%)</li>
<li> Hotchkiss (9%)</li>
<li> Choate (8%)</li>
</ol>

<p>Combined Rank</p>

<ol>
<li> Andover (2)</li>
<li> Deerfield (6)</li>
<li> Exeter (7)</li>
<li> St. Paul’s (10)</li>
<li> Milton (11)</li>
<li> Lawrenceville (11)</li>
<li> Groton (11)</li>
<li> Hotchkiss (15)</li>
<li> Choate (15)</li>
</ol>

<p>You’re telling me being top 10% at Choate, Hotchkiss, or Lawrenceville isn’t good enough to get into HYPS (I’m kidding…sort of)?!</p>

3

<p>Combined Rank</p>

<ol>
<li>Andover (2)</li>
<li>Deerfield (6)</li>
<li>Exeter (7)</li>
<li>St. Paul’s (10)</li>
<li>Milton (11)</li>
<li>Lawrenceville (11)</li>
<li>Groton (11)</li>
<li>Hotchkiss (15)</li>
<li>Choate (15)</li>
</ol>

<p>What’s the number in the parenthesis?</p>

4

<p>Consider that some of these students are recruited athletes and not necessarily at the top of their classes. I know of a good number of top 10% students at Andover who were rejected from Yale, Harvard, and/or Princeton, and even from Brown.</p>

<p>One can’t really tell what these numbers exactly mean without more data, data which the schools have but won’t release to respect the privacy of the students involved.</p>

5

<p>But I’d like to think that the recruited atheletes, legacies, URM, etc., percentage wise, over time, are about the same within the top 10 most prestigious boarding schools, so if it is “standard” case that some within Andover’s top 10% can’t make their way to the most selective colleges, we are looking at a pretty grim picture in terms of HYPS placement (assuming it is a real concern) with the boarding schools across board.</p>

6

<p>Three million people graduate from high school every year, and only five thousand or so go to HYPS. 10% ain’t bad.</p>

7

<p>Rather than being so concerned with percentages of graduates that get into HYPS, how about some attention to how graduates have practiced “non-sibi” or contributed to society?</p>

8

<p>It really comes down to luck in some cases. I know Andover sent significantly fewer students to Princeton (and had fewer accepted) in 2006 and 2007, while the numbers are nearly doubled in 2008 and 2009.</p>

<p>When it comes to HYPS, if that’s really your ultimate goal, you need to first stop and say “why?” I know people send students to Andover just to get into those schools. What <em>should</em> be more important is learning. It has been contested on similar threads that a top BS and a very good, but not HYPS college is a better education than a mediocre HS followed by HYPS.</p>

<p>The numbers may say Andover gives you the best chance for HYPS, but please make sure Andover is the right school for you, or none of those will likely be in your future.</p>

<p>@brandenburg5</p>

<p>This is a very good thought, but from what I’ve seen on this forum, that’s far from the minds of parents and stressed students as they consider BS and college. I do know that a non-negligible number of Andover grads return to help out in the Non Sibi day activities, and I have no reason to believe they stop there or that this is only true at Andover.</p>

9

<p>I don’t get why this is that relevant. If you’re going to do this you may as well do HYPSM…a fully math oriented person would obviously choose MIT over Stanford. If we do that then we’d also need to do simply HYP …top three Ivy leagues and often what many strive for. There are to many statistics we could come up with, many aren’t relevant.</p>

10

<p>The original poster said: “It’s so condescending, misleading, and almost offensive to me when schools purposely hide college enrollment statistics because they decide that potential applicants should not consider that important in their decision.” Davida1, do you actually believe that schools only “hide” that data because it “reflects poorly” on the school? </p>

<p>There are dozens of schools and thousands of students and parents that covet the smaller, elite colleges over the Ivies and for whom a HYPS outcome is not the same prize as it is for you. Why should a boarding school be compelled to promote, display or otherwise prioritize statistics that belie its mission and educational philosophy? Why do you know better?</p>

<p>Your need for those stats says more about what’s important to you. Schools and parents/kids can decide for themselves what’s valuable data. Institutions, like people, get to choose what’s important to them and it’s a mistake to assume that what’s important to one person or one institution is going to be (or should be) commonly felt.</p>

<p>For my money, I’d choose Amherst, Williams, Claremont McKenna, Haverford and Swarthmore over HYPS any day of the week. I really don’t care about the HYPS stats in the same way you do.</p>

11

<p>I dont’ believe many people would judge and choose a school JUST based on college placement stats especially with only a few colleges, but I agree with OP’s statement that people have the rights to make their own choices based on what they think is important. I am a big believer of making informed decisions. It doesn’t matter what kind of schools you want to go to, but it matters whether all the “original” data are readily available for you to sort out what you are looking for. Some schools are able to do that but choose not to, why? If not “reflects poorly” then all I can think of is that they are just trying to say “trust me, we know better”. </p>

<p>There are many valuable discussions and valueable potential topics in the forum. This is just one of the millions of threads. Some people want to know how the top BS’s perform on HYPS, so let people have that discussion. Like with many online discussions, people will leave with different opinions. Some may feel HYPS placement is so important that they don’t want to apply to BS’s because after all it doesn’t give them the advantage they are looking for despite the cost and “inconvinience”, fine! Others may decide they can get a better education in BS witout being necessarily disadvataged in getting into their dream colleges. Still others will dismiss this thread entirely and start a new one, for example, LACs and BS, or community services and BS, etc. - Just my thoughts.</p>

12

<p>To the extent one views these schools as providers of a specific product - matriculation to “prestigious” colleges - one would want statistics tailored to that end.</p>

<p>To the extent one views these schools as providers of education, those HYPed statistics are less relevant and, I’d argue, diversionary. </p>

<p>If one really wanted to know HYPed effectiveness, one would press for admit data, not matriculation data, to avoid the “problem” of a student turning down a HYPed school for a “lesser” one. And that data - thank goodness - you will NEVER see :-)</p>

<p>Kei</p>

13

<p>The number in parenthesis is the combined rank (as it states). So, it is a ranking that incorporates number and percentage data as opposed to just one or the other. It is essentially an average rank without dividing by two.</p>

14

<p>I’m pretty sure the data suggests actually that Stanford beats MIT in cross-admit battles, and MIT is a tech/science focused school so I don’t really think it should be considered with traditional elite schools that provide a more comprehensive, balanced, and diverse student body in terms of academic interests and career objectives.</p>

15

<p>For people that say it is the quality of the high school’s educational program that is important, wouldn’t top colleges want students that received excellent, rigorous high school educations? Wouldn’t HYPS want students that are talented, interesting, compelling applicants – the best of the best, a diverse community, etc.? So, it’s not as if there is no relationship between the quality of the high school’s educational program and the attractiveness of the applicants they produce and matriculation statistics. There is a relationship.</p>

<p>My question to these people who think there is no relationship, and you would have to think that to believe that matriculation information is irrelevant, how do you judge a school’s academic program? A school visit? Nope. That could give you a misleading picture entirely – you see a tiny fraction of the teaching faculty if any at all in action. Student comments during a visit? Again, not representative. % of faculty with master’s? Doesn’t really tell you much about whether or not they are great teachers. Family, friends that attend - maybe at best, but again that opinion may be biased and the overwhelming majority don’t have personal connections the schools they are interested in. Brochures? Please - pure marketing and often present an inaccurate pictures of the reality on campus. Guides, book descriptions – none rate schools by academic excellence, so you get subjective usually consistently positive or neutral reviews that don’t really distinguish one school from another.</p>

<p>The reality is that even once you enroll the quality of your academic experience, particularly at larger schools, could be very different from your peers attending the same school depending on the instructors you get and how you evaluate or respond personally to their teaching style, perceived knowledge of the material, etc.</p>

<p>At elite boarding schools particularly in the humanities or social sciences the quality of the academic experience has a lot to do with the fellow students you are learning from - both in terms of diversity in all forms and how bright or engaged they are. Metrics that could provide this information include diversity stats (% out-of-state, international, minority, activities/arts/sports program options), standardized test scores (the only metric for intellectual abilities), and selectivity (both the size of the applicant pool and the percent accepted from that pool). Schools that have the strongest records in these areas when it comes to boarding schools place the best at top colleges.</p>

<p>So, again. All of this data is related in terms of looking for the best educational environment for highly motivated and gifted students that want to be a part of a community of peers that share their own drive and smarts but also people that can broaden their understanding of the world as well because of their unique backgrounds, experiences, and interests. Matriculation data is an indicator. And parents/families should be fully informed consumers – they should decide what is relevant or not in choosing a school - the schools shouldn’t suggest that they know what is best for their children or family and tell them what data they need to consider or ignore.</p>

16

<p>BS eductation is a business. The schools coexist and compete at the same time. It is only natural that some are better than others, and there are more distinctions among schools other than being a “fit” or not for an individual. College placement IS one indication of how well a prep school is doing, but the approach of comparing only HYPS matriculation is problematic. It doesn’t give the whole picture of this aspect of education. Doesn’t mean we can’t look into it or talk about it, but it is what it is - not a verdict on BS’s.</p>

<p>I strongly agree “parents/families should be fully informed consumers – they should decide what is relevant or not in choosing a school - the schools shouldn’t suggest that they know what is best for their children or family and tell them what data they need to consider or ignore.”</p>

17

<p>Davida1,</p>

<p>I’m not sure you are correct about MIT and Stanford’s cross-admits. Furthermore, I’m not even sure why its relevant because if that was an important consideration you’d just base everything on Harvard matriculations. After all, they top everyone in cross-admits.</p>

<p>However, I’m more interested in your theory that only “comprehensive” schools are relevant. I guess it’s a breadth versus depth argument. Virtually every MIT graduate can say with confidence that their degree is from one of the top universities in the world for their major. That can’t be said by many graduates of the comprehensive schools you listed - even MIT’s neighbor in Cambridge.</p>

<p>Although I may be biased by the fact that my daughter gave it a lot of thought and eventually turned down both Yale and Stanford (didn’t apply to H and P) for MIT, I think if you truly want to capture students matriculating to the world’s top universities it’s ridiculous to exclude MIT. To each their own I guess. No metric will really capture the relative quality of boarding schools and they become even less relevant when considering which schools are best for a given individual.</p>

18

<p>Yes, HYPSM always go together nowadays if you look at the college section of CC, but I doubt the ranking davida1 provided would change much even if M is added in the equation. Exeter’s number may go up a bit?</p>

19

<p>The biggest thing most don’t understand is just how many of these admits are legacies, URMs, athletes and development. In my experience, and I’ve done some digging, it’s the vast majority.</p>

<p>These schools and top day schools do very well at schools below the top dozen or so, but at most ivies and the very top LACs it is very, very hard to get in as an unhooked white/Asian student. At HYPS nearly impossible. There are just too many legacies, top athletes and top URMs (not to menton those willing and able to buy their way in and kids of the famous and powerful) competing for the few spots each of these schools is willing to give each prep school today. As they increasingly seek kids from ever corner of the planet, they want more representation from more places and less from the same old places. It’s kind of ironic, take a kid who was a superstar at his public school in Montana who would have been fought over by the big four and he becomes another Andover reject.</p>

<p>It’s counter intuitive, but top prep schools are the last place to go if you are unhooked and want to attend an ivy.</p>

20

<p>While hmom5’s words sound like a slap in the face to many, there’s truth in them and truth hurts sometimes. Don’t count on BS to give you that edge of getting into HYPSM. Prospective applicants, ask yourself what’s most important to you and don’t get caught up in the frenzy here in the prep school forum. If you can’t decide, apply and you’d have an easier time handling rejections later taking into consideration your college prospect. </p>

<p>On the other hand, you are not immune to all the hooks even if you stay in your PS. For many average high schools, each year HYPSM is mostly an accident anyway. In other words, even you are the number 1, there is no garantee you will be in one of them. And there’s always a chance that an URM or development case or even a recruted athelete gets ahead of you and takes the spot “of yours”.</p>

<p>No doubt, to get into HYPSM is an uphill battle anywhere you are. It seems to me that if you are absolutely unhooked (that is, non-athelete, non-first-generation yet non legacy white/asian male) your chance is maximized in a good quality local day school or a public school with solid college matriculation records - to a certain degree.</p>