<p>Top boarding schools certainly help the top 5-10% and seriously hurt the 10-40%. A lot of the kids in the 10-40% range would be at an ivy/stanford/mit had they gone to public school.</p>
<p>The facts are misleading. Correlation does not imply causation: that is, just because 33% of a class at Andover goes to an ivy/stanford/mit does not mean that sending your kid there means he has a 33% chance of going to one of these schools. </p>
<p>At least for my class at Groton, there were some brilliant kids who are now at Vandy/Duke/Georgetown who would have destroyed a public high school but couldn’t get into an ivy because of just how competitive the applicant pool was. Sure, top colleges will take a higher percentage from top BS’s but it is not in line with ability. If it were based on academic ability alone, I think the top 25% from every top BS would get into an ivy.</p>
<p>Also, legacy/URM status/athlete status accounts for a lot of students getting into top colleges. </p>
<p>That’s 21 students. Out of these, 3 were URM’s, 2 were first generation college students,
3 were great athletes and great students (combo deal), and at least 6 or 7 were legacies. There were very few kids who got in on academics alone.</p>
<p>It’s not that BS makes you connected and more likely to get in to top schools, it’s that BS attracts kids who are already connected and will have a good shot at these schools. There’s no doubt in my mind that, while your kid will get an incredible education at a top BS, you are almost certainly hurting his chances for a top college.</p>
<p>Implicit in Claymangs07’s argument is that if a student is in public school they will suddenly be assessed on some measure of academics alone. But at public schools there are also legacies, URMs, athletes, school and community leaders, experts in a particular subject, etc. Even if we accept the hypothetical that the 10%-40% group would be at the very top of the class at public school, they still might lose out to those slightly below them that have other attractive properties. Once again, with over 20K secondary schools in this country, and about 16K slots at these supposedly premiere universities (before deducting for all the internationals and “hooked” kids that some argue constitute the majority), only a small minority of even valedicatorians and salutatorians will be accepted.</p>
<p>Last year the valedictorian at our large, well regarded, suburban public school applied to: Amherst, Chicago, Dartmouth, Harvard, JHU, Penn and Princeton. She was rejected by most, put on the waitlist by two and only accepted by Chicago. The salutatorian was also rejected by the Ivies and went to Wash U. Fortunately, both of those are excellent universities. Meanwhile a half-dozen kids below them were accepted by Ivy League schools. Had those top two gone to a boarding school and not attained the magical Ivy League many would have told them, “You should have stayed in public school, then you’d have been accepted.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>I admit that I am faultering on this issue, and I am giving up. It is such a debatable issue because: 1) a good part it is based on speculations. Everyone can only take one route at a time. No one can go through their high schools twice, so we’ll never get a side-by-side comparision; 2) the data/facts that facilitate a convincing conclusion are never available. In particular, the legacy factor is impossible to evaluate. And to what extent all the other “hooks” help is also a mystery. For example, as an URM or recruited athelete, do you still need a 3.75 GPA to make the cut or 3.5 would do (while the 4.0’s get rejected)? 3) We are comparing students of a few elite boarding schools against a wide array and huge number of public high schools. People tend to think elite boarding school students would inevitably be on top of his/her class had he/she stayed in the PS, but remember these are a self select group of excellent students. There are more equally excellent students who didn’t choose to be in a boarding school. Suppose you were competing with them in 4 years at the PS, who can be certain he/she can come on top?</p>
<p>No one believes that because 33% of a graduating class go to an ivy, any one in that class has a 33% chance. The stats Uroogla provided earlier suggest that whether you are hooked or not (hooks in traditional sense that is. In broader sense everyone needs some sort of “hook” to get in HYPMS nowadays.), you’d have a faily good shot if academically you are among the top 10%. That of course is little comfort, because that is in a class where more than 30% attend ivies. What about those schools with ivy matriculation percentage in teens or even single digit. What’s their advantage, if any, to the public schools?</p>
<p>I guess we’re back to one point OP made: we hope the schools can make more data available. We’ve heard arguments that legacy students are excellent students too and may make it without the legacy status, that legacies ended up attending another school he’s not a legacy of… but all that is interpretation isn’t it? Don’t you think people can figure things out? As long as there’s hiding of information, the process will remain a mystery. </p>
<p>Off topic (sort of): as far as the college admission process goes, I can’t comment on legacies - people have different positions on this issue of course, but what’s up with the craze with athletics? These are supposed to be most rigorous academic institutions, yet they recruit tons of atheletes and reject academically stronger students? Does it make sense? Anyway, like I said, I give up.</p>
<p>My take is that these schools are a business. Alums may be happier to learn about their school winning the Ivy League football league than winning a debate competition, for instance. And it’s not like these athletes are unqualified - they may be less qualified than some rejected applicants, academically, but they may be more likely to give the school a good name without dragging down academic statistics too much. One of my friends from my year at Andover was a coxswain for girl’s crew and is at Brown with me. I have quite a bit of respect for her academic prowess too, though. She wasn’t in the top 20% of the class, but she did quite a bit of hands-on biological research involving cancer during high school in addition to studying two languages. I’m sure not every case is like this, but that’s just another factor.</p>