I found this list interesting. It is the college choices of Catlin Gable grads, which is considered the most elite prep school in the Portland area. Most represented seem to be the Ivys and elite CA privates like Stanford, the Claremonts and Occidental. But also a long list of LACs scattered about the country. Other than the UO, most seem to leave the region for college. Only 5 decided to stay home and go to school in Portland (Reed, Lewis & Clark, and University of Portland). Boston and LA seem to be the two biggest destinations:
It will be interesting to track these kinds of lists a year from now and see how the pandemic may have changed things. If students are staying much closer to home or not. Or, if the type of schools they are choosing ends up changing. Small vs large and so forth.
I, for one, would be more comfortable seeing my child stay much closer to home, and in a much smaller institution with smaller classes and perhaps a more cocooned environment. I don’t know if I have a purely scientific or rational reason for thinking that. But I think it is a thought shared by many other parents as well.
Looks like a typical overrepresentation of private colleges (including non-academically-elite ones) and underrepresentation of public colleges, compared to the college destinations of public high school graduates.
Well, it’s Portland so your only real public school choices are UO and OSU unless you want to send your kid to Portland State which is essentially a non-selective commuter school. There are a few tiny directional schools in rural areas that are struggling and not of much interest to academic students. UO does get quite a few, but it is a middle of the road public and something of a party school. But OR has been bleeding higher education funding for years. Getting into UW or any of the UC schools as an out-of-state student is tough and the cost ends up being about as much as Stanford. After that, all the other western states have worse public university offerings. ID, MT, WY, UT, NV? University of Utah is the only one I’d consider a good choice and that is almost 800 miles away.
Eight kids going to Dartmouth from one tiny little school??? I’m sorry. That angers me. We have so many kids who are super bright at our competitive public school in the Midwest and only get athletes or legacies into Dartmouth. Out of 700 kids and maybe 50 applicants to Dartmouth in the class, zero-two get in each year. These kids have !530+/35+, lots of rigor, tons of ECs. They would be students who will contribute on any campus. I can’t understand why any school would accept eight kids from such a small private school. Really bums me out but makes the point I’m always making - it matters where you go to high school. Those GCs must know the AOs at these elite schools.
So, for all of the tiger moms out there, the key is to get your child into a high school like this. I guess I’ve always known that small elite high schools get good results but I just had no idea the list would have so many kids going to some of these colleges.
Yep. 760 kids enrolled for K-12 so that is only about 60 per graduating class assuming they are distributed evenly from K-12.
It isn’t just Dartmouth. I count 40 students going to the actual Ivies plus Stanford in four years.
One thing that is different about the Northwest compared to the east coast is that there are really very few private schools out here. Some Catholic schools, and a few elite privates like this one and the usual assortment of conservative Christian schools. But a much higher percentage of kids are in public school, especially wealthy kids.
So these small elite prep schools out here can very selective. This is probably mostly just the kids of Portland’s old money and some new money like Nike and Intel execs.
But honestly I was surprised myself at how many are enrolled at Ivys and the other quasi-Ivys like Stanford. It must be due partly to some attempt by those schools to increase their geographic diversity and not just have entire classes of students from the Northeast.
But yes, they must have really cracked the code.
As an aside, Catlin Gable is in the middle of a massive sex abuse scandal, mainly abuse from long ago that is now coming to light. But some of it more recent. There is a very real chance the whole place might be brought down in a tidal wave of lawsuits. By the news reports, there was apparently decades of cover-up by the administration, and that they seemed to think they were somehow different and that ordinary precautions and measures that other schools would take just didn’t apply to them.
So you may not be competing with them much longer.
They have five college counselors for about 60 students per year. When I went to high school (in a public school), there were about as many counselors (for all purposes, not specifically dedicated to college matters) for over 400 students per year.
If this prep school has a combination of academically elite and scions of wealth and influence (i.e. an attractive applicant pool for elite colleges), it may not be surprising that the college counselors could have developed good relationships with elite colleges and can steer the (elite-college-qualified) students toward the specific elite colleges that will see them as good fits.
By my count that is 146 students going to the Ivies/MIT/Stanford in 5 years or about 25% of their average graduating class. And most of the rest are going to nearly as elite schools.
Elite private high schools have always had much higher numbers going to elite private colleges. Nothing new here, so interesting to see a high school in Portland that probably 99 percent of the population has never even heard of singled out. Interesting also that a " sex abuse scandal" at this school is brought up a few posts in.
As a local, I find it interesting to see where the local elite are sending their children. Not just the Ivies, but where else they ARE going, and where they are NOT going (few schools here in the Northwest and few publics).
After the in-state flagship, UO with 13, the next most popular schools are Dartmouth, Stanford, and Occidental with 8 each. I’m kind of surprised to see tiny Occidental so high on that list. It’s the most popular liberal arts school on the list.
As for the “sex abuse scandal”. It’s on the front pages of the newspapers and leading TV news coverage for months up here. There are very real questions about whether the institution will even survive:
The abuse seems more of the story here in terms of this school than anything about where the kids are going to college. Most expensive privates send plenty of kids to elite colleges (as do elite publics, as @PurpleTitan has mentioned).
I just find the geographic distribution interesting. For example between Lakewood and Catlin Gable they are sending dozens and dozens (if not hundreds) to midwest and northeast LACs. But between them just one single student in 5 years to the local elite LAC – Reed College, which itself draws in the majority of its students from the Northeast and CA.
Maybe the grass is always greener. And maybe the kids all just want to get out of the Northwest.
It could be that the grass is greener (many kids want to leave home for college). Another factor is that many high schoolers put undue weight on USNews rankings (where Reed is far lower than it would be if you went off ranking by alumni accomplishments).
Plus, outside of maybe honors at some publics, there aren’t a lot of prestigious options in the PNW. Besides Reed, there’s. . .Whitman.