<p>now that wall street is toast, don’t you think the demand for the ivies will lessen?</p>
<p>If anything I think people will want it more. It is an affordable (considering it is need blind) top, super top, education. Plus places like McKinsey recruit from top ivy schools and places like Duke sford and so on.</p>
<p>A few things,…</p>
<p>The hooked students at my kids’ three top NYC private schools and how it effected admissions shocked me with the oldest. I have to strongly disagree with the poster who said there are all sorts of hooks. Wrong, there are three real hooks as mentioned. And these hooks multiply the chance of a kid getting in by much more than I comprehended.</p>
<p>That said, I would not have changed where I sent my kids to school. I would have changed how we handled college admissions and did when I understood the game.</p>
<p>There is a big advantage to kid’s from top prep schools at most schools, just not the same 12 or so colleges most want. These kids are very well prepared for colleges and the colleges appreciate this. Few go to a college ranked below 50.</p>
<p>College counseling can be tricky at these schools. In my experience some counselors will pressure kids to apply to school where they are legacies even if the interest isn’t there. My kids were in that position, legacies at two top schools they had no interest in. Those placements can be a slam dunk for counselors whose success is based on where their case load got in. They can manipulate things to come out best for the school. For this reason we hired a private college counselor.</p>
<p>College admissions, believe it or not, is much tougher than prep school admissions. There are kids from all socio economic situations from every corner of the earth. Institutional ‘needs’ are much broader at colleges than boarding schools. Whereas prep schools remain 70% upper class, colleges are much more diverse and want fewer and fewer of the old guard that comprised their student body for most of their history.</p>
<p>The will be no less demand for ivies and their peers. As numbers of US births have become lower they have stepped up their efforts to attract internationals very successfully to become more competitive than ever.</p>
<p>Great points, hmom5.</p>
<p>There are many wonderful colleges and more than enough time to figure it out once a kid is getting nearer to applying. It is creepy to me that students and parents at the beginning of the boarding school experience are getting so passionate about matriculation data at top schools as an end in itself. I think it’s probably safe to say that if you go to one of these excellent prep schools and take advantage of it and work hard, you will end up at an excellent college. I’m sad to keep seeing the list of Ivies + X + Y (even though my alma mater is always mentioned) because there’s just so much more to high school than worrying about what college you will go to, and so many more possibilities for college than those on that list.</p>
<p>^With all due respect, parent’s would be ignorant to contemplate the choice of HS without thinking through all of it’s implications on their child’s future. For many the conclusion will be your conclusion, for others it won’t be.</p>
<p>Applications would have to decrease by huge amounts for the top colleges to be less competitive for admissions. Some schools are getting 27000 plus applications and admit less than 10%. These same schools back in my day got 8-9000 applications and still were extremely difficult to get into. I think many people in areas with good public schools figure that their kids will be no worse off vis-a-vis top 50-100 colleges and choose not to send to private. It really is about what is best for the child and family.</p>
<p>I agree with what anothermom2 just said. With Harvard hitting 29,000 applications and only accepting 7%, it’s a crap shoot for any kid who doesn’t have one of the 3 hooks (recruited athlete, URM, Legacy). I truly believe that a kid has just as much chance to get in to Harvard unhooked from public or private. </p>
<p>Instead of matriculation data, lets compare the education kids get at different schools.</p>
<p>I agree with many of you are saying - it is the whole education experience that matters, as matriculation data are just numbers, they don’t tell where your kid will end up with, they certainly don’t tell if he will be successful out of the college. Not everyone is interested in attending an ivy either. That said, I started this thread to look into the matriculation data published on the schools’ websites; I was hoping to have some discussion on the college counseling process and various factors that play into the process of college application, so parents of incoming and current BS students can have realistic expectations and maybe figure out what they can do to help. </p>
<p>With Exeter’s published matriculation data, there’s no year-to-year break down, but the 06-08 3 year average is: 26% (ivy+MIT+Stanford) and 27.7%(ivy+MIT+Stanford+CIT+ Amherst+Williams).</p>
<p>Grejuni, I think people look at college matriculation data because it’s difficult to use any objective measure to compare the “education received” at various schools…especially comparing public vs. private. You can track student-teacher ratios or average class sizes, faculty with advanced degrees, SAT scores for grads, number of national merit scholars, etc., but no metric is perfect. Public school comparisons often take into account the number of Advanced Placement courses offered, but many elite privates offer few AP courses, or even none, instead offering higher level courses that exceed the rigor of AP and allow for a more specialized curriculum. </p>
<p>The Handbook of Private Schools tracks the number of AP courses offered, but we also track the number of AP exams taken and what percentage scored 3, 4 or 5. (This statistic is often included in the school profiles sent to colleges along with applications). Nationally, 15% of the public school grads scored a 3+ on one test in their HS career – but at the elite boarding and private day schools, even when kids prepare for tests independently, you can expect 85-95% of scores to be 3 or higher. At less selective privates, it’s still almost always above 75%.</p>
<p>It might be more fair for schools to adjust their matriculation info for legacies and URMs, but who’s to say those students wouldn’t have earned acceptances on their own merits? Perhaps a more revealing stat would be graduates’ average GPA as college freshmen, but I doubt many schools track (or share) that information, other than saying students regularly excel in college with no data to back it up. </p>
<p>Also, no matter what school you attend, it’s absolutely essential to take advantage of outside-of-class opportunities in your field of interest throughout the school year and summer to really stand out from the applicant pool. </p>
<p>(Oh, and catg – I think the Wall Street meltdown will mostly hurt MBA programs, not undergrad. And in my opinion, they kind of had it coming.)</p>
<p>I think the matriculation metric is simply muddling the question of what kind of education kids are getting in different schools. I think the same kid would likely have gotten in to an Ivy from a public or a private. My daughter is an Ivy+ type of student and I don’t think boarding school is going to help with that. It is going to help her be organized, efficient and well prepared intellectually. If the matriculation was the driving force in the decision, I would have saved my money and kept her in public school.</p>
<p>And although it would be difficult to judge the differences between an Exeter and an Andover education (nil), it is not at all difficult for me to say with absolute conviction that my daughter is getting a 10X better education than she was receiving at her previous public school. She is in class longer, with fewer students and better teachers, she is producing more assignments of much higher quality, she is taking science classes with more labs and hands on projects, and is dealing with much higher level material in math, English and History. She is also going to lectures and hearing fascinating people from all walks of life, being advised with a faculty member who is interested in her maximizing her experience at school, and being pushed to develop in a well-rounded way.</p>
<p>Short answer, I don’t think it’s hard to talk about quality of education without resorting to matriculation.</p>
<p>As stated the IB is the international baccalureate which alot of college faculty (as opposed to college admissions com) are preferring to APs as they feel taking AP English at Exeter is NOT the same as taking English at Harvard. The IB is actually more rigourous and must be taken in a variety of subjects for all 4 years. ADCOMs are starting to look at them based on their faculty’s input.</p>
<p>When you look at the % admission to the IVYs, also realize that I know of at least one child at elite BS (mentioned in above posts) who got excepted to Julliard and was counseled to go to Yale for at least one year to protect the schools %. A lot of the smaller schools believe that Julliard, Wellesley, Vanderbilt, etc are just as good as the IVYs.</p>
<p>I guarantee you schools such as HADES GCM don’t send anyone out of top 50.</p>
<p>principal-care to bet on that. From the Exeter matriculation list for 2006-2008: Gettysburg-3, Flagler-1, Elon-2, Centre-2, Manhattanville, Lake Forest, Whittier, Roanoke and Concordia. This is a small sampling of the non top 50 schools.</p>
<p>Don’t know why my post showed up before your’s principalv.</p>
<p>Well there are people that just get sick of it…and apply to some small school out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not the schools chose…it’s really the kids. The schools don’t SEND anyone anywhere…the kid decides they want to go there.</p>
<p>^True that, but the school prepares the kid.</p>
<p>Is 70% Upper class at prep schools a true figure from post # 63? Or is it just SHADE schools?</p>
<p>What is the definition of “upper class”? A family who earns more than 200K? That doesn’t seem to fit the bill to me. I think that is around the cut-for fa at these schools. The SHADE schools, plus several others list FA as in the lower 40%, so it would be 55-60% full pay…that does not mean these are all “upper class”. Some could have grandparents who are paying the way. Some could be just barely affording the payments.</p>
<p>mpiz
The “school sends” by 1) only recommending certain schools, 2) “you don’t want to go there”, etc</p>