<p>In another thread, I mentioned that I've done some analysis comparing the relative college matriculation statistics of several schools that my son is applying to. I also said that this was particularly useful because we are considering three distinct types of schools (NYC private day, NYC public select and a boarding school). The methodology can be applied to any school for which I have a reasonable amount of data about their college matriculation statistics (not all schools give exactly the same amount, but I'm not too bad at making reasonable and appropriate adjustments - you'll just have to take my word for that, though I was a math major at one of HYP, as I stated in a different thread). For many schools, enough information is available on their websites.</p>
<p>The basic issue is that when one looks at a list of colleges that graduates of a school matriculate at, it's not so easy to synthesize that information so that comparisons between schools are possible. My methodology boils that information down to a single number, although I also look at some other numbers that I consider interesting.</p>
<p>With the clear understanding that no such methodology can ever be perfect, is that something that people would be interested in seeing? It's a fair amount of work to analyze a school, so I make no promises to do any one particular school, but then again I might.</p>
<p>And as a really big caveat, this number would definitely NOT mean that one school is better or worse than another. In particular, relatively modest differences in these numbers are almost certainly not statistically significant (maybe I'll put the numbers into categories to avoid any overreliance). Also, one should NOT choose a school to attend based on such numbers. They might provided a very small tidbit of information, nothing more.</p>
<p>I would like a report that factors in the following (how realistic or possible it is is another story. :))</p>
<ol>
<li>3-5 years of acceptance and matriculation data from each of the major boarding schools;</li>
<li>Performance in placing students to the following groups of colleges SEPARTELY: HYPS, other ivies, top LACS namely Amherst, Swarthmore and Williams, and top 25 colleges as in US News ranking.</li>
<li>The effect of recruited atheletes, URMs, development cases, faculty kids and NOTABLE alumni (assuming “ordiniary” legacies without a trail of significant contribution would have minimal influence on the admittance outcome).</li>
</ol>
<p>1. 3-5 years of acceptance and matriculation data from each of the major boarding schools;
2. Performance in placing students to the following groups of colleges SEPARTELY: HYPS, other ivies, top LACS namely Amherst, Swarthmore and Williams, and top 25 colleges as in US News ranking.
3. The effect of recruited atheletes, URMs, development cases, faculty kids and NOTABLE alumni (assuming “ordiniary” legacies without a trail of significant contribution would have minimal influence on the admittance outcome).</p>
<p>You certainly have a demanding wish list!</p>
<ol>
<li>I will be using whatever is available to me.</li>
<li>These are similar to some of the other stats that I have found interesting. These are reasonable sorts of stats to compile, though I may choose slightly different ones depending on what appeals to me.</li>
<li>You’re joking, right? Where exactly do you think that such information would be available?</li>
</ol>
<p>Basically, doing this for any one school requires some work. Doing it for many schools requires lots of work. I’m thinking of setting up a web page for whatever I do (my son, who is a technophile is keen on helping with it). If I actually do so (about a 75% chance), I’ll post here that it’s up and running.</p>
<p>I think that Benley’s #3 says it all. We can’t tell how many athletes, minority students, and ultra high net worth are in a class. If you are in one of those groups, then no problem, but if you arent, then your odds of getting into a top school might actually be lower than if you went to a school with poor placement results.</p>
<p>There was a really great book out about this topic. I read it this summer and can’t for the life of me remember it’s name. Anyone? It had fascinating examples where they dug really deep for this stuff. Such as students at Groton going to great schools, but the kids rejected by Harvard were often significantly more qualified than those who were admitted (legacies, athletes, minorities) and in some cases they felt that if they hadn’t gone to Groton, things would have been different. There was also something about Asian Americans being held to a higher standard which seemed unfair. Sorry to bring it up and not remember the name. </p>
<p>But if you care enough to study the schools placement to that degree, you should read the book. If I remember, I’ll post again.</p>
<p>Newyorker22, was it The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges–and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Daniel Golden? The book has chapters on development admits, children of celebrities, legacies, athletes, and faculty children. It also outlines the standards applied to Asian American students.</p>
<p>Lville, do what you can. Just please explain your
methodology and source of data thoroughly when you publish the results. Thanks for the voluntary work.</p>
<p>I skimmed the book The Price of Admission. It points out things that really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone (legacy matters, famous family can help, history or likelihood of giving millions helps, admission isn’t a strict meritocracy). But as most of it isn’t anything that applicants can do anything about, I didn’t find it useful and it got tedious fast. (So, check it out of the library rather than buying it!)</p>
<p>Yes, thank you everyone. That is the name of the book. I got it from the library too, but I disagree with lemonade, I actually found the whole book really interesting. There was a whole chapter just on Notre Dame and how their alumni preferences are different than other schools, and some other interesting nuggets. So even though I couldn’t remember the name of the book, I really did like it!</p>
<p>You make a lot of valid points, but I’m not sure what in any of my posts causes you to infer that I’m not aware of these issues. I simply say that I don’t have access to the data that would enable me to measure them. As someone who lived through the application process as a boarding school student and then saw the results of it from the other end at one of HYP, I saw firsthand much of these effects at work. My intention is simply to take the matriculation data available on school’s websites, use US News & World Report’s rankings in some (hopefully) reasonable way to come up with something interesting to look at. There are obviously a number of factors that contribute to the final matriculation rates for each school. I may share some of my insights into any observations I may notice, but how others use the information is up to them.</p>
<p>I’ve registered a website whose name I’ll share here when I’ve put together enough data to make posting it worthwhile. I’m expecting that to be in a week or so. With the cost of registering a website so inexpensive, I figured that would be a more efficient way to share this sort of data than a number of disorganized posts here. </p>
<p>This is really just something fun for me to do, though it’s started to turn into a family affair. My 8th grade son (the one currently applying to schools) is setting up the website for me and handling all the technical aspects. My 5th grade son is helping me with data input and learning about colleges, boarding schools and NYC day schools as I share tidbits as we go along. Hopefully, they won’t tire of the venture before we have enough useful data to share with others.</p>
<p>I think most of us are aware of the existence and the huge impct of those “hooks” on college acceptance outcomes. I wish somehow they could be factored in the HS college placement research, which is next to impossible as the colleges and high schools don’t fully disclose the data. That however doesn’t mean that all the “college talk” is meaningless. For example, the Prepreview ranking, which ranks private schools based on their performace in placing their graduates into Ivies+S+M, although some people have questioned the accuracy of the ranking, does give a rough idea as for how a school of your interest compares with its peers in this respect. The wall street jounal has had a similar ranking but based on a different group of selective collges. Lville, how will your research be different than theirs? </p>
<p>I still look at college matriculation data and related research because I find it hardly convincing to attribute any and all differences in college placement between schools to the existence of these “hooks”. For example, SPS has consistently overperformed Hotchkiss in placing gradutes into Ivies+S+M. Was it all due to there are more “special cases” in SPS year after year? Considering Hotchkiss is a prestigious school itself (one of HADES after all), I doubt it. If we assume that Hotchkiss students don’t IN GENERAL like Ivies+S+M LESS SPS students, could it be because - among other things - an admitted class of better quality, more recognition of its reputation among selective collges, and better college counciling? On the other hand, I feel comparing Andover with Groton not reasonable. The two schools are too different in size that they shouldn’t be compared side by side.</p>
<p>We all agree that’s how the college admission works. If you are rich and powerful, or a star athelets, or a URM with decent academics, you have an advantage wherever you are. A question that has been asked in different ways many times is: how about a “unhooked”, bright and well-rounded “overachiever”? When it comes to college placement, would he/she better off staying in the PS, a magnet school (which is not accessible to everyone), or a top-tier private/boarding school? I don’t see there is a way that can statistically give an answer either way, so we’ll continue puzzling over it.</p>
<p>For example, the Prepreview ranking, which ranks private schools based on their performace in placing their graduates into Ivies+S+M, although some people have questioned the accuracy of the ranking, does give a rough idea as for how a school of your interest compares with its peers in this respect. The wall street jounal has had a similar ranking but based on a different group of selective collges. Lville, how will your research be different than theirs?</p>
<p>First of all, I was unaware of Prepreview, so thanks for pointing it out to me. I haven’t really been looking at this issue very long. I did read the NY Times article, though. It struck me that both of those methodologies are flawed, though for different reasons. The Prepreview methodology is actually a statistic that I was also looking at. Although, that statistic does have some use, I think it takes too myopic view of the very top. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it doesn’t represent the complete picture. The NY Times methodology was just terrible, in my opinion. They tried to pick a cross-section of schools, all competitive but a number a little bit less competitive than those five, to obtain a sense of the schools. This resulted in some skewed results. I have to admit that their methodology fortuitously favored Lawrenceville because the year studied happened to be a year when L’ville’s top students went to Princeton over Harvard in greater numbers than usual and the NY Times happened to pick Princeton and not Harvard.</p>
<p>You’ll just have to wait and see my methodology and decide for yourself if it makes sense to you. I will caution, though, that I will not be doing anything nearly as extensive as Prepreview. I’m not going into this business, just spending some time indulging an interest.</p>
<p>When it comes to college placement, would he/she better off staying in the PS, a magnet school (which is not accessible to everyone), or a top-tier private/boarding school? I don’t see there is a way that can statistically give an answer either way, so we’ll continue puzzling over it.</p>
<p>I agree with many of the issues you’ve outlined. As to the one I quote above, there’s even a more specific micro-example of it here amongst the NYC day schools. Assuming that one’s child will be attending one of these schools, should he/she attend the most competitive school to which he/she is admitted, or is “steping down” a rung to a somewhat less competitive school to improve class rank a better strategy? As you state, there’s no ready way to discover the answer to this question. In the end, the decision as to which school to attend should probably be made on other factors.</p>
<p>Also think you need to do what part of the Country the school is in. ie west coast heavier at Stanford, Berkley than Harvard, Yale. South heavier on Vanderbilt. East Yale, Harvard. North UC and Northwestern, etcc</p>
<p>I’ve noticed that legacies were talked about a lot in that thread, which is a little misleading. The truth is that there are just too many legacies applying for the ivies each year that only the ones that “truly matter” (celebrities, big donators, etc.) would make a meaningful difference.</p>
<p>My website is up, but for now it only contains NYC day schools. I’ll be adding boarding schools soon, but since there are so many, I’ll post an initial group and then add more as time allows (I do have a full time job, after all). I will take requests for schools to bump to the front of the line to be added (assuming data is available).</p>
<p>People should be careful in interpreting the college matriculation data published by BS.
I believe they should compare the matriculation based on academic matriculation to measure the school’s academic performance without matriculation using legacy and athletic players. In some BS, many students go to Ivies+S+M as athletic palyers. Thta does not mean that athletic matriculation is bad. But just for the sake of fair academic
performance evaluation of the BS!</p>
<p>*People should be careful in interpreting the college matriculation data published by BS.
I believe they should compare the matriculation based on academic matriculation to measure the school’s academic performance without matriculation using legacy and athletic players. In some BS, many students go to Ivies+S+M as athletic palyers. Thta does not mean that athletic matriculation is bad. But just for the sake of fair academic
performance evaluation of the BS! *</p>
<p>Although it would certainly be nice to parse every school’s matriculation statistics based on the academics, legacies, athletics, URM (remembering, of course, that sometimes these factors overlap), I have no idea where to find such data on a wide scale basis. Since that’s not available, we can only look at what we have access to and draw some conclusions from that data, making sure not to put too much reliance on such conclusions.</p>