College matriculation statistics

Prep School Admissions
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<p>I did a bit of research comparing matriculation in the top 10-20% of Phillips Andover (based on Cum Laude inductions) and the overall matriculation. It’s hardly a perfect study with only 2 years of data and how GPA isn’t necessarily the best indicator of success, but it seems that <em>only</em> 50% of those matriculating at HYPS are in the top 20% at Andover. Some of the others are athletes, some are URM, some are legacy, and some just have a very strong hook (someone who’s exceptional at math wouldn’t necessarily have a great GPA and make it onto this list). The percentage for the other Ivies seems to be lower than 50% inside the top 20%, but it’s hard to say from my data if that’s because they take more athletes or because they’re taking people just outside the top 20 who aren’t getting into HYPS.</p>

<p>If anyone’s interested, I could post some more detailed statistics later, but it seemed appropriate to mention this within the context of where this thread is headed. FWIW the “average” student at the top boarding schools does quite well, but how well is a question we probably won’t be able to answer very precisely.</p>

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<p>I generally agree that various hooks are playing too big a role in college admission that it is difficult to draw accurate conclusions from the matriculation data available to the public. However, I have doubts about the theory that unhooked students are more disadvataged in top schools than in lower tiered or even public schools because: 1. While it is reasonable prediction that there are fewer “hooked” students in lower tiered or public schools, there are much fewer students going to the most selective colleges from these schools each year as well. The picture is just as unclear there - could the few that end up at top colleges are similarly “hooked” just as their peers in top schools? 2. Among the well accepted top tier schools that are located faily close to each other, where the various hooks are expected to be “valued” in similar fashion, matriculation statistics in some of them are consistently stronger than the others from year to year, indicating there’re reasons more than just “hooks” for the college placement performance.</p>

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<ol>
<li> College admissions aren’t predictable. It’s fairly clear that the “elite” schools aim for a mix of students, from public and private schools. To me, they seem to be most interested in the top students in each high school. Some high schools may not be in the running, because there may be doubts about their academic rigor, schools which are not accredited, for example.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>Think of the most competitive boarding schools as equivalent to the top track in a good public system. (yes, fewer public systems track than in the old days.) A student in the middle of a BS class might be at the top of his public high school. </p>

<ol>
<li> Harvard and MIT are enormous endeavors. They have many employees, alumni, board members. Most of these people live in the greater Boston area, and they try to send their children to good local high schools. I think that the matriculation statistics for those high schools within the day school geographical of Harvard and MIT employees would look very different to applicants, were the accepted students’ ties to Harvard made public. Similar patterns probably hold true for Princeton, Yale, and Stanford.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>The great weight given to Ivy League institutions increases the chances that New England boarding schools will come out on top of ranking systems.</p>

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<p>

Well, not all the best students apply and go to boarding schools. If you stay back in your public school, you’d be surprised how much competition you’ll get in a graduating class of several hundreds. Even you can make it to the top, many public schools only send students to the most selective colleges sporadically, like 3 in 5 years. I know in a local public high school, an African American student with decent grades got accepted to almost all ivies, and that was almost all ivy admits that school got for that year. There is really nowhere to “hide” from the hooks. I think the only place that may be better in this respect are probably some magnet schools such as TJ, but you know how competitive it is there.</p>

<p>

There are so many, but they are not performing equally well. And, don’t forget the NYC day schools. They are consistently ranked higher than NE boarding schools by prepreview.</p>

<p>One final point, I am not arguing for that the top schools are doing a better job in placing “unhooked” students in the most selective colleges, but rather against the point that there would be a meaningful advantage for students who choose to stay back in PS or choose a lower tiered school JUST for the sake of college admission.</p>

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<p>Given the intense interest in college matriculation I thought this would be interesting (useful to some?). [84</a> seniors accepted early | News | The Phillipian](<a href=“http://phillipian.net/article/9100]84”>Article: Antonio Pulgarin Speaks to Toxic Masculinity, LGBTQ+ Rights, and Latinx Issues in New Exhibition “Whispers of a Caballero.” – The Phillipian)</p>

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<p>LVillegrad,</p>

<p>Terrific analysis – very interesting and useful. I like how the kids helped out, and the website works great. Thanks very much for sharing it.</p>

<p>I’ve considered doing a similar analysis and have thought about the available data and how best to express something more valid than the flawed PrepReview and other such reports.</p>

<p>Two comments for consideration:</p>

<p>1) I see the current metrics for matriculation to ‘strong’ and ‘top’ schools. In addition, it would be perhaps even more interesting to examine “Total Matriculation."</p>

<ul>
<li><p>A Total Matriculaton metric would show a boarding school’s performance with the entire graduating class, not just the top third, roughly.</p></li>
<li><p>A Total Matriculaton metric would indicate the extent to which a particular boarding school is ‘sink or swim.’</p></li>
<li><p>One could compare the relative performance of the “bottom 50%” of each boarding school. To a large extent the top 50% are going to thrive and do well in any boarding school. The lower 50%, on the other hand, would benefit from greater guidance and nurturing, that they may or may not actually receive.</p></li>
<li><p>A really good boarding school delivers a lot of value to the lower 50% of the class. A ‘sink or swim’ school does not. It would be great to see it in the data.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>2) On the website, I read about the method for weighting “strong” and “top” colleges. Instead, weighting by USNews’ “Peer Assessment” value might work even better.</p>

<ul>
<li><p>The current weighting method seems to create too great a gap between weighting boundaries. </p></li>
<li><p>The method seems to over-weight national universities over liberal arts colleges. In the context of evaluating undergraduate programs, the national universities benefit from the halo effect of their strong graduate programs. Some top ranked national universities are more focused on research and graduates than on undergraduates. I’m a product of an Ivy undergrad education, yet I consider the undergrad education at a top liberal arts school, such as Williams or Amherst, to be as strong as, and perhaps even stronger than, HYSM.</p></li>
<li><p>To address these issues, you might consider creating an additional column that uses USNews’ Peer Assessment value as the weight, which is normalized between universities and colleges and has smoother weighting.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Thanks for a terrific study.</p>

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<p>Would love to see a few additional schools in the study to round out the top tier:</p>

<p>Andover
Cate
St. Andrew’s
St. George’s</p>

<p>And a few second tier schools would be nice:</p>

<p>NMH
Woodberry
Mercersburg
Emma
Asheville</p>

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<p>I like the idea of expanding the analysis from Ivies to the “top” (top 25 unversities + top 15 LACs) and “strong” (top 50 unversities + top 30 LACs) schools. Information on average class size and the number of years of data from which the stats were derived is also useful.</p>

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<p>Lville: What you have done is really amazing and a tremendous resouce for people. Thank you. While one might quibble about a particular college’s weighting here or there, it is an excellent system. I think this will be more useful to many people than the other products out there. I suspect you do not have the 2009 data for some of the schools, as a number of the boarding schools had very poor placement results this past year. But what amazed me most was how much better the NYC day schools are consistently doing at college placement than the very top boarding schools. That should really give pause to some NY-area members of this board. I am curious if you have any theories as to why the top half a dozen or more NYC schools do so much better?</p>

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<p>Lville: What you have done is really amazing and a tremendous resouce for people. Thank you. While one might quibble about a particular college’s weighting here or there, it is an excellent system. I think this will be more useful to many people than the other products out there. I suspect you do not have the 2009 data for some of the schools, as a number of the boarding schools had very poor placement results this past year. But what amazed me most was how much better the NYC day schools are consistently doing at college placement than the very top boarding schools. That should really give pause to some NY-area members of this board. I am curious if you have any theories as to why the top half a dozen or more NYC schools do so much better?</p>

<p>Thanks for the compliment.</p>

<p>I’ve been trying to figure out the NYC school vs. boarding school disparity myself. One possibility is the size. I suspect it’s a lot easier to have superb matriculation results with a graduating class of 50 or so than 200 or so. Many, but not all, of the schools with the best statistical results have small graduating classes. There may very well be other factors at work, and I’d be interested in hearing some theories.</p>

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<p>What about athletics? I know that almost all of the top BS’s stress sports and actively recruit PG’s and other students for their athletic abilities. What about the NYC day schools, about which I know next to nothing? (I am guessing that these day schools give little weight or interest in their admissions to athletics…but I don’t know.) Although great athletes can be great scholars, this combination is not routine, IMHO.</p>

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<p>*What about athletics? I know that almost all of the top BS’s stress sports and actively recruit PG’s and other students for their athletic abilities. What about the NYC day schools, about which I know next to nothing? (I am guessing that these day schools give little weight or interest in their admissions to athletics…but I don’t know.) Although great athletes can be great scholars, this combination is not routine, IMHO. *</p>

<p>Athletics may play a lesser role at NYC day schools than boarding schools, but if so, not by that much. They are somewhat constrained by their size relative to the boarding schools in fielding teams, but Horace Mann and Dalton (2 of the highest rated schools) field football teams and Collegiate is well-known for their track teams. Several of the other high rated schools are all-girls schools (Spence, Brearley and Chapin) and I believe they have active athletic programs also. And athletics does make a difference in applications, though it’s hard to say how much of a hook as compared to boarding schools.</p>

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<p>One thing I have found at all the bs is that the students just don’t get enough sleep. I would love to hear from parents of NYC school kids how much rest their children get on average. I also wonder how much parental influence there is in making the children settle down to do homework, helping(?) with homework, in having set lights out, etc., which is all largely missing from bs.</p>

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<p>The bottom 50% analysis would be interesting. However, Lville’s data already gives a pretty good clue. The better schools are placing 75%-80% of their grads (roughly through the third quartile) in “strong schools” with SPS being the outlier at a pretty incredible 83%. That shows that outstanding placement cuts deeply into the classes. </p>

<p>The unknown is that fourth quartile. I suspect you would see a significant percentage of that group going to what could be termed “solid” schools (e.g. USNWR 51-100 universities and 31-50 LACs that I would call “strong” but that term has already been used in Lville’s analysis). That group would include such popular destinations, at least in the Northeast, as Boston U., Syracuse, George Washington, Trinity, Holy Cross, CT College and a lot of major state universities. While such schools tend to get lost in the Ivy + SM hype they would be dream destinations for most of the college-going population.</p>

<p>Addendum: A small but noticeable percentage of the grads from top boarding schools attend college outside of the U.S. Some are returning to their native countries and others just want to pursue the equivalent of top U.S. schools internationally (McGill and St. Andrews are popular). Thus the percentage going to highly regarded institutions extends even deeper into the lower quartile.</p>

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<p>Addendum: A small but noticeable percentage of the grads from top boarding schools attend college outside of the U.S. Some are returning to their native countries and others just want to pursue the equivalent of top U.S. schools internationally (McGill and St. Andrews are popular). Thus the percentage going to highly regarded institutions extends even deeper into the lower quartile.</p>

<p>Handling foreign schools was a particular problem. As I discussed in my methodology, the numbers of students attending St. Andrew’s and Edinburgh in Scotland and McGill in Canada were too big to ignore, so they were included in the “top school” classification. And although not too many went to Oxford and Cambridge, I felt safe in tossing them into that classification also. No other foreign schools showed up in significant numbers to be worth worrying about.</p>

<p>Nonetheless, there certainly are some other foreign schools which pop up as college destinations which most likely are (though I didn’t research the issue) the equivalent of my “top school” or “strong school” classifications. So, I believe your point has merit.</p>

<p>And after entering pages and pages of data, I can confirm quite readily that all the schools you mention show up very frequently. And although, for example, no one would mistake Trinity for Yale, there’s no doubt that Trinity is a very fine school.</p>

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<p>I also don’t read instruction manuals or ask directions …</p>

<p>Thanks for the correction.</p>

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<p>Top 3 boarding:
Strong schools: SPS (83.2%), Andover (79.2%), Deerfield (78.1%)
Top Schools: Andover (61.8%), SPS (61.8%), Groton (56.8%)
Ivies: Andover (27.8%), Exeter (24.8%), Groton (23.8%)
HYPMS: Andover (18.4%), Exeter(16.3%), Groton (16%)</p>

<p>(unfortunately, there’s only 1 yer of data available for Deerfield, Middlesex and Milton)</p>

<p>Top 5 NYC day:
Strong schools:
The Chapin School (89.6%), The Spence School (88.6%), The Brearley School (87.6%),
Trinity School (86.8%), Collegiate School (83.3%) </p>

<p>Top Schools:
The Brearley School (72.0%), The Chapin School (69.8%), Collegiate School (68.9%)
Trinity School (68.2%), The Spence School (65.1%)</p>

<p>Ivies:
Collegiate School (39.0%), Trinity School (38.0%), Horace Mann School (34.4%),
The Spence School (30.6%), The Dalton School (29.8%)</p>

<p>HYPMS:
Collegiate School (24.7%), Trinity School (19.0%), The Brearley School (16.4%), Saint Ann’s School (14.2%), The Chapin School (14.0%) </p>

<p>It’s amazing that the top NYC day schools are doing SO much better than the top NE boarding schools in all the catergories including the ivies and HYPMS, a great many of which are located in NE. I guess size of the schools as L’villegrad pointed out is a factor but apparently it can’t expalin all. There are schools that are considerably larger than others in both boarding and day categories but are high on the list.</p>

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<p>Looking at the report, it’s interesting to note:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>the lower third of Hotchkiss grads do not matriculate to a ‘Strong School’ – lowest performance within the peer group of top tier boarding schools. A third seems a rather large portion of a top tier boarding school not to make it into a Strong school.</p></li>
<li><p>a lower ‘Strong School’ percentage may indicate that a particular boarding school does not deliver as much nuturing and guidance to it’s lower performing segment. A sink-or-swim metric.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>By comparing within a peer group, in this case the dozen ‘top tier’ boarding schools, my sense is that we roughly control for the quality of incoming kids.</p>

<p>Prior to seeing the data I had considered Exeter the ultimate sink-or-swim school…</p>

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<p>Glad to see these statistics stimulating interesting discussion.</p>

<p>I just wanted to remind you that I’m still adding boarding schools on a regular basis and there could be some that have strong results.</p>

<p>As Benley points out, it’s unfortunate when I have only one year of data for a school. Ideally, I’d like to have 4 or 5 so that there are enough years to smooth out unusual years but not so far back in history that the information is stale.</p>

<p>For Deerfield, I now have 2008 data to add to the 2009 data (someone provided me with a link to an official source). That information will be included in the next update.</p>

<p>Although Tristan’s conclusion about Hotchkiss may be accurate, there is one piece of relevant information that should be considered. In the 5 year data, 3.5% of Hotchkiss graduates matriculated at Trinity College in CT which at #36 on the Liberal Arts College list didn’t qualify as “Strong School” but didn’t miss by much. Although one may still draw the same conclusion, the additional 3.5% may shade one’s opinion. Hotchkiss had one of the highest percentage matriculating at Trinity of the schools I’ve looked at so far.</p>

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<p>Is it possible that the nyc schools are less diverse and are heavily skewed to wealthy, well connected manhattan residents?</p>