<p>@smendes8 - I didn’t think ChoatieMom was defending Deerfield. I reread all her posts and it sounds to me like she’s laying out reasons why Deerfield might choose to reflect College Matriculation stats differently than you’d like to see. If you’re a parent or applicant who sees Ivy admission as the primary value and distinguishing factor of a boarding school, I can understand why Deerfield’s decision not to provide yearly granular matriculation data would be difficult for you to countenance. However, If you’re a parent who views the boarding school experience as intrinsically valuable and not just a stepping stone to HYPMS than you care about a whole spectrum of outcomes for your child of which college choice is but one, and maybe not the most important.</p>
<p>Personally, I would like boarding schools to use the U.S. News and World Report college ranking and post the U.S. News Top 25 outcome as their ONLY published matriculation stat, i.e. the percent of kids that go to a top 25 school each year. I would like ZERO definition of how many kids are admitted to an individual school. My theory is this: the top 25 designation provides a reasonable definition of excellence and it would encourage/force parents to pay way more attention to the School itself and what sort of experience their child will have. When we were looking at boarding schools for my son, we cared more about what kind of person he’d be after four years at Thacher than anything else. We weren’t worried about him getting into a specific college; we knew he’d do just fine.</p>
<p>“Acceptances” mean nothing statistically, as every year there will at least a couple of kids – even in the so-called third tier prep schools – that get an Ivy and the school can seed their multiple acceptances to these and other competitive schools throughout the data so as to make the school look far more desirable to colleges than it really is. The honest schools just show the colleges where the students have actually matriculated. The most honest ones limit this to three years, with a separate table for just the single year of the class most recently graduated. This measure of reporting provides both perspective and instant gratification. Seriously, some schools stretch their data over five or six years of “acceptances,” always seeking to capture that one elusive Harvard or Princeton admit. Those of us who know how to read this stuff should discount the integrity of such schools forthwith.</p>
<p>There is a difference between “acceptance” and “matriculation” stats, but most schools are very clear about which table you are looking at. The three- or five-year tally simply gives an overall view because, as you stated, one school might end up with a few erratic Ivies but the rest might be lower-tier. You have to check that. If you’re looking at a five-year table and there’s only one Ivy admit or matriculation, and you’re looking for high-level academics, you might need to reevaluate. I don’t see what’s so wrong with that- even if the schools do manipulate their stats, there’s only so far they can go while still being truthful, and it’s usually simple to clarify.</p>
<p>This battle gets tired. Along with the obsession about matriculation and other stats comes the invariably high attrition rate and too many graduates who say “I got a great education, but I didn’t really like the experience and I’d never do it again.” I feel like there are too few parents at schools like Andover and Exeter who rave about the overall quality of the experience and the happiness of their child, and too many who rave about how many went to HYPMS. I hope that’s just a condition of the CC echo chamber and, just like politics, where MSNBC and Fox are the screamers for the hard left and right, most of the parents on this site take a more moderate, thoughtful center position. Someone once asked the questions “what would happen if prep school candidates and parents had to make their choice in the absence of college matriculation stats? would they even be able to do it? would they choose the same schools?”</p>