<p>Hello I am a current eighth grade applying to Hades Boarding Schools and i researched and found that boarding schools can actually ruin your chances for ivy league. Is that true?</p>
<p>I had a similar question, and found the answers given to me were very insightful and extremely helpful, especially those on the first few pages. Here’s the link, if you’re interested:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1422566-does-boarding-school-lower-college-chances.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1422566-does-boarding-school-lower-college-chances.html</a></p>
<p>The good thing is you have a chance to know your full abilities; the bad thing is the result possibly is not what you expect.</p>
<p>Thank you I kept on reading it was bad to go to boarding schools because it would hurt your chances.</p>
<p>The sooner you get over that success & happiness in life don’t depend on you going to a Ivy League school, then sooner you can get on with your life</p>
<p>^Doesn’t the average Ivy grad get a higher salary than those who graduated from a non-top25 school? After all, name recognition counts when you’re applying for a job; some employers recruit exclusively in the top schools, and you’ll definitely have an edge over that Rutgers alum applying for the same position if you’re a Princeton grad.</p>
<p>^That kind of thinking makes me sad to the bone. +1 GMT.</p>
<p>MVBloveless: “you’ll definitely have an edge over that Rutgers alum applying for the same position if you’re a Princeton grad.” …probably only if a Princeton grad is doing the hiring. </p>
<p>I’ve chaired many hiring committees. On a recent one a Stanford grad was competing with all non-Ivy applicants. The hiring committee was certainly wowed by the Stanford resume. But when it came time for interviews the Stanford grad was eliminated. He came across as entitled and self-serving and was clearly used to being fawned over. This is only one story of many that are similar. By the time you’re 50 (or sooner), where you went to college is not nearly as important as the personal attributes and experience you bring to the plate.</p>
<p>^^Phillips Exeter got 12 kids into Harvard this fall EA. Data point for the OP’s question.</p>
<p>Well, excuse me ChoatieMom for not being as enlightened as you.</p>
<p>According to the Wall Street Journal, companies prefer to recruit at the big state univerisities
[College</a> Rankings - Wsj.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/public/page/rankings-career-college-majors.html]College”>http://online.wsj.com/public/page/rankings-career-college-majors.html)
</p>
<p>For a kid graduating with an undergraduate degree, I doubt the starting pay is going to be that much different for a Princeton grad vs. a Rutgers grad with the same major. If you are planning to continue on to grad school, med/law/business school, then the undergraduate school (provided it’s a solid school) doesn’t really matter.</p>
<p>I don’t think it will hurt your chances that much. Many of my classmates at Exeter got into Ivies. But there are a lot of factors besides which high school you go to.</p>
<p>If you care about financial success as the measure of worth–and hold that an education should have a high ROI, then both a boarding school and a top tier private education is NOT worth it. If you care about the life of the mind, maximizing your potential regardless then it is. </p>
<p>These schools are ends not means, in Kantian terms. If you just want a train you can ride to the next stop on your rail line of economic prosperity, you will be happier elsewhere. Not only is the financial cost high, you will be at odds with the student culture at most top boarding schools (don’t get me wrong they want to go to Ivy-plus and NESCAC colleges but the idea of quantifying a pay-day is not spoken–at least aloud…). </p>
<p>Oh, yeah, most companies also hire the B to B+ student rather than the A student as well–so if you want to be hired as a goal-- don’t do very well in class either. (Also DON’T, whatever you do, listen to Malvina Reynold’s song “Little Boxes.”…)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sorry for the snark MBV; I didn’t realize you’re a kid. Perhaps you’re surrounded by people who are inadvertantly teaching you to think like this based on conversations they have in your hearing or by things you hear other kids or adults say. Please take to heart everything GMT, WCMOM, and eton have said.</p>
<p>IMHO, this misplaced concern for how attending/graduating from a particular school translates to lucre displays how far we’ve drifted from the real definition of education which has everything to do with the life of the mind and nothing to do with the size of a paycheck.</p>
<p>Attending an elite prep school is a mixed bag when it comes to helping a child’s chances for Ivy League admission. </p>
<p>An elite prep school may not materially improve SAT scores. But, it will provide outstanding extracurricular activities; it will offer access to generally good college counseling; it will make rigorous courses available; and it may even improve college essays. On the other hand, it will likely have a negative impact class rank for most students. </p>
<p>That’s why class rank poses the biggest risk to an elite boarding student who dreams of attending an Ivy League college. Think of it this way. If it’s fair to assume that 95 percent or more of the students at Andover, Exeter, and St. Pauls would have graduated in the top 1 percent of their local public school, it should be equally safe to conclude that attending prep school will lower the class rank of the great majority of this group. </p>
<p>Colleges understand the rigor of prep school education. Hence, students don’t need to graduate in the top 1 percent of their elite prep school to get admitted to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. But it certainly helps unhooked candidates from these prep schools to be in the top 5 or 10 percent of their class. And it most definitely hurts if they are in the bottom 65 percent of their class regardless of what Ivy they want to attend.</p>
<p>So yes, attending a top prep school can diminish your chances of getting into an Ivy. Whether or not it will, depends on factors that no eight grader can calculate with any degree of precision. Heck, students and parents scratch their heads about the inscrutable college admission process even after it’s over.</p>
<p>SATs obviously matter. For unhooked candidates, there is no magic SAT number for Ivy admission. In fact, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton routinely reject students with perfect 2400 scores. However, the top 25 percent of the students accepted to these schools have perfect or nearly perfect scores. The next 25 percent are not that far behind. The SATs ranges at other Ivies are slightly lower, but not dramatically so, except for maybe Cornell where the difference is a bit more pronounced. </p>
<p>To complicate matters further, even elite prep school students with high SAT scores require outstanding recommendations, highly rigorous courses, compelling essays, and knock your socks off extra-curricular activities, etc.</p>
<p>If you are in eight grade, there’s nothing wrong with having big college dreams. But don’t pack your bags for Harvard, Yale, or Princeton just yet. And don’t book a flight to Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, MIT, or Stanford either. You have more important things to think about now. The next four years of your life will be as personally important to you as your college years. </p>
<p>Focus on the here and now. If boarding school fills a void in your life, attend the one that suits you best. Work hard. Get involved. Enjoy yourself. There will be plenty of time for you to worry about college when you are a senior. And remember that you don’t need to attend an Ivy League school to be successful. There are lots of other great colleges, and most students at elite prep schools typically end up at one of them. </p>
<p>But, let’s not shortchange the employment benefits attending an Ivy League college can provide either. It’s far from a guarantee of success. But it’s very helpful to have a diploma from an Ivy if your child, for example, wants to work on Wall Street or in a prestigious consulting firm one day. It may also make it easier for your child to make a career change while they are still in their twenties or get accepted to graduate school. </p>
<p>The “life of the mind” is unquestionably a wonderful thing. But it’s not necessarily inconsistent with getting a high-paying job after graduating college. Moreover, many poor or middle class students must be practical about their educational plans.</p>
<p>Exeter didn’t “get” any students into Harvard. Those students (with and without help) got themselves into Harvard. Let’s get off this repetitive train with newbies trying to get into boarding school because they think it will make them “somebody” and get them “somewhere”.</p>
<p>If you’re eligible to get into Harvard, certainly that will happen regardless of where you go. And certainly --despite the “panache”-- some students will gain an enhanced ability over their local schools because they came from weak districts and correct the deficit on the boarding school campus. But what drives me crazy is when people assume that the stats of kids who got into a particular college means “they” will as well if only they can step into the magic IVY waters on a boarding school campus.</p>
<p>Well - if your family has a name on the building, you’ve got connections, you play a sport they desire or have some other attribute the school wants but you can’t possibly know about because it’s not published - you’ll get in. Students at ACRONYM schools “appear” to be more popular because those schools attract deep pocket families with the above advantages already, and a few others who have “hooks”. I know - I went to school with students whose parents owned or ran multinational corporations and/or were heavily involved in their country’s elite ruling parties. Then there are the handful of students who don’t fit that profile who also get in - but would be equally attractive if they’d stayed at home. Because they’re good kids and don’t have a “my stats and pedigree make me entitled” mentality.</p>
<p>YOU CAN NOT - suddenly turn a non-Ivy qualified kid into an Ivy qualified student in the face of 2-4 years no matter how much you rub that magic Alladin’s lamp. What may…MAY be happening is some schools populate their student bodies out of an applicant pile of students who have already demonstrated many of the attributes those schools find attractive - still doesn’t mean it will be you. You put on your application your parent’s college education, years, etc. You reveal your financial status. You “give” away a lot of profile information when you apply to those high schools. Acceptance is not a “blind” process.</p>
<p>So - as we said before (over and over and over and over gain) Go to boarding school because there is something you can get there you can’t get at home - be it the international exposure, the small classes, the opportunity to be independent, the challenging courses, or a combination of all that and more. </p>
<p>If you think going to a boarding school - even those at the top of the heap - is going to make you more attractive to an IVY you’re deluding yourself and just adding to the desperate crush of families who gamble they’ll be picked when the odds are that they won’t be. But it certainly makes the schools more attractive by virtue of those slim odds, right?</p>
<p>The work load at most of these schools–I know Exeter and Eton the best–can be at times staggering and if the only reason you are attending is the hope that you will get the brass ring, you will be very disappointed. A wonderful girl who graduated in recent years from one of these schools decided that as she wanted HYP so badly she would not participate in social activities and instead would swat away. She didn’t get accepted and wrote in the school newspaper that she knew now with as she put it “94.1% certainty” that she had made a huge mistake. Instead of seeing her school as an end to be relished, she merely saw it as a step and in the end missed out on both the experience of the school and, as it happened, the next step too. The fact is, even if she had been accepted at HYP she would at some point in her future have recognized that she had missed out regardless. </p>
<p>Carpe Diem. If you do get in and go to one of the schools don’t waste a minute.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>ouch</p>
<p>Jmilton has addressed the issue well. Yes, your high school, regardless of whether it is a boarding school, public school, catholic school or any type of school can be an advantage or disadvantage to you, depending on how YOU do in that environment. If you go to a HADES school and can be at the top of the class there, you will be at an advantage in getting into selective schools. But being at the top of that heap is not easy. You are with a lot of preselected kids who are every bit if not more able than you. I’ve known some kids who were straight A students, miss an A in many courses at a rigorous Independent school, and a B there, even a B+ does not an A make at the public school. So someone with just about all B+s at HADES type schools are NOT going to get into Harvard even with near perfect SATs. </p>
<p>Don’t get fooled by the high % of those who do get accepted from these schools to top colleges. A lot of legacies, development, celebrities and connections in play, and you may not know who is who. I did get to see a “book” that showed Naviance type data for such a school, but there were extra codes in there for the above specials, and wow…lots of asteriks. And “other” asteriks meaning other factors in play that can’t be defined. If you are walking in with zero asteriks, your chances are not with that crowd’s.</p>
<p>“YOU CAN NOT - suddenly turn a non-Ivy qualified kid into an Ivy qualified student in the face of 2-4 years no matter how much you rub that magic Alladin’s lamp”</p>
<p>A lot of kids qualified for Ivies don’t get in every year, that’s the nature of competitive admissions, right? So somebody could be close to ‘competitive enough’, but 4 years of better teaching, more course opportunities, better counselling and more EC opportunities could help them just enough to get in to an Ivy.</p>