<p>Choate is a great school, as are many discussed on the prep school board. My motivation for the post above was to some parents to stop cherry picking stats - especially matriculation and awards, etc… The “my school is better than your school” and “top tier” arguments based on the limited available data is specious at best.</p>
<p>Matriculation is one of the worst (albeit popular) because the specific quantitative and qualitative data that lead to those numbers are not known and may not apply to a specific parent’s child. Hence, parents who berate their children and the boarding schools because their children fell in the 70% subset of students who don’t matriculate to an IVY or HYPM. They came into the process for the wrong reason.</p>
<p>There are so many boarding schools to choose from, but when narrowed down, so few that may fit a specific child, I wonder why some people have such anxiety over whether a student got into a “top tier” or not.</p>
<p>“Top tier” is as much determined by the students they select (and the support offered once accepted) as by the popularity contest that drives a huge influx of applicants into their admissions pools, many of whom will be turned away.</p>
<p>Benley: I much prefer your criteria to Forbes! I’d add student retention stats. too, though probably under one of your five categories rather than on its own. And, of course, expand college matriculation beyond the Ivies/MIT.</p>
<p>I wish more schools publish their attrition rate or graduation rate. Official data is simply unavailable. As for college matriculation, refer to Lvillgrad’s “top schools” and “strong schools” stats in addition to or instead of the Ivies data. Thanks to him, we have the stats for a wide range of schools.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it also be more useful to know how many were accepted verses matriculated? I noticed that DA put it in their viewbook and I found it fascinating. Believe it or not, not everyone who gets into Harvard ends up choosing to attend. It’s easy to see what schools are considered “safeties” by comparing number accepted to number matriculated.</p>
<p>Of course the debate will rage endlessly until it is known how many APPLY.</p>
<p>I can’t help but feel Exeter’s ranking was unjust.</p>
<p>Exeter had a 44% matriculation rate to elite schools, not 29%. They counted American Ivy Leagues, not schools like Oxford and Cambridge. They counted on statistics, and not things like opportunties and social aspects-- Andover and Exeter and the rest of the HADES would have been MUCH higher up on that list.</p>
<p>neato, Harvard’s yield is in high 70’s in general, so it’s hardly a trend to turndown Harvard. What you see with Deerfield can easily be HYPMS cross-admits, but that’s not the point. The point is that if a top tier school is excellent in the first four areas I listed above then they shouldn’t do poorly in the fifth, which is college matriculation. Call it causation or correlation, if a school takes in smart, motivated and academically well prepared kids and outputs graduates that are not competitive in the admission to the most selective collges, you’d wonder what happened and can it still be called a top tier school.</p>
<p>On the flip side, that also isn’t an indicator of competitive. For instance, my husband made the point that if a student got a full ride at a non-IVY college, and partial aid at an IVY, the family economics may dictate a different choice. Doesn’t make that choice less desirable because it didn’t have a specific name. Many colleges have strong alumni networks and great academic departments. We’re just “trained” to see IVY’s as the ultimate - which they often are not.</p>
<p>Likewise, what happens if students don’t “want” to go to an IVY. That is not an indicator of a school’s academic preparation.</p>
<p>Which is why there are too many variables not available to those reading the stats for them to be more than a cursory way to compare schools (and a shaky one at that). </p>
<p>So the “outputs grads that aren’t competitive” is not accurate. Most BS talked about on this board outputs students who are highly competitive because they enter that way. Whether or not they get into a top choice school, or even care to apply is another matter entirely.</p>
<p>But for the record, colleges are also trying to build diverse campuses and wouldn’t be very popular if 100% of their population came from the same narrowly selective boarding schools. So as with the BS process - not every bright, academically accomplished student who applies to a “Harvard” is going to get a spot. That kind of homogeneity is not desirable.</p>
<p>So use the stats verbatim at your peril. But holding too much stock in them may lead parents to choose the absolute wrong environment for their student.</p>
<p>Oooh, Spence is on the list
I love saying this because my school and Spence have formed a bond and students at my school (which is one of the best all girls’ private school in the country) offers an exchange to Spence.</p>
<p>To your husband’s point, Exie: my niece (who wants to be a geneticist) was admitted this year to Johns Hopkins, Y and P with no financial aid, and to Trinity on a full scholarship. It would have put her parents into years of debt to try to pull off one of the Ivies, especially in the face of eventual medical school costs. So, Trinity it is. I have no doubt that this choice will prove little hindrance to her happiness and aspirations.</p>
<p>“So as with the BS process - not every bright, academically accomplished student who applies to a “Harvard” is going to get a spot.”</p>
<p>More to the point . . . MOST will not:</p>
<p>Harvard admits ~ 1665 students</p>
<p>Last year’s applicants:
2,150 scored 800 on their SAT verbal test
more than 3,200 scored an 800 on the SAT math
almost 3,200 were valedictorians of their high school classes. </p>
<p>Sorry for the necro, but I think the main issue with people’s consternation on this thread is that most people on such threads would obviously be shooting for a boarding school since where you live geographically has no bearing on a boarding school since you stay there. As a result, they are saddened when they do not see the schools they are obsessed with (HADES as it’s called) not at the very top. In fact, however, unrelated to the ranking criteria, a school such as Trinity provides a stronger education and generally better environment than many boarding schools such as Exeter, at least in the humanities. Sure there are some legacies, but Trinity students from my experience are surprisingly unfettered from their time and place and some are great, pure thinkers. And if you’re good, you’ll get into a good college, especially with Trinity’s rock solid reputation with college admissions.</p>
<p>Hey I haven’t really been in this thread but I’m wondering why Nobles was ranked higher than Deerfield. No offense to those who go to Nobles, but Deerfield is supposed to be at the same caliber of Exeter/Andover.</p>
