<p>It depends on the specific situations and a bunch of "what ifs" as to whether your chances are harder. Although I do caution people who think that applying from schools like Exeter are a sure ticket for the ivies, there are certainly many advantages to going to a top school. How the advantages play out depends on the individual situation. SOme kids would do better in anonymity, others with close attention. Sometimes those famous prep school refs say a bit too much that would not be mentioned in a large public school. It also depends upon which public school you would have attended. In any case, at this point it is fruitless to dwell on the "what ifs". You stand a great chance of getting into a selective college being in the top quintile of a prep school like yours.</p>
<p>bummmmmmmmp</p>
<p>Prep school will never lower your chances of making a top school.</p>
<p>Let's see why Prep/Independent schools rock:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Excellent college counseling - counselors actually write recs that say substantive things about you. Kids at pub schools often end up with generic recs not written by the main college counselor. Your college counselor also has a lot of connections and can personally vouch for you when admissions officers call and have questions or concerns about accepting students. Persuasion is key to getting a lot of students into top schools, and college counselors do that by knowing their students well and advocating for them. At a public school, this would be impossible. </p></li>
<li><p>Good classes and environments - you learn more. This also produces great teacher recs.</p></li>
<li><p>Reputation - Prep schools have a reputation for having higher grading standards. Being in the top 20% means that you're a fairly strong student, and having all those APs and ECs shows it too.</p></li>
<li><p>No Rank/No weighting - this encourages students to not worry about competing and also not worry about overloading on AP classes. APs are generally boring and standard whereas smaller seminar classes can be some of the best learning experiences ever because they delve deeply into topics and promote learning past the superficial level. Some of the best courses I've taken at Collegiate were non-AP seminars.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Even if you don't make HYPS it's not the end of your life. I would have been perfectly happy had I not gotten into Princeton and would be perfectly willing to go to many other schools. College is more about fit than rank -- too often kids lose sight of that.</p>
<p>I go to Riverdale Country School and it is a great independent school, but whenever I look at the list of acceptees at their various colleges and I can't believe they all had 4.0 GPAs to have 4 or 5 kids out of 120 go to one Ivy and have more than 1/2 to 3/4 the grade go to Ivies and top 25 schools. mzhang23, how are Collegiate's acceptances.</p>
<p>Also, is the curve for a black at an independent school even larger than at a normal public school?</p>
<p>Does anyone know about The Grier School in particular?</p>
<p>Pixie</p>
<p>nope, never heard of it. good luck with apps though!</p>
<p>"mzhang23, how are Collegiate's acceptances"</p>
<p>Collegiate's matriculation list:</p>
<p>Each graduating class has about 50 students.</p>
<p>i wouldn't worry too much about whether or not it would be harder...(i go to a top 50 private...) my gpa is considerably lower than if i went to my local public (and i would also be in more honors/advanced classes) but i think it all evens out in the end. i also feel like i am going to be better prepared for college when it comes around (i did a program this summer at cornell...i thought it was fine and a little bit easier than some of the classes i take/have taken while others were freaking out about all the reading)</p>
<p>and in terms of getting into collge...this is off of my school's website:</p>
<p>78 students graduated in 2003; all went to college
Schools with highest number of 03 graduates: Duke, Harvard, Kenyon, Middlebury, Penn, Princeton
SAT Average (Class of 03): 1373</p>
<p>the only problem i could concievably see of is that it might be harder to get into state schools because of the focus on numbers/stats.</p>
<p>Hey, the girl across the hall from me went to Riverdale Country School!</p>
<p>state schools will still know that private schools are harder, and will take it into consideration, i dont think it will be any harder for you at a state school.</p>
<p>"state schools will still know that private schools are harder, and will take it into consideration, i dont think it will be any harder for you at a state school."</p>
<p>The problem is that oftentimes priv schools are not well known by state schools. East coast prep schools aren't really that well known by the UCs and Stanford, so relatively few people go there because of the lack of good relationships between schools and the fact that they won't recognize going to a priv school means even the smartest kids might not have 1 ranking and 4.0 gpa along with 13 aps.</p>
<p>yeah. stanford hates our school. for 6 years in a row no one got in, and this past year 3 got in and 1 is attending. although it'll be probably be another 6 years before stanford accepts someone from our school again...i've also never heard of anyone attending (or even being accepted) to a UC.</p>
<p>hmm I heard of this school before which would mean its quite prestigous :)</p>
<p>what does being selected for membership to the cum laude society from a competiitive provate school mean for one's chances?</p>
<p>hey man schools love prep schools.. such as yours. everyone knows about you guys! i wouldn't worry too much, and yeah.. i'd' think it's better to get that great education and get lower rank, cuz face it.. all these ppl who are at the top right now are most likely not going to be @ ivies and top schools... so it'd have to happen eventually</p>
<p>cum laude? i'm not sure about your school system but for exeter, there are two categories, early cum laude, and regular cum laude. early is decided in the middle of fall term (octoberish) and includes the top 5%. this is what has the most influence for colleges because this is what they actually see. regular cum laude is announced only in the spring, a few days before graduation, so colleges have no idea. it's also only the top 15-20%. the only complaint so far, is that it takes no account of years at the academy and no account of course load. for example, this year, one guy who got inducted early was only here for one year (he joined as a junior) and since he had already taken US History and sciences (traditionally known as the harder courses), he took math and the other 4 courses were arts (easy A). totally not fair but its been like this for years. in the early cum laude inductees for the class of 2003, over 1/2 of them entered as juniors (two-year seniors).</p>
<p>buuuuuuump. ^.^</p>
<p>for us early cum laude tends to be more the 4-yr seniors because it is a difficult adjustment for most 2-yr seniors to make and they usually don't do well enough in the fall. i actually like the way they do cum laude at exeter because you guys can use it for early applications. andover's early is top10% and released in february, so it can only be used for regular.</p>
<p>Your private school offers you college counseling. In California public schools are mandated to have one meeting with sophmores and their parents about college. Most counselors have to monitor several hundred students and are focused on behavior problems or making sure students meet graduation requirements. They have little time to get to know any college admission officers outside of the nearest state school or community college. The experienced counselor from our local high-school had never heard of the Profile financial aid form.</p>
<p>Most of the advice I gave my own children about college came from visiting the counseling web sites at private schools.</p>
<p>Outside of wealthier school districts, most public school students have never heard of early decision. There is an assembly freshman year to tell students to be involved in ec.s but no one really follows up on them. Many low incomed households require older children to come home and babysit right after school reducing their involvment in clubs, teams and the rest.</p>
<p>There are few family or friends connected to college admission offices. We have to drive four hours to see a road tour of admission officers in a crowded room with only sound bite discussions about their schools , while the private schools had them come to school during the day for scheduled meetings. </p>
<p>It is unusual and an event for many public high schools when a student is accepted into an Ivy League school. It makes the paper when they get into Harvard, Yale or Princeton. </p>
<p>Non of our local high schools offerred classes to prepare for the SATs, although private companies exist they are beyond the price range of most students. We had an English teacher that pushed vocabulary and she switched to a private school after her first successes were noticed.</p>
<p>Many students have more than 30 students in their smallest class. Teachers who have 175 students per year are asked to write recommendations and sometimes write shallow appraisals of a student they hardly remember. This may be why the state colleges no longer require letters of reccommendation.</p>
<p>Too often, a student will take a course with a teacher that has never taught it before; this includes AP classes. Your class ranking might have been the top 5% of your freshman class but as the dropouts leave you find your self dropping in rank like a rock in water.</p>
<p>One year due to budget cuts our local high school dropped German, leaving students to fend for themselves to meet the four year language requirement. Speech, debate and mock trial teams don't exist at most of the public schools in my district, I think only one high school out of 8 consistently has a team and it is funded by a few focused parents.</p>
<p>Add to that: broken or no school lockers, walking through metal detectors to class, the lack of working bathrooms, textbooks and overcrowded campuses that many public school students experience and then think about your question. </p>
<p>Accordingly, I don't think going to a prep school makes your chances harder.</p>
<p>I went to an underperforming public high school, graduated first in my class, and got accepted to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Dartmouth. Now I'm typing to you from my laptop at Tressider Union near the Main Quad, enjoying a cup of coffee and watching a black squirrel scurrying around the trunk of a well manicured palm tree. In high school I hardly had to work or lift a finger. </p>
<p>Oh, people from Exeter here don't do better than anyone else in their classes. All they do is complain when it rains and say, "Oh man I came to Stanford for the weather and now I get this? Brrr..." Since college is not about grunt work and is mostly all about natural smarts, my public high school education served me well enough. I am getting 3 A's and 1 B+. </p>
<p>If I had gone to a prep school, I'd probably end up at a lower ivy like Penn or Brown or Columbia. Plus I would have wasted all that money I could have spent on tuition. That would suck big time.</p>