<p>From what I have read, moral fiber is extremely important in choosing applicants for top-ranked schools. In most cases, it is nearly impossible for ADCOMs to get a genuine sense of what the kid is like personally if the recommendations seem skewed, inconsistent, or simply don't reveal very much. Although it is stereotyping, if you pick a kid from a religious school and a kid from a public school out of a hat the chances are that the religious kid is going to have greater moral fiber. You can argue all that you want with the statement but by-in-large it is true due to religious convictions.</p>
<p>Furthermore: looking at a few schools....
Dartmouth:3% of class from religious schools
Penn: 4% from religious schools
MIT: 9% from religious schools
Princeton: near 11% from religious schools</p>
<p>I don't know if it is just me, but 9 and 11% seem quite high when you think about the proportions of parochial to private to public schools. (Private are really in a class of their own though). Would it be fair to say that at some schools your chances increase by going to a religious school?</p>
<p>Or it could just be that the school prepares them for getting in…</p>
<p>Nearly 75% of the people I know from religious schools aren’t even the religion of the school (and a good chunk of them are atheist or agnostic) and despise all of the religion classes they have to take. And I know a lot of people at religious private schools.
Also, being religious doesn’t make you a good person; there are plenty of people who are religious that certainly don’t have “moral fiber.”</p>
<p>Remember, correlation does not prove causation.</p>
<p>Now mind you, there are plenty of religious teens who do fit the bill of having “moral fiber.”</p>
<p>75%!? Also considering friends I have at 4 Catholic schools in my area give similar statistics. What credibility do you have to make that accusation?</p>
<p>The people I know. Certainly a good source.
3/4 isn’t an insane number.</p>
<p>Also, I never said that they condemn the faith; rather they don’t agree with the teachings of whatever religious affiliation it is, and their religion classes are pure drivel.</p>
<p>However, note that I live in an area where private schooling (religious or non) is the norm, rather than public. And yes, I live in the U.S.</p>
<p>But to stress again, correlation does not prove causation, so your claim has no stance of fact at all.</p>
<p>My school has had a consistent number of kids, without any special ECs or abilites, get accepted on a consistent basis for no apparent reason. Their stats are much less impressive than the kids that I see posting that they got rejected, yet these kids are getting accepted.</p>
<p>For example, a kid with a 29 ACT and 7/205 who played 2 varsity sports (non recruited) and had a little bit of volunteer work was accepted to Yale. We have complete surprises like that every single year although he was an exceptional surprise</p>
<p>I agree with Johnson181 – correlation does not mean causation (common fallacy, that is).</p>
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<p>And you’ve taken a survey of some sort? And you’re sure nobody is lying? (Come on, people constantly lie about their faith for fear of condemnation – even more so at religious schools, I suspect.)</p>
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<p>We can all cite anecdotal evidence of Weak Student X getting into Elite College Y, for reasons unknown. It isn’t specific to your school, or to any school, really.</p>
<p>There is nothing shockingly religious about either Princeton or MIT (well maybe Princeton). If anything, I do think that it would be a fair assumption to say that your chances coming from a parochial school are better when applying to those schools than to Dartmouth or Penn but there are so many variables involved. perhaps the ADCOMs are predominately Christian and subconsciously sympathize Christian students (since just about every religious school in the states is related to Christianity. I mean I live right down the road from Dearborn, the highest concentration of Muslims in the USA, and they don’t even have an islamic high school.) It would be interesting to see some figures from other top schools, especially UVA, UMICH,Cal, and UCLA to see the benchmark. I know I was shocked to see that ND had 43% of students attending Catholic high schools while still maintaining an ACT 75 percentile of 34. Parochial schools are no joke.</p>