<p>Also, @JustOneDad, if only 1-2 kids from where you are are going to the most selective schools every few years, then kids from your neck of the woods are definitely not being kept out because of geographic diversity reasons. If anything, they’re bing helped by that.</p>
<p>@TheGFG, actually, many of the elite privates favor the elite high schools in their area: <a href=“What High School Communities Does Harvard Favor? - Harvard University - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/715657-what-high-school-communities-does-harvard-favor.html</a></p>
<p>1 out of 20 Harvard freshmen (roughly 83) come from 1 of 7 high schools (so an average of about 12 per HS):
<a href=“Northwest Indiana News - Chicago Tribune”>http://posttrib.chicagotribune.com/news/24598924-418/high-schools-play-role-in-ivy-league-acceptance.html#.VI9T5DHF8To</a></p>
<p>And finally, while some colleges may first screen by region (I haven’t heard of such a practice, though), some definitely do not.</p>
<p>IMO, people tend to be pretty myopic so compare mostly with their neighbors, but in reality, applicants are competing with the whole US (and the whole world to some extent).</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan I agree–we get around 5 Stanford acceptances a year, which I’m pretty sure is above average (although not nearly as high as those statistics). Another private school in the area gets around 15 Stanford acceptances a year (which honestly annoys me, because it’s just a school filled with absurdly rich kids–the tuition is over 30k per year).</p>
<p>Yes, I agree that kids from my neck of the woods have an admissions advantage because of selection based on geographic diversity. However, once there is even ONE, the selection pressure goes down for the rest. What happens is that it moves up the freeway to another county, where another ONE is taken and then out to Wyoming where someone who grew up in the middle of the scrub is taken and so on. if admissions were blindly applied, you’d have a huge preponderance of the students from the big cities and the elite private preparatory schools. This is what they are trying to avoid.</p>
<p>Why hasn’t it occurred to some people that the reason the main “elite” colleges have geographic diversity is because marketing (not just from the schools themselves—I include things like the USNWR lists in this) ensures an applicant pool of spectacular students from across the country. I’ve seen data (incomplete data, but still) that leads me to believe that a Wyoming student who gets into a top-listed college is just as impressive as a New York student—there <em>are</em> smart kids in flyover territory too, after all.</p>
<p>You are wildly extrapolating above. No one has said or implied anything of the kind. The point was that if they wanted to, HYP could save time (and FA money in the case of certain high schools) by snapping up almost the entire senior class at some prep schools because the kids are that good. But they don’t do that, do they? They don’t take more than 12 or so. Is that because there ARE only 12 who deserve it? I don’t know, but schools like Stuy seem to be chock full of stellar kids. </p>
<p>Interesting underlying assumption there about the quality of prep school graduates as compared to the poor plebes coming out of, say, Wyoming’s public schools…</p>
<p>Also interesting underlying assumption that all stellar kids would choose HYP. . . .</p>
<p>Look, I went to a HS similar to Stuy. There were some stellar kids there. There were some not-so-stellar kids there. Of the stellar kids, some went to HYPSM. Others chose big merit money at another elite university. Still others chose LACs.</p>
<p>
Is it your assumption? It isn’t mine.</p>
<p>@JustOneDad: Didn’t say it was. I was directly replying to @TheGFG.</p>
<p>We are poor public school folks, actually, so I have no direct knowledge of the caliber of students at top prep schools. But I’ve been reading CC for a lot of years now and via posts on threads like this, have gotten the impression that there are private schools and public magnets which produce upwards of 50 NMF’s per year, and 100 or so Ivy admits. Our public school is considered very good, but we see only 8-10 NMF’s and around 10-15 Ivy admits. Using my knowledge that the private schools in our area only graduate 50 or 60 kids in a class, I made the assumption that at certain top prep high schools, almost the entire class could be HYP et. al caliber. All of that was the basis for my explanation of why people think they are competing against their own classmates for a spot at a particular Ivy/elite out of the maximum allotted number permitted for any one high school. The idea was that some 30 or 40 kids could be qualified stats-wise for a particular elite, but no more than 12 or so are ever accepted. </p>
<p>No one is making any implicit assumptions of where said students want to or should attend. Why do these threads always trend toward classist accusations and Ivy-bashing?</p>
<p>I actually think that many people who observe the private school admissions scene don’t realize the mechanics of what goes on there- the college counselors work hard - and aggressively- to eliminate the “bunching” phenomenon which happens at public HS’s (even the elite type public high schools which do very well in college admissions.)</p>
<p>Your kid is at a private school in New England and wants to go to Williams? Great. Except if the counselor knows who the other kids applying to Williams are, and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that your kid isn’t getting in over those kids. So the counselor presents a fantastic list of Bowdoin (also “hot” with the same set of kids), Bates, Skidmore, and then adds in Beloit and Lawrence and Reed and St. Olaf.</p>
<p>Kid decides he’s not that interested in Williams (i.e. can’t get in) and ends up happily at his new first choice- Lawrence- and everyone wins.</p>
<p>At our local public HS you can have 20 kids applying to U Penn as their first choice and three get accepted. Now 17 kids feel like the “game is rigged”. 20 kids apply to Brandeis- it’s the first choice of three of them, and something of a safety school for 10 of them, and the other 7 are just applying to keep their parents off their back that they don’t anything between Harvard and Hofstra selectivity wise.</p>
<p>So the three kids- who have acceptable stats at or around the midpoint at Brandeis- don’t get in or are waitlisted. And the 17 who get in have interest in Brandeis ranging from “I’ll go there if I have to” to “not in a million years”.</p>
<p>This doesn’t happen (or at least, doesn’t happen frequently) at the private schools. It’s not because they’ve got an elitist attitude that their students are special snowflakes, or because they’ve got the Adcom’s on speed dial. It’s because they see it as their job to get the entire senior class “placed” into a college which represents a kids first, second or third choice. And if that means teaching a kid from Boston about Rice, or teaching a kid from Menlo Park about Middlebury- they do it. It’s their job to work with geographic diversity and the kids inherent strengths and to create a “best outcome” scenario. </p>
<p>We see the questions all the time from kids on CC- e.g. “which is more prestigious, Pitt or BU?”</p>
<p>Private school college counselors would answer that question by figuring out which U had the programs the kid was interested in, AND which one the kid was admittable to before answering!</p>
<p>Most here do not care a bit about UG, most around my D. are in Grad. Schools and that was a plan. D. never applied to any Ivy / Elite and most of her friends were very cool about them also, with the exception of few, who actually never talked about Grad. School. I believe that Ivy / Elite hype is CA and N. East thing, Midwest people do not care, but many above average kids are planning for the Grad. Schools. D. had not problem getting into top 20s Med. School after graduating from in-state public where she was on full tuition Merit, and that part is also a hot topic here. Nobody wants to pay tuition, especially after hard work for getting to be eligible for huge Merit awards.</p>
<p>@TheGFG: Poor assumption. My observation is that the proportion of NMF’s and number attending Ivy+Ivy-equivalent/elite universities is fairly consistent across HS’s (excluding schools that are favored by certain universities like Boston Latin fairly obviously is by Harvard). Just because a private HS in your area has a graduating class of 50 doesn’t mean that all 50 are Ivy/equivalent material if there are only 5 NMF’s in that class.</p>
<p>People like cobrat have posted stats about their high schools which seem to indicate that some prep schools do indeed have a very large number of Ivy acceptances/NMF’s/national science fair winners, etc.–kids who are eligible stats-wise for elite schools and who ultimately are accepted–just not all to the SAME elite, since each one only takes a dozen or so from a particular high school. Or so it is assumed. </p>
<p>I never said the assumption was correct; I was only explaining why people think that way apart from the un-becoming reasons some have proposed upthread, naming cluelessness or unflattering prestige-seeking. Also, blossom explains that there IS competition on the school level as far as how the GC guides the student away from certain choices in favor of who he believes is better-qualified.</p>
<p>@TheGFG, you “never said the assumption was correct” but you “made the assumption that at certain top prep high schools, almost the entire class could be HYP et al caliber”.</p>
<p>That’s not a contradiction?</p>
<p>BTW, the way I interpreted @blossom’s post is that <em>not</em> all 100% of the kids at top prep schools are HYP caliber, and the guidance counselors do a good job of guiding those kids to other choices that they would still be happy at.</p>
<p>I agree that GCs at top private schools try to find “fit” for their kids and not just let them apply to the top schools. At my D’s high school, the process is that the parent and student fill out a questionnaire and one of the questions is about why a particular school is on the list (legacy, locale, etc.). So, if the parent is an alumni, they know they are going to lose the battle for that school, whether the kid has a shot or not. Though the will give it a good try to convince them not to apply if they don’t think they’re appropriate. But, if the parent decides to go that route, then its their app fee down the drain.</p>
<p>After schools that are non-negotiable on the list (if any), the counselor pulls together a list of schools based upon what the student says they want. My D (as a Yale legacy) had Yale on her list, but she also had Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Emory, Tufts, Amherst, Colby, Brown. Kids were not allowed to apply to more than 8-10 schools. It was policy that the GC Office would not send out more than 8 transcripts, unless a special circumstance existed. That made the kids hone their list very well.</p>
<p>As a public school kid myself in the dark ages, I know about that process too. I am sure my counselor barely knew my name.</p>
<p>Yes, not all those kids are HYP caliber. Half a generation ago, those kids made Denison, Lehigh, Lafayette, Hamilton top choices for the non HYP crowd. Now that those schools are increasingly popular and harder to get into, the New England GC’s are venturing further and doing a much better job of due diligence “discovering” (tongue in cheek, none of these schools needed discovering!) other options.</p>
<p>I think the public school GC’s are drowning trying to get the transcripts out on time, plus deal with their roles as social workers, probation officers, etc. So I don’t fault them for not waking up one day and saying, “Gee, where do smart kids in Missouri go to college and can I learn anything from those kids?” But at a lot of high schools with a big cohort of high achieving seniors, it often means that kids feel that if they can’t get into one of the very exclusive, single digit type colleges, their options are limited. Which is a shame.</p>
<p>I recently told a kid who is NOT going to get into MIT or Cornell (I think it was a waste of two application fees but I’m not his GC) and likely not getting into RPI that he should look at MST in Rolla Missouri and he looked at me like I have two heads. I think this is the message that is not getting out in a lot of public high schools. And it’s not just the Coasts. Kids in St. Louis don’t want to hear about Goucher and kids in Texas don’t want to hear about Emory and kids in Minneapolis don’t want to hear about Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>Hey kids- spread out a little!!! Yes, transportation costs need to be factored in to the equation and I’m not insensitive (as a parent) to wanting your kids close by. But if you’re deciding between a local college which doesn’t meet your kids educational needs, vs. one which does, which you can afford (if that’s the case) but happens to be further out- at least consider it? Kick the tires?</p>
<p>So are you all saying there don’t exist high schools where 50 kids or so a year get accepted to the Ivies? My mistake then. I must have wrongly recalled the posts.</p>