@Golfgr8 Haha love it! Your poetry is a fun little gem to happen upon 
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To expand on, and likely repeat, what others have already written - the reason that āeliteā private BSs have a lot of kids going into Ivies is that they are, essentially, accepting students from the exact same pool as the Ivies.
Admissions to boarding schools looks a lot like Ivy admissions, including legacy preference, recruited athletes (yes, they recruit athletes out of middle school), many kids of wealth and privilege who are also pretty good academically, kids of super wealthy donors, etc.
The other half or so are a mix of kids who are in the top 1% of their middle school, including URMs, etc.
Moreover, and most importantly, acceptance rates to āeliteā boarding schools is about the same as acceptance rates to āeliteā colleges. Realistic admission rates to these āeliteā high schools for unhooked applicants is around 5%-10%.
So, from where you are now, your chances at attending an Ivy are no different, whether you apply for an āeliteā prep school now or not.
The only difference is that you will also go through the awful college admissions wringer as a middle school student, but still have to do it again when you graduate.
If you REALLY want to attend one of the āeliteā prep schools, because you want to attend such a high school, it may be worth going through the admissions wringer to do so. However, going through that pain now, because you think that it may reduce the pain of the admissions process to colleges sometime in the future is not a smart idea.
While White students are still overrepresented among the students at āeliteā colleges and private high schools, it is better. However, income-wise, it hasnāt changes much. A large proportion of Wealthy White students have been replaced by wealthy Asian students, and high SES URMs are also more common.
At Hotchkiss, for example, 37% of the student body receives financial aid. We can assume that all families which make $150,000 or less require some financial aid (tuition $64,000). According to their own statistics, these make up 58.1% from all the students whose families are receiving aid, or 58.2% of 37%. That means that 21.5% of their students body have an income of less than $150,000, or the bottom 80% of the population by income.
So around 78.5% of Hotchkiss students are from the top 25% by income
For Choate, 32% receive aid. Choate writes that 111 families receiving aid make less than $150,000. There are 850 students at Choate, So around 13% - 26% of the students (assuming that lower income family has TWO kids at Choate) make less than $150,000.
So At least 74% of the families at Choate are in the top 80% by income.
Phillips Andover is less forthcoming about their financial aid, but state that 46% of their students receive some financial aid. Since their tuition is $48K-$62K, that means that 54% of the kids at Andover come from families which can afford to pay that much money without any support.
Loomis Chaffee has 117 families which make less than $160,000. There are 726 Students, so 16%-32% make less than $160,000.
That means that at least 68% of the kids at Chaffee come from the top 20% by income.
I could go on, but it is pretty clear that these high school very clearly represent the wealthy, albeit a more diverse set of wealthy.
Moreover, this is identical to the patterns that are seen in the āeliteā colleges.
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My understanding is that these days the percentage of white students at boarding schools far exceeds the percentages of white students at elite universities, certainly the Ivies, where whites are not at all overrepresented. While whites are about 57% of the U.S. population, they made up less than 40% of the most recent entering classes at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, etc.
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Interesting stats, I put qualifiers in my post (āmay no longer entirelyā) because my impressions were merely from personal experience and a quick google of Harvard stats 
I also wrote that progress has been slow. But there has been progress.
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The percent of non-Hispanic Whites among Gen-Zs is 52%, and they are, on average, not as wealthy as Asians, or at least Asians from the ethnicities who make up so high a percent of incoming classes.
I think that progress in income diversity wonāt really happen, so long as the cost of education at these schools remains high. They simply cannot afford to have more than a small minority of students who arenāt paying tuition.
These high schools require as much money as colleges do, and are much much more reliant of the money that they get from parents than colleges are. While colleges, especially research universities, are making money from things like royalties, patents, etc, high schools are dependent of tuition and donations. To keep these coming in at a rate that allows them to provide an expensive education, they need to have a large majority of their students paying full and most of the tuition, and be from populations who are wealthy enough to donate good amounts of money.
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The schools can charge the money they do because they offer a product people want. The people who can pay for it are by definition wealthy (except those who receive financial aid - which the wealthy folks pay for, too).
I donāt think thereās anything wrong or shocking about the existence of āeliteā colleges or high schools or clothes or cheese. Wanting more and better is human nature. It is an inherent paradox - if everyone has access to what is elite, it is no longer elite. Something else will come in and replace it as even more elite.
The reason many families choose boarding school is because local public school options stink. The prep school product is superior than the public school product for most students, imo. I wish more students could have access to it. All kids deserve to have optimal education. It will always be more available to the wealthy, though. How wealth and race track in this country is not new, but elite/wealthy institutions are actively grappling with the paradox of providing the elite education to a wide swath of people and keeping the elite product people are chasing.
But that discussion diverges from the OPās question about which boarding schools have more success at getting students into Ivies. The answer is that the premise of that question (that the boarding schools are better at getting students into Ivies) is unfounded these days and the data is muddy because of legacies, urms, and recruited athletes.
Personally, I wouldnāt dissuade someone from applying to boarding school or an elite college because of a perceived āmiseryā to the application process. We didnāt find the process miserable (juryās still out on college apps). Apply because you want to go.
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Sorry my comment referred back to my comment on Harvard, not boarding schools, about which I know next to nothing.
I would comment on the word āplacementā in the OPās headline. That reflects a reality from the turn of the century to about 1965, but has not been the case since then- and is certainly not the case now.
Donāt want to argue if itās just a semantical shortcut, but if itās a reflection of the OPās understanding of how admissions works, itās a dangerous path to walk down. The days when the Groton Headmaster made his phone calls to āplaceā his boys at Harvard, Yale, etc. are long gone. These colleges take who they want to take; they do a deep dive into magnet public high schools in low income areas where high potential HS kids go; they are acutely aware of first gen and access issues. When I interviewed for Brown I knew that every ādiamond in the roughā I met was going to displace a BWRK or prep school kid- didnāt disturb my sleep at all. Incredible and intellectual kid from a rural town in Kentucky who was the first in his family to graduate HS vs. another squash and tennis player from Hogwarts? Iām good with that.
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I agree - my point was only that applying for the purpose of having an easier time in college applications is not worthwhile.
Looking at the prep school admissions threads here, there are plenty of middle school kids who have augmented their normal middle school angst with the stress and anxiety normally associated with college admissions.
I would guess that most applicants and their parents are not like that, but the OP seems to be such an applicant.
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I think there are similar angst-y dynamics at play in both systems. For the prep school version (for better or worse) it is more personal since everyone is interviewed. It is also the first time most applicants deal with rejection. For some that rejection is devastating. No doubt. But often, that devastation has a silver lining.
For us, it served as a kinder, gentler dry run for college apps. The work that goes evaluating schools, writing essays, rejection, all of it. Thatās a huge upside to the angst. Kiddo has a little context and perspective. Also, having already experienced dorm life, he has a better sense of what he wants out of a college community and living situation.
But if you go into either prep or college apps assuming you are destined for admission and canāt handle rejection, then the resulting misery could be a huge problem.
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All good points. Also, love your avatarā¦
Donāt Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus!
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Choate is known to be a feeder to yale altho loomis isnt known to be a feeder to any t20s. There are alot of noncompetitive hsās in the northeast that are well funded though. honestly a non-competitive public hs thats in an upper middle class area is better than a boarding school unless its a seriously ranked private school just b/c you have the opportunities near you but they arent readily presented so the majority of kids wont know about them or do them
Vroom vroom vroomy vroom vroom!
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Choate is not a feeder to any college. As mentioned over and over in this forum, those days are long over. Though it may appear that Yale is overrepresented in Choateās matriculation stats, those heightened numbers are affected by the number of Yale faculty children who attend due to proximity to New Haven.
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this is equivalent to the same bland answer that colleges give when people ask if legacy or ED has an effect on admissionā¦ the data means less than what real life does. you could make that excuse for yale but can you say the same for columbia and cornell? I have many friends that go to loomis and choate and they say differently
also keep in mind my PUBLIC school has connections to uchicago with a ~20% acceptance rate (even including those who are WAY underqualified) according to naviance data because we have alumni at their admissions office. if my public school has connections to a t10ā¦ it would be very reasonable to surmise choate would have way more
One doesnāt need to āmake excuses.ā The problem is you cannot draw meaningful conclusions from looking at total number of matriculations in isolation, without considering number of applicants, acceptance rate, and quality of applicants (including hooks).
For example, you mentioned Cornell. Choate averages ~5 Cornell matriculations per year. How many of those 5 kids were hooked with a great application (both stats and non-stats) who would have likely been admitted had they instead applied from a non-feeder HS? How many more than those 5 kids applied to Cornell, had top stats + a great application, yet were still rejected? How does the acceptance rate compare to the average acceptance rate among similarly qualified applicants (for example, acceptance rate among applicants with similar stats + similar hook stats)?
Looking at matriculation totals in isolation doesnāt prove whether the HS name/connections helps with admission. Instead you need more information to make such a claim.
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āReal lifeā from 2011-2015 while our son attended supports my post. The CC office was quite upfront about those stats. I stand by my statement.
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Here is one additional plus of having attended BS: Kiddo seems much less stressed than same-aged peers back home. After having experienced the BS application process at a younger age (and going away), the college application process seemed less overwhelming to my kiddoā¦.ditto with interviewsā¦.been there, done that, sent the postcard, bought the t-shirt, went to Senior Frogs 
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Thatās an interesting observation.
I was thinking that the general stress level would be high. The kids are surrounded by high-achieving peers 24 hours a day and thereās little room to escape.
Many kids at our local private school head directly to the state flagship college or private colleges with generally higher acceptance rates. Very few even consider Ivy or top-tier colleges. My gut said that BS stress level would be higher. Itās good to hear that isnāt your kidās experience.
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