I'm Interested in Attending an Ivy League College...Placement Statistics?

[Catcherinthetoast]

Bergen Academy is an example of an extremely competitive public HS in Northern NJ. Draws students from diverse socio economic backgrounds, many first gen and few athletes.

BCA_School_Profile.pdf

They typically place similar or greater percentages of students at super elites versus some of the major preps and boarding schools in the state without many legacy or athletic hooks being applied. The student body is reputed to be very competitive amongst one another and extremely HS Pre Professional. Lots of national academic competition, olympiads, etc. It is hard to gain admission and we know several kids that dropped out.

Ultimately however it serves as a great stepping stone for many kids in the area to gain a world class HS education for free and attend colleges that would likely not have been possible if they had stayed in our local regional public HS.

You can also see how economic limitations impact at the college level as many kids opt to go local to Stevens, NJIT, TCNJ or Rutgers.

[Data10]

@Catcherinthetoast

They typically place similar or greater percentages of students at super elites versus some of the major preps and boarding schools in the state without many legacy or athletic hooks being applied.

The primary determinants of “placing” large portion in “super elite” colleges are having competitive enough high school admissions such that a large portion of the class has a decent a shot of being admitted to “super elites”, and having a large portion of the kids who have a good chance of being admitted to “super elites” choose to apply Selective public magnet HSs can do this, as well as selective private/boarding HSs.

To determine whether attending the HS offers any special admissions benefit, you need to look at more than just matriculation totals. Much more useful is to look at the portion of students who applied and acceptance rate, with some type of control for individual student performance or stats.

For example, some stats for Thomas Jefferson are below, which is a public magnet in VA. During the polarislist sample years at https://polarislist.com/, it was the HS with the largest number of matriculating students to HPM – 96 in in 4 years (Bergen was #8 at 64 in 4 years). This larger number partially relates to having a large class size. Unfortunately, I did not find any breakdown of admit rate by stats/rank – only overall admit rate. TJ’s school profile mentions a 34.4 ACT and 781/734 SAT, so I applicants typically had very high scores. TJ’s pre-COVID admission used to also consider grades, rigor, LORs, essays, and personal/character criteria; so most TJ applicants to “super elites” likely excelled in non-score criteria as well.

Some areas where public magnet school kids may differ from private/board schools are having different demographics (TJ used to have very few low income kids, be 60% Asian, and 3% URM at time of PolarisList capture… this is rapidly changing) and having different application behavior. This different application behavior can include public magnet kids being more likely to apply to in-state publics, and not top of class kids being more likely to apply to “super elites”, particularly in early round.

Thomas Jefferson Admission Stats: 2017-19
UVA: 79% applied, 56% admit rate, 32% yield, 14% attended
Cornell: 37% applied, 16% admit rate, 52% yield, 3% attended
CMU: 32% applied, 26% admit rate, 42% yield, 3% attended
Stanford: 28% applied, 6% admit rate, 83% yield, 1% attended
Penn: 28% applied, 13% admit rate, 40% yield, 1% attended
Princeton: 25% applied, 8% admit rate, 67% yield, 2% attended
Duke: 23% applied, 13% admit rate, 54% yield, 2% attended
MIT: 22% applied, 11% admit rate, 80% yield, 2% attended
Harvard: 21% applied, 7% admit rate, 67% yield, 1% attended
Yale: 17% applied, 11% admit rate, 50% yield, 1% attended
Chicago: 16% applied, 18% admit rate, 50% yield, 1% attended

[gardenstategal]

You assume that kids attending all elite schools, whether public or private, see the same colleges as equally desirable. They do not. There are different things that matter, from geography to how inclusive they are to how they are perceived in their community to what majors they offer.

Presumably, the OP is lookin at a number of BS with similar demographics.

[1NJParent]

There’s another important difference between private elite prep schools and public magnet high schools that needs to be taken into account to make sense of their college admission statistics. Public magnet school students tend to lean heavily, in some cases predominantly, toward STEM. However, colleges, with a few exceptions, generally limit the proportion of STEM students they would admit, due to constraints on their internal resource distributions and other considerations. Private prep school students tend to be more evenly distributed, matching better with the desired profiles of those colleges.

[UltimaCroix]

@MWolf

Very well written explanation and description.

It is interesting to compare the situations in the East Coast, where private prep schools are at the top of the pile to the Chicago area, where the high schools with the best reputations are the public magnet schools. These schools do not have a legacy and athletic admissions, so they do not have the large number of legacies for “elite” colleges, nor do they have the large number of athletic admissions to “elite” colleges. So most of their admissions to “elite” colleges are based on the accomplishments of the students, the reputation of the school, and these connections between the school and the colleges.

For example, Walter Payton in Chicago has around 30% of the students at Payton are considered low Income by the state of Illinois, meaning that they get discounted or free lunch, or their parents are on federal or state aid, so bottom 20%-40% by income. For comparison, “elite” private prep schools have 30% from the bottom 80% by income. While the income distribution is not comparable to that of the city, it is still far from the mostly wealthy students at “elite” private prep schools. That means that there are far fewer legacies and potential development admissions. Since Payton doesn’t consider legacy of athletic ability for admissions, this reduces almost all athletics admissions to colleges, as well as another large percent of potential legacies for colleges (a large number of “elite” prep schools legacies are also legacies to elite colleges).

Since admissions to Payton are very tough, and no students get a nudge, students are all pretty good.

So, without athletic admissions, a small number of legacies, and very few super wealthy families with connections at “elite” colleges, Walter Payton has about 15%-20% of its graduating classes ending up at “T10” colleges, and another 10%-15% at “T20” colleges.

That is probably what one should expect from all of the “elite” private prep schools, once you remove legacies, athletes, super wealthy and connected families, and such.

However, the connections between GCs and AOs still exists, and is clear when looking at the patterns of attendance at low admission colleges.

For example, and very large number attend NWU, but not equivalent colleges in other parts of the country. More attended UChicago than any other colleges with similar acceptance rates. The number who attend MIT, Harvard, and Yale is strong, but very few attend Princeton. Similar patterns can be seen in matriculations to LACs - Pomona has many more Payton graduates than it does Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore together. Very few attended Notre Dame, since Payton is not a Catholic high school.

So schools like Payton will tell us what the real boost is for unhooked kids who attend an “elite” high school.

I would expect though, that the “elite” east coast boarding schools have an additional advantage. Thy have decades of connection, and generations of there being a pipeline from these high schools to the Ivies and other “elite” colleges. This benefits unhooked students as well these days.

A Walter Payton Prep student wrote a short paper on why matriculation from WP was so strong, here is a link. WPCP Analysis

I’m a big fan of WP, so this is not a knock on it at all, I’m merely repeating a couple (of many) factors the student suggested helped its matriculation: a) “no class rank”; b) “high grade inflation”. He says: "While I lack supporting data, anecdotally A’s were very common, and one teacher told me that a Payton “B” is about as rare as another school’s “F”.

@Golfgr8 , a must-read!

[Golfgr8]

Thanks for posting about WP….also thanks for your additional comments @UltimaCroix !

Just to clarify some misconceptions some readers new to the Prep School board might have about Ivy or “very selective” college placement. The demographics of the students matriculating to top 20 ranked universities are very interesting. These statistics are not reflected in the matriculation data. The students we know at the top boarding schools come from across the US and around the world. Very smart, talented, driven, and not banking on connections - or a “pipeline”…the days of feeder schools are long gone.

I had to write a poem:

The New England prep school
Of days of yore
Are no longer stuffy
And no longer a bore

You might still stereotype
College pipelines and elite
Getting into an Ivy now
Is no small feat

Competition for HADES
And a like, is tough
The competition continues
Over 4 years, it’s rough!

Remember, top prep schools
Select strong students to get in
Many smart kids are rejected
And placed in “the bin”!

At top BS’s you compete
With the globe
It takes more than connections
You need a frontal lobe!

Top schools are not one dimensional
They’re more sophisticated than you surmise
More competitive and international
Look beyond Ivies and be wise!

[Data10]

@gardenstategal

You assume that kids attending all elite schools, whether public or private, see the same colleges as equally desirable. They do not. There are different things that matter, from geography to how inclusive they are to how they are perceived in their community to what majors they offer.

I’m not sure if that was directed to me, the OP, or someone else. I don’t think anyone in this thread has assumed that high school students see all elite colleges as equally desirable. All of the things you mention can influence desirability, as can things like cost and perceived eliteness.

Less selective HSs and HSs with a larger portion of lower income students often see a far larger influence from location than the HSs that have been the focus of this thread, even when limited to just private colleges. For example, I attended a non-selective public in upstate NY. The upstate NY college Cornell received more applications that all of the over Ivies + SM combined. Stanford, Chicago, and similar colleges outside of the northeast received especially few applications. The small number of applications to non-Cornell “elite” colleges contributes to the small number of matriculations to non-Cornell “elite” colleges.

The TJ stats above show less of a regional bias, but they do show a bias towards more techy schools. For example, Stanford is on the opposite coast and further away from Ivies, yet far more students applied to Stanford than Harvard or Yale. Rather than sharing a common location, the 3 most applied to private colleges (Cornell, CMU, and Stanford) are all known for having great tech/CS programs.

[one1ofeach]

Being a first gen college kid is a hook. A very strong hook if you’re coming from a good magnet or an elite BS. So no, those kids coming from the best magnet school in the state are not giving you “unhooked college admission stats.”

[MWolf]

@UltimaCroix

A Walter Payton Prep student wrote a short paper on why matriculation from WP was so strong, here is a link. Jorge Zhang – Personal website

I’m a big fan of WP, so this is not a knock on it at all, I’m merely repeating a couple (of many) factors the student suggested helped its matriculation: a) “no class rank”; b) “high grade inflation”. He says: "While I lack supporting data, anecdotally A’s were very common, and one teacher told me that a Payton “B” is about as rare as another school’s “F”.

The problem is that it’s exactly that - an anecdote, from the perspective of a person who had absolutely no way to access that information.

It’s likely that there is grade inflation, but lacking any information on grade distributions of the students, all we have is the impression of a student, and the impressions of students are often way off.

Also, let us look at, say, Hotchkiss. According to their brochure, over 90% of their graduating class has a GPA of B+ or higher. Or, maybe Choate, at which 91% have GPAs of over 3.5. Or, maybe Horace Mann, where things a are slightly better, with 75% of the class having GPAs of B+ or higher.

I don’t know what the GPA distribution at Payton is like, but it’s unlikely that it is any more inflated than these “elite” private school.

And this bothers me, to be honest. When private high schools have graduating classes with average GPAs of 3.8, the term “grade inflation” is not mentioned. It is assumed that all of the kids who attend these schools earned those grades. Yet when a public magnet school, with far fewer super-wealthy, has similar GPAs, the accusation of “grade inflation” is immediately raised.

[Golfgr8]

Worried about grade inflation at private high schools? No problem! I can suggest a school (or 2) we know where there is enforced grade deflation and compression with a convenient class average of 89

DM me for the grade distribution comparisons from 2 years ago - they were posted in an earlier thread.

[MWolf]

@Golfgr8

Worried about grade inflation at private high schools?

Not the slightest.

My point is that making the claim that Payton has high college placement because they have grade inflation, while not making the same claim for private high schools with similar or higher average GPAs is elitism.

It assumes that the public magnet has high GPAs because of grade inflation, while the private school has high GPAs because the students are smart and hard-working.

It also assumes that the college placement from the magnet school is the result of the inflated grades, while the college placement of unhooked students from private schools is because their grades are earned, rather than inflated.

It is those two assumptions that are my problem, not whether or not there grade inflation at private high schools.

[Altras]

At least for Choate, the GPA stats reported in the school profile are only for junior year. Amongst the students that started in 9th grade, the overall GPAs are mostly lower. Few students make the transition to BS without taking an academic hit. By junior year, they have it figured out. The GPAs reported in the profile are really a representation of their relative standing, not their absolute standing.

[one1ofeach]

@MWolf

My point is that making the claim that Payton has high college placement because they have grade inflation, while not making the same claim for private high schools with similar or higher average GPAs is elitism.

We talk about grade inflation at elite private schools ALL the time.

Grade inflation at elite colleges has been a topic of conversation for years out in the real world.

[UltimaCroix]

@MWolf

@UltimaCroix

A Walter Payton Prep student wrote a short paper on why matriculation from WP was so strong, here is a link. Jorge Zhang – Personal website

I’m a big fan of WP, so this is not a knock on it at all, I’m merely repeating a couple (of many) factors the student suggested helped its matriculation: a) “no class rank”; b) “high grade inflation”. He says: "While I lack supporting data, anecdotally A’s were very common, and one teacher told me that a Payton “B” is about as rare as another school’s “F”.

I don’t know what the GPA distribution at Payton is like, but it’s unlikely that it is any more inflated than these “elite” private school.

And this bothers me, to be honest. When private high schools have graduating classes with average GPAs of 3.8, the term “grade inflation” is not mentioned. It is assumed that all of the kids who attend these schools earned those grades. Yet when a public magnet school, with far fewer super-wealthy, has similar GPAs, the accusation of “grade inflation” is immediately raised.

Not “accusing” WP of inflating grades. I cited a WP student’s own perspective, and said the student cited “no class rank” and “high grade inflation” as two of “many” factors leading to strong matriculation results. Since none of us are Admissions Officers, frankly, all we deal with is anecdotal evidence. Some have more anecdotes than others.

@one1ofeach and @Golfgr8 have complained in the past about tough grading at their kids’ schools compared to other privates and how it may affect matriculation among the “elite” cohort, so we have had quite a bit of discussion on that matter. No intention of comparing grading-matriculation results at BSs to WP.

Have a good one.

[Golfgr8]

There was an AO from Nantucket
Who sorted the apps in a bucket
Would have been a tough call
To have rejected them all
So he chose only 2 and said “___ it”

He looked at class rank
That really stank
As later that year
His yield was a shank

So keep your eye on the ball
Don’t bet on it all
If it’s “Ivy or bust”
You’ll have a tough fall!

[UltimaCroix]

@Golfgr8

There was an AO from Nantucket
Who sorted the apps in a bucket
Would have been a tough call
To have rejected them all
So he chose only 2 and said “___ it”

Masterclass

[MWolf]

@UltimaCroix

Not “accusing” WP of inflating grades. I cited a WP student’s own perspective, and said the student cited “no class rank” and “high grade inflation” as two of “many” factors leading to strong matriculation results.

Having no class rank is fairly typical of “elite” high schools, including private ones. As for grade inflation, as others have pointed out, some “elite” privates have grade deflation, yet their matriculations to “elite” colleges are the same as those private high schools which do have grade inflation.

That was exactly what bothered me - that these practices have been common among privates for decades, but I have not seen them being considered as the reasons that unhooked graduates from these high schools have high admission rates.

But moving on…

@Golfgr8

There was an AO from Nantucket
Who sorted the apps in a bucket
Would have been a tough call
To have rejected them all
So he chose only 2 and said “___ it”

We should have a college advice thread made up entirely of your poems.

[DramaMama2021]

@MWolf

We should have a college advice thread made up entirely of your poems.

Ditto!

[ChoatieMom]

We already did a poetry thread: Playful Prep Poetry

[Golfgr8]

Thanks @DramaMama2021! And @MWolf !!