My advice, don’t spend your life revolved around getting into an Ivy League. Far too often, kids fall into the trap of toxic perfectionism trying to get a “competitive edge” for these schools. A mental breakdown is usually the end result. And it’s a very bad life lesson to learn when you actually do get into the professional world.
The reality is that the admissions criteria is completely subjective and ALWAYS outside your control. Just find a good prep school that is rigorous and teaches you good study habits. Work hard, stay balanced, and find a college that’s the right fit for you. There are lots out there.
Choate nor any top boarding school a particular feeder to any Ivy because these days there are great students that come out of Top 10 boarding schools. I will state that over the past 5 years Choate has nevertheless matriculated 53 at Yale while Andover has 45 and Exeter 63. Given the smaller class size, Choate still places more Yalies than any other boarding school. However when you compare the matriculation rate between HADES+Choate/L’ville they all matriculate about 20-23 of their senior class into Ivys year over year. It would be better statement to say HADES+Choate/L’Ville are the last remaining successful IVY feeder schools.
I think @ChoatieMom was trying to say that Choate aswell as the other’s designation as a “feeder” is generally misleading for non-hooked students as it does not take into account the disproportionate amount of legacies, donors, athletes and other “hooked” students that these schools admit in the first place. I do not doubt however that these schools do have strong connections to ivies, but I do wonder how much of a difference that actually makes for the non hooked student
It would be a better statement to say that owed to proximity and the number of Yale facbrats attending Choate, Choate sends more kids to Yale than would otherwise be expected.
Once upon a time, the Ivies and the boarding schools were bastions of a blue blooded, WASP elite. The old boys’ network took care of its own from cradle to grave. That is not what is happening today, for the most part.
The top boarding schools attract high-potential students. Those high-performing students navigate a rigorous college prep curriculum that demonstrates they can succeed in a college environment. So are the boarding schools the difference in matriculation success, or, in our new “meritocracy,” is it that the boarding schools are achieving concentrations of talent that were already likely to get into a highly selective college or university? Sure, in marginal cases, the connections and relationships of a high school’s leadership and advising offices can tip a close decision, but that’s not the general case.
Lastly, I want to challenge the Ivy mentality. We can say it over and over, but the power of the Ivy brand is too great to overcome. The schools belong to a common athletic conference, but they have very different cultures, requirements, locations, scale, graduate/undergraduate balances, academic strengths, and more. Focus on fit. If you do that, you might apply to a few Ivies as reaches, assuming you have the stats. You should also have a balanced list of colleges that meet your fit characteristics. For now, pick the right boarding school for you to thrive, and don’t think of it as a “stepping stone” decision for a college admissions trophy.
Exactly. The same can and has been said about GLADCHEMMS. Obviously there’s overlap but when you talk about a school as small as Groton alongside one as large as PA, you’re looking more at apples and oranges IMO than you are Granny Smith and Red Delicious.
I don’t think kids generally look at the Ivys as a homogenous group of desirable colleges. Kids that can get into these colleges often have nuanced views on which college they would prefer over which other college. If a kid made a long list of colleges to apply to, some ivys may end up at different parts of that list – it is not definitely a case of all 8 ivys first followed by every other non ivy thereafter. It is not even a case of colleges ordered by usnews ranks. Kids have well informed opinions on where a particular college is on their list.
I’m not responding to most kids. I’m responding to the OP, who is looking for analytics to pick the independent school that will get them into “an Ivy.”
Yes, I know boarding school kids who pick a few Ivies for their list, and all the schools on the list make sense from the perspective of fit.
I also know students who applied to six or more of the Ivies, along with other schools, to be sure. In those specific cases, however, it appears the goal is prestige, not fit. I mean, from a curriculum standpoint, I don’t see how a student would want to apply to both Brown and Columbia, not that anyone has to prove anything to me.
I’m not indicting an whole generation. My senior did what you suggest. Many of their peers did too.
Well, my son had both Columbia and Brown on his list some years ago, for CS. And he also wanted significant humanities exposure. So he’d pick these over a place like UIUC. Columbia was #5 or #6 and Brown was #10 or so on the list. So there was a place for both on a list :-). If you had asked him, he’d tell you who are the faculty in each dept and what research they are doing, and who he’d want to work with etc. Eventually he applied to neither.
People (myself included) are willing to overlook a lot about Columbia because it’s in New York City. Heck, I know a senior who is torn between it and Princeton despite disliking the Core Curriculum (and not because of major reasons!)
To be careful he would have picked Columbia college because he would have wanted to do also double major in neuroscience. They were doing some cool research modeling a fruit fly brain on a GPU, neuron by neuron. The core wouldn’t have bothered him. He may have taken it anyway even if it were not mandatory.
Princeton hands down :-). I am biased. My son was visiting his friend at Columbia, he said the place was oozing stress !! I have more things to say, but they will be very poorly received here…
I’ll admit I was not thinking about CS when I wrote that. I will say that I do know of a student who was admitted to CMU and Yale for CS, but plans on attending Yale because it is more “prestigious.” Um, OK…?