I included Harvard-Westlake. None of the other HSs you listed were among the top 50. Only Sidwell was among the top 100. Like I said in the post, different people have different definitions of most prestigious HSs. Unless your definition of “elite” includes a huge number of different private high schools, it’s only going to be a minority of the total private school matriculating students, which came from hundreds of different private HSs.
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Yeah, I’m including a huge number because most of these schools range in size from small to tiny. Even the top 100 private HS’s added together won’t have as many students in a class as the T20 do and make up far less than 1% of graduating seniors.
So if you don’t include a huge number, it would be like putting 2 red balls in a container with 98 white balls, pulling out 1 red ball and 9 white balls and saying “look! Red balls only make up 10%!”
Well, getting into college is much more than doing well on AP’s, as you know. The system is holistic with an emphasis on academics, ECs, sports, and all the rest. A kid in a class with 4-12 kids can learn a lot more than a kid in a class with 25. My oldest takes an obscure language and has a total of 4 kids in the class. I think most of them have received national level awards each year.
@Samroy is correct. Prep school kids also often have better access to Summer program and might have other advantages.
I didn’t attend a prep school and as a parent am surprised at the high level of learning. Honestly, I think my prep school kid’s chances will be ever so slightly less than having attended a public school in our area. I think they’ll be better prepared so we were willing to make the trade-off. Life isn’t a race, and the Ivy league isn’t the goldent ticket some folks on CC think it is. Academic fit is really important esp. as an undergraduate. So is life-long love of learning.
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This debate comes up over and over again - along with the assumption that elite preps are pipelines to the Ivies.
On the prep school board I take the minority position that prep schools do actually boost the chance at elite schools. But not because they are a pipeline. It is because of the exposure and access to extraordinary enrichment and leadership opportunities. Plus the dedicated college counselors make a huge difference in getting kids to schools that match them. At boarding schools it is much less about the Ivies than people think.
The legacy, athlete and URM influence at boarding schools is huge, which makes the apples to apples comparison impossible.
The prep schools pre-select highly competitive students who aspire to attend competitive colleges. In most elite boarding schools that I am aware of, at least a third of the students receive substantial financial aid. Percent BIPOC is 40-50% of the student body. The scions of the upper crust do not dominate like they used to. Those financial aid and BIPOC kids earn their way into elite colleges. The legacy, development and faculty kids get into the elite colleges, too. The kids who have a rougher go, just like in public schools, are the hookless who do not fit into any of the above categories.
On the flip side, the elite colleges don’t have to depend on scores. Stanford’s average SAT is 1460 - which is low compared to the next “tier”. They don’t require a certain number of APs. (Fun fact: most boarding schools don’t even offer AP classes anymore because they are too formulaic and limiting). Holistic admissions is real.
What I am saying is, the conclusion that prep schools help get kids into college I don’t think is wrong, but the analysis is. The fact that prep school SAT scores might be on average lower, or the AP tests not as frequent is irrelevant.
If you are a kid, POC or not, with mad skills and drive, and you get yourself into a boarding school, you will have a superior opportunity to develop those skills with multiple adults who will vouch for your devotion. Your SAT may not be as high, but it will be high enough. You won’t have APs, but you will have an extremely rigorous curriculum. You will also have a proven track record of thriving away from home.
There is also a high likelihood that the “Ivy or bust” mentality you started with in 8th grade will be gone by the time you are a senior at boarding school, replaced with the luxury of thinking of “fit” first. Fewer boarding school students are applying to Ivies for pure name recognition- they and their parents get it trained out of them by the boarding schools quickly. If they are applying to an Ivy it is because they have thought through why it is a fit - and then they have expert help in making that application sing.
I get why people want to attack elite high school students as getting some unfair advantage, and they certainly do get exposure to elite high school opportunities that are not available to others. But there are very few, if any, of them that are getting into elite colleges solely by virtue of a “pipeline”. It is either by hook or hard work, just like everyone else. The school name itself is not a “hook”.
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Didn’t AP start as a collaboration between some academically elite prep schools and some elite colleges?
But now that AP is widespread in ordinary schools, perhaps the elite prep schools now feel that they have look down on it to market that they are different from ordinary schools.
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This is something I posted on another thread that is relevant here:
One big thing is that many people just don’t have a good grasp on the numbers. Nearly all of the privates in the top 25 (research U’s) have relatively small undergraduate student bodies and the US is a big country. The privates in the top 25 added together take in roughly a little over a percent of all American HS grads, but when you consider that close to or even half the class at Ivies/equivalents are hooked and that they fill roughly half their class via ED/SCEA and they all admit holistically and they generally want a balanced class, well, your chances at nearly all of them may be close to zero if you are unhooked.
These days, there aren’t too many avenues where you’d have a good chance even if you’re top 1% in everything . I’d say UW-Madison and definitely McGill/UBC/other Canadian schools.
Also, a lot of people seem to not look at LACs (outside the top).
While an average excellent kid who is top 1% in everything (but unhooked and has nothing really noteworthy about them) really has no chance at HYPSM, many LACs (outside the very top) are filled with them (as well as the top publics and the privates in that tier like NYU, USC, and a few others). As are honors programs and some of the named cohorted full-scholarship programs (outside of the most prestigious ones who are competing for Ivy admits). While there are still no guarantees, it would seem to me that your chances are better fishing in that pond.
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^ And I should add the UK unis on the same tier as Edinburgh and St. A’s.
Granted, you shouldn’t expect to get fin aid as OOS at a public or overseas, but some of those LACs would give enough aid and some of those British/Canadian unis work out to not much more than the in-state total costs in the most expensive states.
Could be part of it.
I haven’t heard my kid’s school talk about it, it is more something parents talk about. It is kind of like the talk about common core - people complain that it doesn’t meet the intended goals. APs were intended to do a deep dive, but since they require covering a specific breadth of topics to “teach to the test”, teachers feel hamstrung. Coupled with fewer colleges giving credit for them, there is less reason to provide them.
It is also really hard to have perspective as a high school kid of how many extraordinary students there are worldwide who you are competing against. Attending a selective international physics conference, for example, will have a startling number of very gifted young physicists most of whom are also applying to HYPSM. I expect the same is true in other fields. All those national and international award winners have set their targets on a small number of schools.
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It depends on the student. It’s not just a simple choice among always boost, always hurts, or always has no effect. For example, by definition most students at a highly selective private HS will not be towards the top of their class. A larger portion are going to be towards the middle of their class and receive well short of ideal grades on their transcript. Not being towards the top of the class can influence things like LORs from teachers and GC, as well more direct consideration of transcript. Many of the same students would be towards the top of their class and would have received near straight A’s had they attended a non-selective public. However, there are also students who would get pushed to new heights when surrounded by a group of motivated and high achieving students in their class, who might accomplish far more than would at a non-selective public. There are also students who would get bored out of their mind at at the relatively slow pace of many publics and whose grades would go up when actually challenged somewhat. There also some kids who get discouraged when struggling in advanced classes and not being among the big fish. There are too many variables to make any kind of sweeping statement.
There are lots of great things about “elite” private high schools and good reasons to attend, but I wouldn’t choose to attend because you think it is a pipeline to an Ivy. Attending may increase chances of being admitted or may hurt chances. It depends on a lot of factors, including the student.
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Actually, lots of colleges give at least one of the following for at least some AP scores:
- Credit units.
- Subject credit against course requirements.
- Advanced placement into higher level courses.
They may not give all of the above, or give some of the above only for specific AP scores, but there are not that many “general”* colleges and universities that give none. Even Dartmouth, which made an announcement about not giving credit for AP scores a few years ago, was only referring to 1 above; it still allows some AP scores for 2 and 3 above.
*As opposed to specialized-curriculum colleges and universities like St. John’s College, music conservatories, etc. which offer no courses whose content is similar to that of AP course content. Caltech and Harvey Mudd may count, if you consider them to be “general” colleges.
I was referring to number one.
I don’t have any strong opinions one way or the other, and not enough knowledge to debate the value of AP courses to a college career. No doubt there are plenty of threads on CC about it, among people who know more than me.
Point is, the AP debate doesn’t have much bearing to this particular thread. Someone was saying that there was significance to the fact that elite high school students don’t perform as well on AP tests, and I was merely pointing out that those students don’t take many AP classes. I also don’t know how many times I have read on CC that the number of APs taken isn’t all that important to AOs. It is the rigor of the coursework. So AP performance doesn’t inform the inquiry about whether there is a pipeline.
FWIW, elite high school students still place out of college requirements, often through the colleges’ placement tests. Some self-study for AP exams.
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Wow! This took off.
What you’re saying is true for normal jobs, but again, not for the kind of “lay down the rails” jobs I’m talking about. The problem’s that there are clubs, and the clubs don’t spring into existence when you’re 40; you’re inducted, if you’re late, at age 18. This is why a promising young person who can get on a GS ladder in STEM is likely to do well and might lead large, nationally influential divisions or even agencies/departments (someone I knew 20 years ago in my current state-U dept is moving steadily up the ranks at FDA and will be influential in national vax policy in his new job there), but outside those very well-defined hierarchical structures, power and influence are clubbish affairs. So who gets the internship at State? Who’s got a really interesting internship at the SEC? Who gets the top clerkships in law? Who’s invited to serve on NEA judging panels? What matters there starts with your school and your profs, and your trajectory is inflected by that throughout. Even in fields where there isn’t much money, but there is large cultural influence, these school and program clubs come into play. Do old relationships matter there? Not the people you worked with two years ago, but the people you were drunk with 20 years ago, share in-jokes with about the future Nobelist who came to your house party? Absolutely. Without question. And that’s the problem.
I notice, reading this thread, that it’s gone incredibly fast towards talking about elite pipeline schools that people don’t even talk about outside power-elite circles. If I wandered around my building sticking my head in doors and asking, “Hotchkiss: what is it?” I’d get blank stares and people guessing that it’s a candy or a children’s game and shocked questions about whether I’d said something dirty. One of the faculty members in my dept interviewed at Dartmouth a while back and nobody in the front office – these are people with master’s degrees – was sure where Dartmouth was, exactly. Or how to spell it. Or whether it was a state or private school. Like I said: they don’t even know these conversations are going on. That by itself is a problem. No awareness that these people who’ll run the show exist; no idea that there are pipelines and doors they’re not invited to notice, let alone walk through.
Maybe that should be my next class? “Meet the people who have pre-eaten your lunch for the next 30 years.” I could bring them here. Not a bad idea.
I looked at this extensively. Really wasted a lot of time on it. Much too expensive on a lower-middle-class budget even with savings built up, plus you’re at the mercy of exchange rates. To make it affordable my kid would have to move to Minnesota, establish residency, and then go to school in Manitoba at provincial rates on their exchange program. I hear there’s a good bakery near U of Manitoba, but it’s not worth that much effort. But there’s a bigger problem, which is that unless you’re looking to emigrate, you’re making a cultural problem for yourself. You’re being educated within another culture and all the cues you learn are pointing you to what’s important in that country, which makes for some problems when you come home – again, unless you’ve got beaucoup bucks and connections to make up for it. You’re also often going to a catchment school where the international students are very much on the outside of the heavily commuter environment. I know some awfully nice people from Simon Fraser, but unless your kid really wants to ski or hike and is super-gregarious and adventuresome, or you’ve got lots of friends/family around there, I can’t say I’d advise shipping an American 18-year-old kid off to SFU all alone.
If a kid wants adventure, I’d heartily recommend U of Amsterdam. Wonderful jumping-off spot, the school’s not that rigorous but is actual school, easy-enough culture that’s genuinely weird, plus if you want you can stay afterwards, get a job. The return-culture problem is still there, but especially if your kid’s likely to slough off school and travel, there’s real opportunity there. Time of their lives. Learn another language or two the good way. Much better choice for a traveler than Edinburgh, dreary place, grind of a school.
My kid got very excited for a while about LSE, which is worth spending time at, but it can be a grim undergrad life unless you’re wealthy, and currently about 3x what we’ll pay for the local flagship, even taking into account the fact that their B.Sc. is three years, not four.
If a kid’s genuinely wanting to emigrate, though, I can’t think of a better and in the end less expensive way of doing it. Canada has quite liberal policies that way, as do at least some of the EU countries. I’ve also got new appreciation for the “easy to get in, hard to stay in” model.
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lol indeed. But actually, as I’m thinking about it, if you subtract the Acela parents who’re already sending their kids to preps while meticulously planning the Georgetown gifts, I think this might not be far off. My reference is now midwest, so Chicago/North Shore burbs, but you don’t really get that many UChicago winners there, even from New Trier. Northwestern, Wash U, Tulane by the chartered planeload, UMich, UIUC, Loyola. Even Iowa, UMN, UW-Madison.
Yeah, I can see it. As opposed to the Labbies who’ll be off in large numbers to the tops.
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Elite grad school and programs do exist.
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Well, the U of C traditionally had a pretty small undergrad population. Also, it’s pretty unique (like MIT and Caltech), so appeals more to a certain type. MIT probably doesn’t draw as much from the Boston suburbs as Harvard does either.
I’d argue that it very much was better for society.
I work in STEM, voluntarily, after lives in soc sci and arts. I dig it, have some formal background. But I’m also funded to get scientists doing more interesting work because I’ve got that long, wandering education through the liberal arts.
There are serious misconceptions about STEM: that it’ll give you a safe living, that it’s broadly applicable to life. Basic scientific literacy, sure, very important. We’d have hundreds of thousands more people still alive today if we’d had that over the past year. (I am currently arguing with my daughter’s HS principal, who wants to have Tulsa II for graduation.) As a life, though, it’s a very particular, and purposefully narrow, thing. The range of thinking and questions that don’t pertain in STEM is immense, which is causing real problems for socially-aware Gen Z in STEM, and the unemployment and underemployment are only getting worse as processes are roboticized. The world needs only so many creative scientists and robot-designing-and-managing scientists. I’m already uneasy about sending people out the door with BSes to jobs that will be roboticized within the decade, and when they come back a few years later braindead from running samples, wanting something more interesting, all I can do is hope that they really hit a good, lucrative niche. Many do not. It’s field-dependent, but some of those fields where people just fall off the edge of the earth careerwise in midlife are ginormous. And unfortunately, because the degree requirements are so rigorous and the faculties still encourage them not to “waste time” doing anything but shoveling in more science, they get very, very narrow educations, which makes it hard to retool.
The narrowness of the education also hampers them in being good citizens of a participatory democracy. I am not joking when I say I started to introduce a clip from the impeachment hearings to a group of grad students, as prelude to a communications discussion – I’m talking people about to get PhDs, doing defense work, all kinds of stuff – and their question was, “Who’s being impeached?” They were suitably embarrassed, but truly, it is a very partial education that leaves them without important knowledge and skills for lives as citizens of an important democracy. I’d also argue that we need as many people well-educated in citizenship as we can get right now.
So yeah. For utility to society and mind furnishings, I’d recommend history over STEM. They do make history of STEM, which I like a lot, but the people who run it aren’t very nice.
The history major is hands-down the better major for “elite society-defining job”. History-> law, history->goverment, history->arts, it’s very versatile. Plus the odds are better that you’ll learn to write competently. I can think of few scientists who’ve played the role…there’s Vannevar Bush, for sure. Carl Sagan and the others who turned communicator. Djerassi. Gates, Woz…but now we’re talking about technologists. On the whole if you’re looking at societally influential STEM people, they’ve been influential by accident: they were making things, finding things out, solving things, and they hit it big, they met the time. Their focus though has generally been on the thing, not the society. Where they really have aimed for societal transformation…you’ll notice things haven’t gone so well. Which isn’t surprising. Not enough history courses, or lib arts generally. You know, the part about people, free from the constraints of science’s narrow modes of inquiry.
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Irvington High School is rated by Niche as the 60th best college-prep public high school in New York State (quite a few exam schools are ahead of it, so it is probably more like the 45th best “regular” high school. I’m using it as an example as I live nearby and know they make detailed matriculation information available.
Its class of 2020 had 133 students who averaged 29 on the ACT and 1284 on the SAT. I count at least 13 Ivy - T25 schools on its matriculation list, and another 18 very highly ranked and respected research universities or LAC. Those numbers are a bare minimum. It is likely more than one student went to several of the 13 (or 18).
All of the NYS districts ranked higher than Irvington would have comparable or better, in some cases much better, outcomes. The school ranked 100, Commack, had Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Penn, and Vanderbilt in its class of 2019, among others, and that is an all-white, not especially affluent district in the very unfashionable part of Long Island. I’m not going to see how far down the list you’d have to go before you found a school that sent only 3 kids to Ivies / T25, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was in the 200s. The claim this is happening at most top public HS is nonsense.
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Which is exactly the problem. And at this point it’s not just poor kids. It’s kids who aren’t rich, meaning most kids. So someone else runs their world – eventually, other people their age, only rich – and these people are so rich that they genuinely don’t know anything about the world of most people.
If you want to explore why ACA’s had so much trouble, this is a prime reason. The rubber-> road part is in the max out of pocket plus premium. The idea’s that you’re not going to be exposed to financial ruin through illness: you’ll pay maybe $6-15K max per year.
I guarantee that the people sitting in the room where that number was established have never in their lives been in a situation where they couldn’t raise that kind of money. Most of them could, I bet, have written a check, or turned around and asked their parents for it. Just like most of the people reading this post. So sure, $15K, not nothing, but it’s doable, an inconvenience. They figured this is a massive improvement, we can roll with this, the insurance companies will live with it and everyone’s better off.
Most people in this country, though, don’t have enough in the bank to cover a car repair. Half of Gen X has nothing saved for retirement. We have a not-insignificant number of employed people walking around missing teeth. If you don’t have $1500 or any way to get it, how in hell do you get $15K? It may as well be $150K. Or $15 million. So what happened? ACA’s popular, but it’s also the target of massive and serious resentments, which makes it, even now, a precarious thing.
In the period of this country’s greatest popular prosperity, the country was run by people from very modest backgrounds. Wealthy too. But people from very ordinary backgrounds came in through the military and then through the state and city universities. That pipe’s been narrowing and clogging for the last four decades, and now we’re at a point where it takes herculean effort for a kid to make that trip from State U. More than can be expected.
When you don’t have that ease of access, you get policies made by people so rich, so privileged, that they’ve never touched any other world. They might be very nice, well-meaning people, but they don’t know other people’s lives. That’s a problem not just for the bright kids whose trajectories are stunted, but for the country.
Back when Buttigieg was running for president, and he was touting his compulsory national service thing, I was shocked to hear my daughter say that she was for it. Why was she for it? Because, she explained, those kids like the kids at her elite summer program she got the full ride for – they’d have to be with everyone else. And they’d have to see them.
Personally, I think she was a little hopeful about what a year can do. But I see her point.
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U of C undergrad’s almost 7K kids now, and that “all well and good, but how does it work in theory” kind of superbright quirky kid isn’t so likely to get in anymore unless they’re masquerading as a potential Penn or MIT admit, too. There’ve been a lot of changes in the last decade or so. You can still find the old U of C at UChicago but it’s getting paved over pretty handily by the massive endowment. Shame, really.