Inner workings of the Prep School College Advising Office

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
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@Golfgr8 I am also kind of perplexed about what you are asking in your original post. I have never heard of a school using some generic list of schools rather than working with the kids to come up with a balanced list of colleges that will be the best fit for the student.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not have a child at boarding school. I did, however, graduate from Choate back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I did both my undergraduate and graduate work at Emory. The college counseling process that i went through 30+ years ago was exactly as @ChoatieMom and @buuzn03 describe above.;as is the college counseling at the Atlanta area day school my kids attend.

There has always been a certain amount of curating of applications to the most elite universities. Back in my day that meant they didn’t really want kids applying Yale, Harvard and Princeton at the same time. Other ivies and top lacs back then didn’t set limits on the number of admits from one highschool like they do now.

That being said, I am not clear whether you are saying that kids ( or more likely the parents ) are disappointed with their college lists because the counselors are suggesting schools outside of the Northeast or because they are being given lists of schools from some predetermined list?

I think it is important to realize that a top private school most likely isn’t going to get the average kid into an ivy or other similar elite school. Not only are they competing with the top students from their school, but many of these students are legacies. Add to that athletes and minority students and there are very few spots available for unhooked kids.

The list of Southern schools you posted above includes several of the top colleges in the country. Are kids really not happy about the prospect of attending Rice, Duke, Vanderbilt, Emory or Chapel Hill?? Kids from my neck of the woods are clamoring to get into these schools.
The school my kids attend routinely send kids to most of the schools you listed. I will say some of these schools - particularly the public schools like Auburn, Clemson, C of C are more culturally Southern due to the vast majority of the students being in state. Others, including Emory, enroll large numbers of students from the Northeast and are essentially northern schools with better weather:)

Interestingy, and because i am home and bored, I pulled up Choate’s list of matriculations for the past five years. Notably there are far fewer going to Southern schools than there were in my day. For example, I was one of six in my graduating class headed to Emory. The total Emory matriculations for the past five years combined is 7. The numbers for other schools are small as well. 14 to Duke, 5 to Vanderbilt, 7 at SMU etc. All in all, it looks like about 5 percent of Choaties have elected to go to college in the South over the past five years. Certainly doesn’t appear that college counselors are steering them to the South.

As other posters have said, there are many fabulous schools across the country.

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@bernesemtnmama - I apologize for any misunderstanding. Like someone above posted, the Southern schools are becoming more popular. Also, they are being recommended by GC’s more. In addition to the list the students make, the counselors also make a list to cast a wider net AND/OR align better with their reality. As a proud golf mama from the FL/GA Line, I know many of our fine universities in the region
many with strong golf teams, as well!

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A few years ago there was a mom on CC who discussed her student’s experience at PEA and college advising. I am not sure how the schools really work out how many of their students will apply to specific schools. My nephew at Stuyvesant several years ago, was given a list - even though he was a high GPA kid with strong scores, he was told to not apply to YYX Ivy (one example) because they already had the students selected who were vying for that spot. At the time both Stuyvesant & Bronx Science limited the number of schools they would “package” and write recommendations for were 7. I am not sure how this works at NE boarding schools. How do they have teachers write all those recommendations for kids competing for top colleges? My other nephew at Bronx Science was also told “not to apply” to certain schools and that certain students had either legacy status or a better shot due to sports. He applied anyway to Duke and was accepted.

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^Teachers write a recommendation for a student and it is included in the common app. So it’s the same whether a student is applying to one school or 30.

We went through this 6 years ago. DS told his CC what he was thinking about and why. She suggested a few more based on that and encouraged him to consider some Midwestern schools. Her suggestions were right on the mark. Told him his “odds” at each school on his list (with great accuracy, btw) but didn’t discourage him from any application. He ended up attending one she felt was “a bit of a reach but not impossible.”

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Thanks for sharing your insights. GolfKiddo was recently asked to make a list of schools. Have not heard back yet. I am sure there will be some interesting feedback - not the typical schools in NE, but maybe we will see some of you (hopefully) in the sunny states.

We know many of the Southern & Midwestern schools from golf. Here is one way to make a college list :stuck_out_tongue:

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My son has just started the college application process as a junior at Choate. The experience thusfar is similar to how others have described it at Choate. He is currently working on a list of schools. He was told that he is competitive for all but the very tippy-top Ivies, because those spots are going to be spoken for by other students in his class. He was not given a prepared list of schools, nor was it suggested that he look at a particular region.

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Thanks for sharing @Altras . This is something I am curious about - something that @Center had posted a few years ago - you mentioned “spots spoken for by other others students in his class”. Are those the recruited athletes or legacies?

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He didn’t say. I suspect it’s due to legacies, athletes and those in his class who are higher on the academic/EC ladder.

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I’m curious as to what this year’s juniors are using for the application tools. Last year, SMS moved to SCOIR and Kickstart, and said goodbye to Naviance. All of the students really liked the combo of those two programs for applying (SCOIR puts everything, including individual schools’ FA/scholarship application links and interview scheduling into their app for a one-stop shop) and parents who have been through the process before preferred this over Naviance.

Kickstart was a great tool to form a list. The stats also help students see for themselves how they would rank amongst most applicants for a particular school.

And-- so far, based on these tools and the CC’s recommendations, DS has been right on the money. That being said, none of his reach schools’ decisions are out yet, but he has received merit at some of the schools listed by @golfgr8 above.

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Just found this thread. Argh!

Kiddo is just starting the process. Got a SCOIR account last week. No list yet. He is just starting to think about it. But he comes up with the first list himself, then the CC works with him on refining. They have a class dedicated to the apps process that starts second tri - all of the kids are gently dragged into the mindset. Parents aren’t involved yet.

I know historically Stanford is the most popular school, about a third of the students apply. I don’t think the CCs talk anyone out of it, but realistically 3-5 kids get in.

They strongly recommend kids only apply to about 8 schools- no doubt that is because they can better spread the schools out among the students.

Midwest and South seem to be trending. SMU got something like 5 kids last year, which is a huge percentage of the graduating class.

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Congrats @buuzn03 on your DS’ merit aid!!

FWIW, kiddo’s crew is still on Naviance.

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@CateCAParent That seems like how SMS approached things. I’ll be interested to see what you think of SCOIR and if Cate will use KickStart, also. The kids LOVED KickStart (parents did not have access, unless they hijacked the kid’s account). I really liked SCOIR, but once the list was done-- I really never logged back in to check on things. I did see on FT, though, DS going straight to the site and then checking in like 2 minutes to be sure all was in/done on all schools for a given day. It seemed to be very user friendly.

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Thank you, @Golfgr8 ! It’s hard to believe this journey you and I began together is almost at an end!

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Lol I don’t even know what Kickstart is.

All soon will be revealed, I suspect. They can’t keep the hand-wringing parents at bay much longer.

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Thanks, @buuzn03 - so proud of your DS!! I remember when you heard about his acceptance to SMS and his first visit there - getting the little lion! Maybe our kids will end up in college together - only hoping! BTW, my nephew (the Duke story, above) and his wife are in Houston
if Rice is on the radar.

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One of the things I will be curious to see: how will this crazy 2021 admissions season, what with test optional and the huge increase in the number of applications (and the resulting confusing impact on acceptance rates, wait lists and yield) do to the advice CCs give to students graduating in 2022?

Naviance and the like will be a little out of whack as a result, wouldn’t they? Or is the bs process so tried and true that they don’t need to adapt as much as others?

Not to mention the inability to tour while the kids develop their lists, athletic recruiting being messed up from the gap years taken this year, and the dropping of subject tests/schools going test optional.

I don’t envy the CCs.

Eta: oh and the implosion of ECs. That makes the job sooooo much harder.

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A post was split to a new topic: Taking AP Tests 2021

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I think a lot will be out of whack. Test scores won’t be a good indicator of selectiveness, because so many kids only submitted this year if they were top 50%. Some schools seemed to take equally from TO and score submitting kids, so your admissions odds in some cases may be a lot better/worse depending on whether you submitted a score.

I would think Naviance/Scior are going to have to be taken with a huge grain of salt for the next couple of years until we get settled into a new normal. And I don’t know if that will look more like 2019 or 2020. I don’t think anyone does.

I’m happy that I am out of this for a few years. D21 got her ED, and I don’t have to worry about this again until 2025. Which is good, then I can go back to freaking out about how BS is going to be affected this year


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I just pulled that up (Choate’s matriculations past 5 yrs) and took a look. Over the last 5 yrs, they’ve graduated about 1200 students. And about 325 (that is 25 %) matriculated at HYPSM +Penn, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and U Chicago. Plus a huge number went to NYU, and a lot to the top liberal arts colleges. Plenty more to other T20 schools. Interestingly, they didn’t have that many go to the top engineering schools. Overall, the list was extremely impressive - even shockingly so.

The grade inflation there is incredible - only the bottom 5% had a B average, or lower. The top 15 % UNWEIGHTED had an A+ average, and the top 50% had an A+ weighted average. Interestingly, the standardized test scores (and you know that these students had to have had access to the most expensive, intensive test prep) were more “standard” - average SAT of 1397, average ACT of 31.6. The first time it had ever occurred to me that standardized test scores might level the playing field for the well-off, too. And yes, I do realize that Choate takes kids through A Better Chance who don’t necessarily come from well-off backgrounds (the ones I knew were not the descendants of US slaves, but the children of educated African immigrants), so not everyone there is wealthy. But everyone there has access to the best this country has to offer in secondary education, and the test scores were most definitely NOT all A+.

When you view the acceptance list against the top 1/4 of my son’s class at his very good suburban (but racially and socioeconomically very diverse) high school, the GPA, rigor, and standardized test scores are probably totally comparable. And maybe one kid a year gets into a top school, maybe two or three if there are any URM’s who achieve at that level in the class that year. I’m not talking about the bottom 3/4 of the school, who are in regular classes, or remedial classes, or intellectually disabled. I’m talking about those 100 or so kids that he’s gone all the way through school with, in all honors/AP classes, the kids who have virtually never taken a regular level class, who also excel in sports, or music, or robotics, or the like. And hardly any of them are getting into the top schools. They’re mostly going to our flagship state U, or T50 schools.

These numbers seem to confirm what I suspected; heck, what I myself probably benefited from in the 70s. The top schools are still preferentially admitting kids from the top US prep schools.

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Remember that these prep schools also have a disproportionate number of parents who attended a T20.

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