But based upon SAT or ACT scores and rigor of curriculum, I would say that the top 100 kids at my kid’s good suburban highly integrated and diverse school, who all seem to take all honors and AP classes, would be about the same academically (at the least) as the class at Choate, and with similar SAT/ACT scores, probably without having received coaching or tutoring. But 25% of the kids at Choate get into an Ivy or its equivalent, while at my kid’s school, less than 1%. And it appears that 50% at Choate get into a T20, while maybe 5% of that top 100 do at my kid’s high school. And the rest of the class at Choate gets into T50 schools, while perhaps only 25% of that top 100 at my son’s school get into T50 schools. It’s pretty darn clear from that list from Choate that prep school kids with inflated, stratospheric GPA’s, yet earthly standardized test scores, despite test prep, are getting into the best schools, while comparably qualified kids from public schools are not.
Some of those top 100 kids at my kid’s high school are legacies. The town has a lot of educated professionals. Some of those top 100 kids will be first in their family to college - we have a lot of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, many NOT college-educated, but who value education. It’s not the lack of legacy status or first to college status that would account for a 25-fold higher rate of acceptance to the most elite schools, with similar academic qualifications. It’s pretty clear that the top schools are still preferentially admitting students from the elite prep schools.
@parentologist - I had to ask the GC if he explains to colleges that the school does not give out many grades higher than a 91. There is well known grade compression. There are many wonderful things about DA, but… If grades are an issue for you, do not attend DA. OK, yet another reason Kiddo should have gone to Choate. I think one or two students in the Junior class had an average of 95 last year. Only 5% of the class is between a 93-94.99. Almost impossible to get above a 92 in a Humanities class. Even with perfect grades on foreign language tests, it seems the teachers are told to deflate based on “class participation”.
A teacher wrote about this topic in the Scroll a few years ago.
Why are most Humanities grades at Deerfield between 89 and 91?
Have to agree with you about the Choate statistics. I was also struck by the grade inflation. Back in my day, a C was average. They prided themselves on the fact that JFK was a C student. We had an entire section of the yearbook captioned “gone but not forgotten” that featured pictures of the kids who were either expelled or flunked out ( which was not uncommon).
The main difference I see between where Choate students are matriculating today vs 30 years ago is on the numbers of students going urban schools like BU, NYU and Chicago. Those just weren’t schools anyone was interested in back then. Brown and Georgetown used to be the two most popular choices.
I don’t have a child at Choate, but I will push back a bit on the grade inflation comments. Stop and think for a moment. Choate is admitting only kids that are roughly in the top 10% of all high school kids in the US (and super strong internationally). The kids getting As, dare I say are doing A quality work. And it makes sense that so many are performing at a high level. These kids are not only smart, they are motivated. There aren’t large groups of slackers at these schools (unlike most (all?) public schools). Their student pool is not like a suburban public school’s.
Also understand that these top 10% students after 4 years of a world class education with some phenomenal opportunities are now applying to college. This is an impressive bunch of kids, mostly, and the group of “impressive kids” at Choate is larger than the “impressive kids” at the good suburban school of the same size. Of course more of them are going to selective universities!
Now that said most selective colleges are NOT looking for more prep achool kids. Going to prep school might even be a disadvantage with college admissions.
@Golfgr8 don’t worry about the grade compression! Colleges are very familiar with Deerfield. They know the school profile. Their admissions offices are tight with Deerfield’s college counselors. Truly you have nothing to worry about on this score.
@parentologist I’m not so sure. I have two students at high schools in the same county of MA. One at very good public school and another at a BS (one that is known to deflate grades not inflate). My student at public school is all honors, AP’s and 99%+ PSAT/SAT… On paper her stats will be way better academically then her sibling’s at prep school. However, I believe my child at BS will be much more qualified for a top college.
It is astounding to see the same subjects being taught at the two different schools. Her PS does just fine, but they stick to lessons and scratch the surface. At BS, they might go off on a tangent at any given time to explore topics deeper than any PS can with class size, testing & time constraints. They are learning to really, really think. At BS my child is also learning much better time management, independence and self advocacy at a level that is not needed to ace public school.
I’m certainly not knocking public high schools, especially, since I have an upper level student at one. However, I can see why AO’s at top colleges accept so many prep kids. There is so much more learning that goes on at these schools than just academic stats can reflect.
Plus the quality of teaching is so much higher across the board at boarding schools. Bad teachers cannot stay more than a year or two. Many are life changing.
Let me say for the record that I don’t think the gulf between top boarding schools and public schools is a good thing.
Keep in mind that those GPAs are junior year only. So, the kids are very well trained by that point and their courses align well with their abilities. Also, the students are pre-screened via the admission process, so the “average” GPA is an average of top 15% academic performers.
I agree with most of the points on this thread esp. the difficulty of classes, level of teachers and initial acceptance. One thing I would say is, 15% being A+ does seem very high compared to most BS’s.
Just going to chime in here and say that whether Choate’s grades are inflated or not Is rather irrelevant. College AOs know all the top boarding schools and their grading systems. I would be willing to bet if someone pulled the matriculation lists from any number of top boarding schools they would look fairly similar. I’m bored, but not that bored so will leave that to someone else
Yes, it doesn’t really matter. If one BS school is high and another is low they are still comparing the top students from each. The point was being made relative to Choate so they are the example.
Dang it! ChoatieKid ('15) missed this new grade-inflated Choate by one lousy year. Just think where he might be today had he enjoyed the handout @parentologist describes. Instead, he was oppressed by the same grade deflation @Golfgr8 describes at Deerfield. In the Dickensian days of his prep years, there was zero grade inflation, straight-scale/no curve, no do-overs, extra credit, or test corrections, many classes where no student earned 100%, and you just had to suck up your miserable existence and hope you at least got in to Tufts. It was a dark time, indeed.
Seriously, as others have stated, the cherry-picked student body and the quality of teaching make comparisons beyond other boarding schools rather moot. You also have to consider the institutional capital that the college counseling offices at these schools bring to the process. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a highly curated process. Applications are not random; students apply to custom-crafted lists of schools with the advocacy backing of familiar CC offices – colleges know what they are getting from the well-prepared students who apply from (all of) these boarding schools.
Even with all of the advantages students from these elite high schools have, top colleges still gate how many students they will admit from each, and most kids at every college did not attend BS.
I think that the main point here is being missed. On the only parameter that can be said to not be biased, or if it is biased, would be biased in favor of the prep school kids, who are more likely to have had access to intensive and expensive standardized prep - namely, standardized test scores, a cohort of high achieving good public school kids with average SAT/ACT scores similar to those of the prep school kids are admitted at about 1/25th the rate of prep school students to the top schools.
I’m not arguing whether there’s grade inflation at Choate. When the bottom 5th% of the class has a B average, and the top 15th% UW, and top 50th% weighted, has an A PLUS average, that’s grade inflation.
My point is that given roughly equivalent achievement - similar standardized test scores, similar rigor of classes, the rate of admission to top colleges of good prep schools vs good public schools appears to be about 25:1.
My kid beat the odds, because he had high achievement in an area outside of school, that was initially nurtured by the public school districts strong music program. But he has so many supersmart, high achieving classmates - national merit, perfect or near-perfect SATs, fantastic grades in the most rigorous courses, lettered in and placed high in state for a sport, published writer in prestigious student journals, high level talented jazz musician. And virtually none of them get into the very top schools - whereas the equivalent students at good prep schools virtually all do
THAT is the issue. Despite the lip service given by the schools to doing otherwise, it appears pretty clear that in order to get into the top schools, one had best be sure to choose to be born into the kind of family where the kids get to go to elite prep schools, as opposed to public schools.
Review @Altras post. The stats Choate lists are junior-year only so, again, not apples to apples with schools that use a different rubric. We saw zero grade inflation at Choate. But that was more than five years ago…
Also, the BS students who are admitted to those top college are at the top of their BS classes – and that is VERY hard to do. They are the best of the best from all over the world, truly a rarefied group.
One other point about standardized test score comparisons. Choate (for example) does not encourage score-chasing. Once students score above the average for any college they are applying to, the score will not be the reason for rejection or acceptance, and they are encouraged to move on as most can meet those thresholds in a single sitting. Students are encouraged to take both the ACT and SAT once and submit the better of the two tests. If either is a bit low, they are encouraged to repeat (once) the better test and call it a day. Our son took each test once, no prep, and moved on.
As ski always says here, “Colleges admit students, not scores.” I believe it’s the package of benefits BS students bring to the table that gives them an edge compared to non-BS students. In addition to that stellar high school education, the boarding experience produces independent students who know how to study, manage time, live away from home and in community, and advocate for themselves – all things that ensure they will hit the ground running as contributors to the colleges they attend. They are attractive to colleges on a spectrum of characteristics not easily achieved or demonstrated outside the BS experience.
Yes, that’s very true. Apparently, from the numbers, they take about ten kids from Choate a year, at each of the most prestigious schools. Not EVERY student at Choate gets into the absolute top schools - just half of them. Some of them have to settle for T20s, top LACs, and even (gasp) an occasional T50 school. But surprisingly, their average standardized test score is the same as the cohort of kids at the public school who take all the honors and AP classes offered. Considering that the public school students are certainly less likely to have had the benefit of test prep, that would tend to imply that they are performing at the same level as the Choate kids. The top elite colleges overall take about 35% of the class from elite prep schools, whereas 90% of the country goes to public school, and probably 99% doesn’t go to elite prep schools. But yes, 65% of the class DOESN’T come from the elite prep schools, and not EVERY elite prep school student winds up at the most elite college. Never mind that the ratio is about 25:1 for the individual high achieving student, with similar qualifications, when looking at prep school vs public school. 25 to one.
Well, that must be new, too. The class of '15 did not have more than five to ANY top school (mostly 2-3) with the exception of Yale and that, historically, is due to the number of (qualified) faculty children who attend Choate. Oh, and NYU which just appears to be wildly popular with Choaties.
I read an article recently that demonstrated that most of the grade inflation in the last decade to 15 years has been at the privates. I know in my large urban market, grades at privates are inflated compared with the flagship public(s), which generally eschew weighted grading anyway.
Unless grades are forced into a bell curve, grade inflation of some degree is inevitable at any school that selects students based on academic performance. And most schools that “select” are private schools. Therefore, it is not surprising that private schools have grade inflation relative to public schools. The mean of an unselected group is going to be lower than the mean of the top 50% of the same population. And the mean of the top 25% will be even higher. etc, etc. That is just statistics. Whether there is further grade inflation is a school-by-school assessment. And I’m sure college AOs are familiar with the inflation of many selective schools.
Not sure why people with no experience of boarding schools are so certain they know more about boarding schools than people with actual experience. . .
I was talking about exam schools so they do select in fact they are highly selective. I am extremely familiar with the boarding school world not limited to the fact that I went to one.
I think one or two students in the Junior class had an average of 95 last year. Only 5% of the class is between a 93-94.99. Almost impossible to get above a 92 in a Humanities class. Even with perfect grades on foreign language tests, it seems the teachers are told to deflate based on “class participation”.
