Interesting Admission Statistics from One Top Private School

A few of us are of the opinion that the 1980’s were probably the low point for Hyde Park. My kids live in an area of the neighborhood that I wouldn’t even walk into 35 years ago. It’s very safe, close to public and university transportation, lots of young professionals, nice shops, and surrounded by attractive walk-ups and townhomes. VERY different from my day. By early '00’s the neighborhood was improving noticeably. This isn’t at all unusual for Chicago; I used to say that you can actually see the gentrification taking place in various neighborhoods on the North Side. Woodlawn recently has been a target area for getting an affordable place near the university; south of Law you will see a lot of students milling about. The university has really built up South Campus and about half the undergraduate dorm space is located there now. ETA: there is now a hotel there as well.

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I was half-joking about the dorms, although I do wonder what sway nice living amenities have on potential applicants. Maybe we need to find some statistics looking for a correlation between applications and bathrooms/student.

I lumped ED and ED2 two together. With HW students, the early admission acceptances from schools like WashU and Chicago beget more interest from the students, especially for those outside of the very top of the class.

Your comment made me curious about what colleges students applied to and were accepted to who were not at the top of the class. I used the weighted 2017-19 sample to better correlate with rank. I am using the 2018-19 profile rankings to convert GPA to rank . “Unhooked” means without not in the category they call “athlete, legacy, etc.” I am not sure whether “etc” includes things like being a URM.

The most popular schools varied with each rank range. WUSTL did well among the middle rank kids. It was the most applied to college among the 2nd lowest quartile rank kids and had a high 30% unhooked acceptance among this group. Chicago wasn’t among the most applied to colleges among any GPA grouping. It had the highest relative ranking in the 55th to 75th percentile rank group. Unhooked acceptance rate was a high 48% for this group.

I did not find most of the other unhooked Ivy type acceptances particularly impressive. Chicago and WUSTL are anomalies to this pattern. USC was the most applied to college among relatively lower GPA kids, and the hook rate was higher for low GPA USC applicants than for any other listed college-GPA group. It was the only listed college-GPA grouping for which the majority of applicants were not unhooked. This made me think of the college admissions scandal, although given the close proximity between location of HW and USC, I am not surprised that there are a lot of hooked kids.

Most Applied to Colleges: 4.3+ GPA ~= Top Quarter of Class
1 . Stanford: 14/77 accepted overall, 7/62 = 11% unhooked
2. Harvard : 15/75 accepted overall, 6/62 = 10% unhooked
3. UCB: 50/66 accepted overall, 49/65 = 75% unhooked
4. Yale: 16/62 accepted overall, 11/50 = 22% unhooked
5. UCLA: 47/60 accepted overall, 46/59 = 78% unhooked

*. WUSTL: 18/39 accepted overall, 16/35 = 46% unhooked
*. Chicago: 15/38 accepted overall, 13/35 = 37% unhooked

Most Applied to Colleges: 4.1 to 4.3 GPA ~= 55th to 75th Percentile Rank
1 . UCB: 22/56 accepted, 21/54 = 38% unhooked
2. Penn: 13/48 accepted, 4/37 = 11% unhooked
3. UCLA: 12/46 accepted, 11/44 = 25% unhooked
4. Brown: 6/43 accepted, 1/35 = 3% unhooked
5. WUSTL: 14/41 accepted, 11/38 = 29% unhooked

*. Chicago: 14/30 accepted overall, 12/25 = 48% unhooked

Most Applied to Colleges: 3.7 to 4.1 GPA ~= 25th to 55th Percentile Rank
1 . WUSTL: 30/77 accepted, 17/57 = 30% unhooked
2. Michigan: 35/74 accepted, 28/63 = 44% unhooked
3. UCB: 11/73 accepted , 10/69 = 15% unhooked
4. USC: 25/70 accepted, 10/47 = 21% unhooked
5. Emory: 16/63 accepted, 8/50 = 16% unhooked

*. Chicago: 9/30 accepted overall, 6/24 = 25% unhooked

Most Applied to Colleges: Below 3.7 GPA ~= Bottom Quarter of Class
1 . USC 27/98 accepted, 4/49 = 8% unhooked
2. NYU 55/82 accepted, 35/55 = 64% unhooked
3. Michigan: 13/74 accepted, 9/45 = 20% unhooked
3. Tulane: 40/74 accepted, 30/53 = 57% unhooked
5. UCLA: 8/57 accepted, 3/52 = 6% unhooked

*. WUSTL: 8/42 accepted overall, 2/29 = 7% unhooked
*. Chicago: 0/5 accepted overall, 0/2 = 0% unhooked

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I don’t know if hooked includes URM applicants, but my hunch is that it does.

As for HYPS-type schools I think the sense is that these are extraordinarily difficult admissions even for the most well qualified but unhooked HW applicants, and that this because there are so many well qualified and hooked HW applicants. For example, for the three year period ending in 2018, HW admitted 32 kids, 21 of them were hooked, and 12 of these hooked kids had above a 4.3 gpa. That is a lot of spots being taken up by hooked HW kids with stellar applications, and, as a practical matter, how many kids (unhooked and hooked) from a single school will Harvard take?

On the other hand, I think you mentioned somewhere above that unhooked HW kids have about the same odds as anyone of getting into a school like Harvard. I am not sure this is an apples to apples comparison, but maybe I am mistaken. Are you comparing the unhooked HW kids to all Harvard applicants, or only to unhooked applicants?

As for USC, it is a very good school, popular, a sports powerhouse, local, and the alum families are extremely devoted to the school. And, like WashU and Chicago, HW kids feel they have very good chance of admissions provided they apply early. As for the admissions scandal, except possibly for two kids who transferred out long before they would have taken the SAT, I’m not aware of a connection to HW. Not saying it couldn’t have happened there, but I am unaware of anything indicating that it did. HW is tough for even the brightest students, and If a kid can make it through HW, then they probably don’t need hire someone else to take the SAT.

I believe the HS with largest average number of matriculating is Boston Latin. Their profile at https://www.bls.org/ourpages/auto/2013/5/24/55204166/College%20Matriculation%20-%202016%20-%202019_xlsx%20-%20College%20Matriculation.pdf?rnd=1574103934000 mentions an average of 25 Boston Latin students matriculating to Harvard per year during 2016-19. Boston Latin used to publish admit rate by GPA, like HW. The admit rate to Harvard was a high 93/369 = 25% among high GPA kids, but nobody with below a 3.75 UW was accepted. Given that Boston Latin is located ~2 miles away from Harvard, it’s safe to assume there are a lot of hooked kids. However, there are other factors as well including a historical relationship between Boston Latin and Harvard that dates back to the 1600s. In contrast, HW averages 9 matriculating students to Harvard per year, which probably is about 10th highest among all US high schools.

No specific figures were listed in earlier posts. It’s more of an estimate based on available information. For example, the Harvard lawsuit data shows a large difference in admit rate between unhooked high stat applicants and the overall admit rate for unhooked applicants. Top stat applicants had an admit rate several times higher than the overall average. There also wasn’t a huge difference in admit rate between hooked and overall, unless you count apply REA as a hook due to the bulk of both applicants and admits being non-ALDC.

The HW profile mentions 98th percentile mean SAT/ACT across the full student body. It’s safe to assume the high GPA/rank kids who apply to Harvard have higher average scores than the overall average for the study body, likely 99+ percentile scores. So I expect the reference high GPA/rank HW applicants to Harvard group as a whole had high stats, high course rigor, and in general were very well qualified academically. This group is expected to have a much higher admit rate than the overall average. If you compare similarly well qualified, unhooked kids who apply to Harvard, I expect the average admit rate for HW kids would be significantly lower than the overall average across the full domestic applicant pool.

In short, in spite of HW having the ~10th most matriculating students to Harvard of all US high schools, I don’t see any evidence that attending HW boosts chance of admission to Harvard for the average unhooked HW student. I’d make a similar statement for the vast majority of Ivy Plus colleges (not Chicago and WUSTL).

My post said, “This made me think of the college admissions scandal, although given the close proximity between location of HW and USC, I am not surprised that there are a lot of hooked kids.” I agree that few if any HW kids are paying anyone to take their SAT. And I’d expect the bulk of USC hooked kids are legacies. I would not be surprised if there are some less scrupulous hooks, but I expect these are rare.

It’s my understanding that poorly qualified hook kids sometimes attend the lower grade levels at HW, but the kids who can’t handle the challenging workload and high level of rigor with good grades are encouraged to switch schools well before college applications.

Interesting. This data does indeed suggest that WUSTL’s ED rounds might attract more HW applications from outside the very top of the class. The same can’t be said regarding UChicago, however. ED might, indeed, attract “more” interest, but the data don’t really reveal the GPA category, especially when now compared to the other institutions. Of course, WUSTL has degree-granting business and engineering programs, as well as a popular pre-med program. Those and its very respectable ranking would probably tilt the numbers in its favor.

UChicago still appears a bit of an enigma using the conventional standards and metrics.

This is consistent with what seems to be the general consensus in the community; these same unhooked HW kids would have a much better chance at H if they were applying from elsewhere.

It looks like the statement holds for Pomona, Duke, Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford, but beyond those, the admissions percentages are higher than the general application pool. In some cases much higher.

Here are the lowest admit %s for 2016-18, 4.3+ gpa, ten or more unhooked HW applications:
|COLLEGE|4.3+ (%)|Apps|Acc|

  1. |Pomona College|0.0%|11|0|
  2. |Duke University|4.8%|21|1|
  3. |Princeton University|6.5%|31|2|
  4. |Harvard University|9.7%|62|6|
  5. |Stanford University|11.3%|62|7|
  6. |Northwestern University|15.8%|38|6|
  7. |University of Pennsylvania|18.0%|50|9|
  8. |Brown University|19.6%|46|9|
  9. |Columbia University|20.5%|39|8|
  10. |Yale University|22.0%|50|11|
  11. |Massachusetts Institute of Technology|25.0%|32|8|
  12. |Cornell University|28.6%|35|10|
  13. |Dartmouth College|28.6%|21|6|
  14. |Emory University|30.0%|10|3|
  15. |University of Chicago|37.1%|35|13|
  16. |Vanderbilt University|41.2%|17|7|
  17. |Swarthmore College|41.7%|12|5|
  18. |Washington University - St. Louis|42.9%|35|15|
  19. |Tufts University|45.5%|11|5|
  20. |California Institute of Technology|45.5%|11|5|
  21. |Johns Hopkins University|45.8%|24|11|
  22. |Williams College|50.0%|10|5|
  23. |Amherst College|53.8%|13|7|
  24. |Carnegie Mellon University|53.8%|13|7|
  25. |New York University|66.7%|15|10|
  26. |University of Southern California|75.0%|36|27|
  27. |University of California Berkeley|75.4%|65|49|
  28. |University of California Los Angeles|78.0%|59|46|
  29. |University of California Irvine|78.6%|14|11|
  30. |University of California San Diego|86.0%|43|37|
  31. |University of Michigan|88.6%|35|31|
  32. |University of California Santa Barbara|90.3%|31|28|
  33. |Georgetown University|90.5%|21|19|

(Sorry I don’t know how to format it correctly. If you want to copy it into an easier to read format, feel free.)

As discussed in my earlier post, the HW profile suggests the top GPA kids at HW have 99th+ percentile scores. Do you expect top GPA + 99th+ percentile scores + high course rigor + … applicants to have the same admit rate as the full general applicant pool, including typical applicants who have far lower stats? If not how do the listed admit rates compare to those expectations?

As an example, Cornell 10/35 = 29% sounds quite high. However, among similar stat applicants from the basic public HS that I attended, the admit rate listed in Naviance is even higher. In contrast, the overall admit rate from my HS across all stat ranges is similar to the overall average admit rate across all stats for Cornell.

I don’t follow. The HW statistics include the gpa breakdowns, and Chicago is attracting a large number of applicants (and admitting a large number of students) from well outside the top gpa group, as is WashU.

I focused on the general pool because you had done a similar comparison for the top schools, above, and I wanted a point of comparison as to how HW fared at different schools. To me it looks like there is sharp increase in the acceptance rate after Stanford.

Also, the general applicant pool to top schools is somewhat self-sorting and skews toward kids near the top of their class, with high test scores and good grades, etc. applicants to the top schools, so I am not sure the comparison is entirely inapt.

While most of the HW kids in the top gpa quartile probably had high test scores, I am not sure it is safe to assume that almost all had 99+ test scores. I’ve never seen statistics on the correlation between class rank and grade at HW. My guess is that there is some correlation, but I doubt it is an extremely strong correlation, especially if we are focusing on the top 1/2 of the class. (This would help explain why kids from the middle of the class do so well at a school like Chicago.)

Also, how do we weigh the HW grades as compared to the general pool? Does top 25% at HW equal top 10% in the general pool? 5%? 1%? .5%? I don’t know, and I am not sure we have enough data.

  • The top 25% of HW class would fair very well as compared to general pool applicants from the top 25% of their classes.
  • HW students would probably still fare well as compared to applicants in the top 5% or even top 1% of their classes, but I don’t have data supporting this?
  • It it possible that the HW students would still fare well when compared only to Valedictorians and Salutatorians from the general pool, but again, we don’t have the data to support this. ’

But I am hesitant to draw too many conclusions when the proof depends on the assumptions, not the data.

That said, I’ll to try to answer your question.

I don’t think that kids from other schools with high test scores, top grades, and high course rigor

  • have a 20% chance of admission to Brown,
  • or a 22% chance of admission to Yale,
  • or a 25% chance of admission to MIT,
  • or a 29% chance of admission to Cornell,
  • or a 37% chance of admission to Chicago,
  • or a 46% chance of admission to Cal Tech and Johns Hopkins,
  • or a 90% of admission to Georgetown, etc.

It’s not appropriate to expect similar results between similar rank kids at a highly selective HS to a non-selective HS. Suppose you group a bunch of top 5-10% kids from their non-selective HS a put them all in an especially rigorous honors program. It might be appropriate to compare the kids in the top 25% of that selective honors program to the kids in the top 25% of of HW or similar highly selective HS – rank in selective grouping compared to rank in selective grouping. But it’s not appropriate to expect similar results for similar rank between a selective group and non-selective group, especially since selective HSs almost never directly submit rank.

More appropriate is to compare individual student characteristics. For example, compare 35 ACT + 3.9 UW GPA kid at HW to 35 ACT + 3.9 UW GPA kid at other HS. Do the 35 ACT + 3.9 UW kids have HW have much better results than the 35 ACT + 3.9 UW kids elsewhere. If so, it may suggest something special about HW is really helping applicants.

As an example, Brown used to publish admit rate by ACT score during a period near the one for which the admit rate stats were captured. HW reported an average ACT of 33 across all students in their profile. If we assume top GPA students at HW who choose to apply to Brown average notably higher score than the overall average for the full HW student body, then I’d expect an average ACT of 34-35 type range… probably closer to 35. Applicants to Brown with this 34-35 type ACT averaged a 15-20% admit rate. The kids who had 34-35 ACT + top GPA no doubt averaged higher than 15-20% admit rate for ACT alone, so i think it’s safe to assume >20% admit rate for 34-35 ACT + excellent GPA… probably notably higher. If you add in a higher rate of ED applicants among HW kids (wealthier + better counseling supports higher ED rate) than the overall average, then expected admit rate is well above 20%… probably much higher… So I am not amazed to see than top GPA kids at HW had a 20% admit rate to Brown. That doesn’t imply that Brown must really like HW kids or HW has a special feeder relationship… or that a particular kid would have a better chance of admission to Brown had he attended HW than a non-selective HS.

Scattergrams suggest the same. I realize Parchment is self reported and flawed, but can give a general idea of how admit rate may change between higher stats kids vs average stat kids. Parchment scattergrams suggests a 3.9 UW + 34=35 ACT kid has similar or higher chances at Brown, as well as all of the Ivies listed above.

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What would be more interesting to me is the sort of description that someone with real knowledge of the kids in this school could give us as to the varying types, profiles, characters, etc. of the kids attracted to these various colleges. Gpa’s are a pretty one-dimensional measure. Within each of these gpa cohorts there must be a variety of types, and those types must surely be drawn to, and cluster around particular colleges, especially those known to have distinct characters. Going off to college is just about the biggest thing that can happen in a young life. There is a longing to find kindred spirits and the place that suits what you believe to be your unique personality and ambitions. Of course the logistics of one’s likelihood of acceptance and ability to finance the great adventure comes in to it. But it was certainly the case in my day as it was for my childdren that the choice of a school could tell you a lot about the kid who chose it, and most of what it told you had little to do with gpa. Aggies and Longhorns were simply cut from different cloth, as were owls and mustangs and hornfrogs. The sole kid who went to Berkely was, ah, different, as was the sole kid (naming no names) who went to Chicago.

Correct, but with UChicago there is no “bump” of applications for any GPA range - well, ok, a slight bump at the highest maybe. WUSTL is a clear favorite in terms of applications and ranking at the 2nd and 3rd tiers.

Not sure if any other school is showing this, but UChicago attracts students from across the GPA ranges. While that might be correlated to their nice accept rate, it might be other things. Also, we don’t have a picture of the type of application round students are choosing. Other data or evidence will have to provide that; these numbers really don’t.

All of this data seems unsurprising, to say the least. That highly accomplished students (many from wealthy backgrounds) at a well regarded, rigorous prep school have a greater chance of being admitted to top schools is no shocker. What would be truly surprising is if they weren’t being admitted to those schools in droves. I just don’t understand why this is worthy of so much discussion and analysis. For the most part, kids from HW have every advantage (including a truly impressive education) -that they are successful should be no surprise.

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I think the takeaway is the opposite of what you are saying. HW kids aren’t getting in at higher rates than equivalent students elsewhere. The confounding variables are the legacies and how competitive it is to get into the high schools to begin with. Strip those variables away, and the results are not special.

The discussion is about whether and how you strip away the variables.

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Maybe they aren’t getting in at higher rates than equivalent students at other prestigious prep schools, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find many (any?) regular public school (i.e. not exam) where 90% of kids with an unweighted gpa of 3.9 or more (and commensurate ACT or SAT scores) are accepted to Georgetown, for example, or where 25% are getting into MIT. I live in a town in MA with a good public high school where anywhere from 15-20 kids go to top 20 schools each year (and more to top 50) – that’s out of 400+/- students. But we have 60+ kids with a weighted gpa of 4.4+ (roughly equivalent to a 3.9 UW) most years and you just don’t see those kind of results. Maybe at a Boston Latin or Lexington High you’ll see those % but there aren’t a lot of public schools like that – many public high schools in this country send 0 students to tippy top schools.

But that might be a better point of comparison. I would speculate that there a bunch of “known” schools, both public and private, where college AOs understand what it takes to be at the top of the class and are willing to admit at least some of those kids even if they are unhooked. Palo Alto High would be another good (public) example in CA. However there are many more high schools that aren’t known by reputation to AOs and applicants have to do something outstanding to be noticed.

Where that creates problems is if you do have a bunch of strong hooked kids in those schools, who squeeze out the possibility of the unhooked kids getting admitted. That seems to be common in our high school which has multiple admits to Stanford/MIT/Ivies every year, but almost invariably those are only the hooked kids. If that’s the case then an outstanding unhooked kid might be better attending either a “known” school or a high school that hasn’t had an admit (either hooked or unhooked) in the last decade. Anecdotally, unhooked kids we know who moved to Palo Alto appeared to have better outcomes than the comparably talented ones who stayed at our local high school.

And yet, Notre Dame only has an 8.3% accept rate, low number of apps as well (1 admitted out of 12 applied) - using the most current 3-year unweighted data from the Handbook. I found that interesting. Here in the Midwest ND has a large number of applications and back East is a respectable backup for the Ivies. My son applied to both ND and G-Town (pulled his apps when he got into UChicago). ETA: there are definitely “favorite schools” with decent admit chances among the HW population.

The numbers mtmind posted were for weighted GPA of 4.3+, not unweighted. The unweighted admit rates for 3.8-4.0 GPA as listed in the first post were as follows:

MIT: 6/29 = 21%
Georgetown: 21/27 = 78%

Given the 33 ACT average among HW, it’s safe to assume that HW kids who have top 3.8+ GPA and choose to apply to MIT would have a higher average ACT than the full student body, probably much higher. MIT publishes admit rate by test score at Admissions statistics | MIT Admissions . The 34-36 ACT group had a 10% admit rate. >3.8 UW GPA + 34-36 ACT would no doubt have a higher a higher admit rate than any GPA + 34-36 ACT, but it’s unclear how much higher. maybe 15% admit rate? So the overall pool had an estimated 15% admit rate with similar stats compared to 21% admit rate at HW. 21% is indeed higher than 15%, but it’s not clear that the HW name has anything to do with this relatively small difference.

One possibility is simply a small sample size issue. For example if there happened to be 5 admits instead of 6 over the 3 year period, then the admit rate would have little difference from expectations. A sample size of 6 admits is not large enough to estimate a precise admit rate. Another possibility is that HW + HW parents may offer greater opportunity to excel in high level math/science than offered to typical students at other schools. This includes things like HW offering math above calculus. There are countless other possible explanations, but I don’t consider a roughly estimated ~15% vs 21% over a small sample of 6 admits a large enough difference to draw sweeping conclusions.

Georgetown is more interesting. A 78% admit rate is indeed very high. Georgetown doesn’t offer ED/ED2, so it’s not an ED vs RD issue. Georgetown doesn’t post admit rate by score or other stats, but I am not aware of history of having this high admit rates for top stat kids across the full pool. Several other high stat selective HSs do show similar overall acceptance rates across the full class. For example, a comparison of TJ to HW is below. I am using the full class across all GPA ranges since TJ does not separate by GPA. Both HW and TJ had a 44% overall admit rate, with presumably a much higher than 44% admit rate among top GPA applicants at both schools. I don’t know enough about Georgetown admissions to provide a good explanation about why this pattern occurs.

HW – 39/89 = 44% accepted
TJ – 14/32 = 44% accepted

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G-Town has a decent admit rate for the second tier of GPA as well: 10 out of 24 apps in the 3.6-3.799 group.

There are several reasons for the bump in admit rates that are particular to G-Town. They might be targeting HW in order to boost the numbers from CA like UChicago is, or they might be giving preference in the REA round (it’s EA but you can’t apply ED anywhere). The G-Town app. is a piece of work and that’s deliberate. They are not on the Common Ap and you have to write a LOT. So there is some self-selection there too. Then there are things like who is hooked but not in that “excluded” group. Could be URM’s, particularly the descendants of the MD Province slaves. Could be extended family - not technically legacy but important to G-Town nevertheless and they do ask you to list them on the application.

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