Completely agree with OP in #15. Knowing where the most recent classes of your high school applied and got in is key in keeping expectations grounded in reality. Our small public high school is full of very smart kids who do quite well on standardized tests. At least 10 or more/year have the grades and scores and some interesting ECs to get in. Yet only a few (average 3-5) go to Ivies every year (and often those slots go to athletes), despite many applying. None to Stanford, MIT, and UChicago in recent memory. Interestingly, kids from our HS tend to go to an Ivy if they get in - I think most of them qualify for some aid.
And I know some parents have said in past posts that it’s hard know where all kids applied and all kids got in. We have a small high school in a small town and all the kids at the top and their parents talk openly about this stuff (even money).
@Yalie 2011 My offspring attended a NYC public magnet. I just checked the stats for the Class of 2016. More than 25% went to top 20 universities and top 10 LACs, based on US News rankings. I suspect more were accepted but chose to go elsewhere for other reasons.
How is knowing this going to help you? The guidance counselors at these schools and a look at Naviance are going to be more helpful to these kids than someone who isn’t familiar with the school. It really isn’t your job to keep expectations in control. IMO, kids who attend high schools like this aren’t the ones you should be trying to help. They get a lot of help from people who know a lot about college admissions. Help the kids who go to high schools where nobody even applies to top colleges. At those high schools, GCs sometimes don’t even know basic info, such as the necessity of taking SAT II tests.
That’s NOT the case at the top public high schools. At most such schools, the GCs know what they are doing. And, IMO, the kids, including the “naive immigrant” kids will be FAR better off following the advice of their GCs than some volunteer who wants to “manage their expectations.”
Just to give you a sense of how seemingly random it can be. I went to a top 5 high school in my state. We all knew who got in where unfortunately; it was the wrong sort of competitive. There were around 20 kids in the top 10%. Among us, half were National Merit scholars.
Our valedictorian was admitted to Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Williams, Amherst, Wellesley, and Dartmouth, wait-listed at Pomona, and rejected at Harvard.
Our salutatorian was denied by every Ivy/Stanford, and accepted to Berkeley’s engineering program and Rice.
3 got into an early medical program. #4 got into an early vet program. #5 was denied by all the Ivies, Stanford, and U'Chicago. Got into Rice. I was #6 and went to Pomona- didn't apply to any Ivy or Stanford besides Columbia (I was admitted after a mistake in which they never got my rescind notice, since Pomona was binding) #7 was rejected from every Ivy, U'Chicago, and Stanford, but got into Rice. #8 was also denied but later transferred to Cornell after a year at King's College London. #9 was ED to CMC. #10 was denied everywhere and went to honors at the local university. #11 was admitted to Stanford, WashU, and Princeton. #12 was denied everywhere except Haverford and went to UT Austin. #13 was admitted to Yale, Duke, Amherst, Pomona, and many others, but went to Plan II Honors. #14 was denied at all the Ivies, Stanford, and Pomona, but admitted by U'Chicago, Swarthmore, Northwestern. #17 was admitted to Columbia, Jefferson Scholarship at Washington&Lee, Rice, Brown, and Cornell. There was someone not in the top 10% (barely, I think she was right at the edge) who got into U'Penn ED. I think that's it for the people who went to the Ivies and comparable schools. Those not in the top 10% were strongly encouraged not to apply to them.
11, 13, #17, and the girl who got into Penn were African-American, so their race probably did help them a little, but all the same they were incredibly bright students with national accolades and superb essays, so no one resented them for their admissions.
My high school (a widely regarded public one, at least down here) sends a solid amount of kids to top schools. Last year, they sent one to Caltech, one to Emory, one to Harvard, one to Johns Hopkins, five to Rhodes, four to Tulane, one to UCLA, one to UChicago, one to Vanderbilt, one to Vassar, and two to Yale. Granted, we normally have a class size of 400-500 kids graduating each year, but our school is known for its strong relationship with top schools. It’s shaping up to be even more this year, as our c/o 2017 is brilliant and last year’s was seen as a bit weaker than normal!
Here’s the breakdown of who went where for my prior highschool (the one that’s in the top 20). The list only includes more known and renowned colleges.
Barnard College (2)
Brown University (2)
Bryn Mawr College (4)
Carnegie Mellon (17)
Cornell (8)
Columbia (2)
Dartmouth (3)
Duke (1)
Emory (5)
Georgia Tech (8)
John Hopkins (3)
MIT (6)
Mount Holyoke (1)
NYU (18)
Northwestern (2)
Princeton (8)
Rice (1)
Smith College (1)
UC Berkeley (6)
UCLA (1)
all other Ucs have 1 person attending
UChicago (4)
UMD (14)
UPenn (3)
Vanderbilt (2)
Villanova (3)
Yale (2)
Last year no one decided to attend Harvard or Stanford it appears…or they didn’t get in. The year before two people went to Harvard and 1 to Stanford.
I go to a average sized public school in rural Ohio (~300 kids per class), we get an ivy student about once a year. 2016 class had 1 princeton, 1 carleton, and 1 Washington (st. louis) i know for sure. About half don’t go to college.
There is a lot of variation among schools. It is important to know your school’s stats and those you can find in your school profile, asking your gc or looking at the school’s naviance. What happens to other high schools is irrelevant. You also have to be a bit realistic in seeing where you stand in your school, how you compare. For example if you are a solid student but not in the top 1% yet any student that ever made it to a top college comes from that percentage yes you should take notice. Some high schools might have a larger gray zone others are more clear.
Naviance would be a start, but I don’t think the data you’re looking for exists. Knowing X students got into the ivies from some school doesn’t tell you much unless you know how many of them were hooked. It would be interesting if someone did a study on this, but the only one I’m aware is Espenshade’s Frog pond study. The Frog pond study is based on data 2 decades old and only included three unnamed colleges.
I suspect that when you look at the feeder high schools scoring the most elite admissions, you will see the hollowness of the holistic process. Perhaps a few from the flyover states to round out the admissions map.
Our local high school has about 2000 students in 3 grades, in a college town with some bright kids. As far as I know, only one person in the last several years was admitted to an Ivy (Yale), a part minority female who agreed to start after a gap year. I think a few years ago one boy went to University of Chicago.
It is true that the culture here is more local with fewer kids aspiring to selective schools. But the admission rate is so negligible that encouraging students to apply is questionable.