I know people now making over $1million a year who went to Bentley and Babson. Nothing wrong with either school. You do know Babson’s acceptance rate is 26%, nothing to sneeze at?
Where do you draw the line, @laenen on what is “ordinary” and what isn’t?
Plus, to some people $100-200K isn’t a lot of money and some people aren’t paying that amount either.
All the top boarding schools are going to have plenty of kids getting into Ivies and top colleges based on legacy, athletics, URM, development cases and the majority are going to be very capable students. You’re never going to be able to understand what the percentage is at each school. Even if you talk to folks that are attached to the schools, absent the college counseling office which won’t provide you with the info, it is all speculation and hearsay. Someone might be able to say Student X got into Brown as a legacy or for being a URM but that relayer of info doesn’t know all the details of Student X’s application - the essays, teacher reviews, etc.
If I was the OP, I’d focus my decision on dynamics that are going to make my kid happy at school. Is the school a nurturing, caring place? If my kid is a boarder at Milton, how do I feel about the fact that the school is 50% day students? How do I feel about the fact that my child will be walking into a school where many of the students have been forming friendships since elementary and middle school?
There is nothing wrong with Bentley or Babson. They are fine schools but they are just ordinary. You could be an above average student from an average LPS and get into Bentley. I know. My wife went there.
BTW – I think it is a straw horse to point out "I know someone that did X or made X from this ". There are outliers from community college. My point is IN MY FAMILY – I would not invest that type of money to make my kid happy for 4 years. If they don’t have the potential to go to a top school after going to an expensive prep school, then my children will have to learn to be happy in the public school or home school situation.
In fact – if my children are not going for a career that justifies the money for college tuition then they will either have to self-fund or go to UMass. I am not sending a child to go to BC/BU/NU etc to become a K-12 teacher.
Finally – if you look at some of the more public legacies, I think there are quite a few that are not qualified to go to an Ivy League school. Rarely do you see these legacies at MIT.
Ladies and Gents, lets try to focus on the topic at hand. We all have many opinions and they are right for us individually. And even if they are not, rarely do we have the wisdom to recognize that. I have learnt a lot from all your posts. But if anyone has insight on the specific topic at hand kindly pm me or feel free to post. Thanks,
I think there is general agreement that there is no answer to your posted question/s. They will never ever release that data.
The discussion has strayed a bit but not really. If you aren’t going to an Ivy or like school after BS, was it worth it? Is it worth to go to a mediocre college. What is the value of an elite BS education if you end up at a so-so college? These questions are the automatic follow on questions. My post basically said that I valued an elite BS education even if my kid goes to a non elite university.
As a parent survivor of the BS class of 2016 college application season, I know of many BS kids who were thrilled to get into BU this year. Nearly 20 applied at our school, most early, and I believe just 3 were accepted. These were kids with lots of leadership, top 20% etc. (some who were denied were also accepted at seemingly more selective schools. )
Take a look at some of the college threads for perspective. There is a red sea of “I have 2300, 4.2 GPA and got wait listed everywhere” threads. Parents of incoming bs freshman might not be aware that Stamford, Harvard and Yale acceptance rates are now under 5%. Tufts had over 20,000 applicants, accepted approx 3,000 and approx 100 of the accepted who enrolled last year were alumni kids. Tufts actively recruits alumni offspring but like many colleges, they are more interested in first generation college applicants.
Basically any student accepted into these “elite” schools is hooked in one way or another. The fact that students had the credentials to be accepted at Milton automatically means that many of them will be strong college applicants 4 years later, but if you are counting on purchasing a particular college outcome or thinking past stats will align with future years, the times they are a changing and so is the definition of “hooked.” The good news is it is the child who has the hook and not the BS so your odds of being a 5%er are about the same at Milton as at St Pauls etc.
Do you have access to Naviance? The GPA and SAT cut offs for a given college can be displayed as a scatter plot.
While these scatterplots do not show legacy status it is often pretty obvious. Usually most admits are above a minimum threshold. There will be a few outliers who are below the others. These outliers are most often legacy or development kids.
This will give you a general idea but no precise estimates.
Great suggestion. I dont have access and my guess is that I could not see a schools data unless my child is in that school and gets access for that schools data. But at some point I will have access and this suggestion will be helpful at that point. Thanks,
You could ask the admissions office to send you screenshots of their school’s Naviance plots for the last few years. As a parent I think this is a fair question to ask.
A few years ago I asked the Deerfield office for a list of college matriculation a and they were more than happy to oblige.
If I understand it correctly, the question you’re really trying to ask is “which high school will be most helpful in getting my child into a good college”? You are correct to think that just looking at each school’s matriculation data doesn’t really help you answer that question. If you could eliminate all students who are “hooked” from the data, and look at the matriculation results for just the unhooked students, that would help to some extent, but as many have said, schools don’t make that public. But I would contend that even if they did, it wouldn’t really help you that much. First of all, not all “hooks” are the same. There’s a big difference between being a legacy of a certain college, and being a legacy for multiple generations all of whom have given money to the school. There’s a difference between being a recruitable athlete in a marquee sport and being a recruitable athlete in a less visible sport. Etc, etc. And even if you had the matriculation data for just unhooked students, that still wouldn’t give you a level playing field for assessment, because the boarding schools have different incoming populations of students. There’s plenty of data showing a high correlation between SSAT and SAT scores, so a school with higher average incoming SSAT scores is also likely to have a student population with higher SAT scores.
I’d argue that the best way to assess which high school will most help your child get into a good college would be to concentrate on which school he or she is more likely to thrive at. For some kids, being a “big fish in a small pond” might give them the confidence to really knock it out of the park and shine. For other kids, having more academically intense students around them may push them to succeed. What are the leadership opportunities outside of the classroom like? Do kids engage with teachers on things like independent projects/studies? Which school offers opportunities that your kid might really get passionate about?
I think soxmom’s comment is spot on. That said, my son is a student at Milton and I can give you some incidental information as this is something we have our eye on as my son gears up for his college search. 1. Milton has a TOP notch sports program, and I know hockey players who have ended up at Harvard and Yale in the past few years (boys and girls). Their championship soccer team players have ended up in top schools as well. 2. There are many Harvard + MIT professor kids at Milton. They are wicked smart, and enjoy a leg up at those schools. I can’t speak to number of legacies. 3. Milton has a a very smart, very interesting student body. The academics are incredible. There are great opportunities for bright motivated kids, but I would be careful, especially if your child will be a boarder, about the culture there. There is limited support, and there are kids who fall through the cracks. It is not a warm fuzzy place. If you think your kid is a strong self-advocate and would do well in this kind of environment, it is a great school. I think like any school, you want to be careful that your child does not start off in the bottom half and then finds the program hard to navigate. Hope this is helpful.
lizzie 123 this is very helpful, Thanks. Can the support be limited even for a motivated child with strong self advocacy? One little factoid I noticed is that the school has has some limited success only in STEM areas like say the Intel Science Talent Search. Maybe that has to do with the traditional strengths of the school in liberal arts areas? Or it got me wondering if support is limited if a child wants to do a big independent project that does not line up with the traditional strengths of the school?
I can’t speak to the support in STEM areas or large independent projects, though I think that would vary significantly depending on teacher and department. It is true that Milton is considered stronger in the humanities than in math/science, but the kind of “support” I was referring to is actually much broader. Specifically, the advisor system is very rigid which is a problem mainly for boarding students. The kids are assigned an advisor freshmen year, then have no opportunity to change. My son had a bad match (an advisor that actually rarely met with her advisees and then was “unavailable” during course selection period, I could go on and on) and we were told there was no way to change advisors. Deadlines were missed, communication was non-existent, etc. He has a new advisor now, but only because the old advisor left the school. Teachers are available but also pretty rigid about help outside of class as it is a big school and they teach multiple sections. Your child must make an appointment, and matching up schedules is difficult. With one exception, they have not been available after hours or on weekends like at other boarding schools. The learning center is staffed with “peer advisors” that do not return emails or show up for appointments. There are exactly 2 learning specialists for 700 students, and they seem to be dedicated to recruited athletes. Day students are in a much better position with parents that can be more involved. You could also luck out and get a great, in-touch and motivated advisor, and of course it helps if your child is a strong self advocate and doesn’t end up needing this kind of support.
It is safe to say that those who get into a top college with hook (sports, URM or anything) or legacy are equally smart in most cases. Top colleges would not simply accept unqualified students because they have a legacy status or are great athletes.
@patronyork top colleges and top boarding schools accept URM, legacies, athletes etc all the time that are well beneath the very very high bar for admissions. For example: Andovers 68% admit rate for legacies; the academic minimums for Ivy athletes; the lower bar for URM and so on.
Perhaps I’m naive or even too much of a hippie, but in my estimation the general tone of this thread misses the biggest goals of (boarding) high school. And frankly of life. We are curious, passionate, industrious creatures. Nurture that and the rest will follow.
