@laenen, to be fair, I think you need to acknowledge that JFK Jr. isn’t exactly the typical “hooked” student. I think one can probably assume that if you are (1) the offspring of a US president, (2) actual royalty (major royalty, not the dime a dozen small country that doesn’t even exist any more), (3) a blockbuster actor (think Natalie Portman, Emma Watson), or a Olympic gold-medalist in a marquee sport – you can pretty much go to any college you want as long as you aren’t actually illiterate. For people with more regular hooks, you’ve got to at least be in the ballpark of the academic standards.
Amen, @Soxmom. And I think you’d agree the distribution of those truly unique students is so random that’s even worrying about it is unnecessary. John John didn’t take your kid’s spot. There will always be a spot for John John.
@Mr.Wendal JohnJohn is truly unique but when you aggregate the legacies, development and URM competing for a relatively few spots percentage-wise, it is not insignificant
Of course. But those folks are pretty evenly spread–by design. All schools strive to maintain a nice balance. All top BS will have a large component of each group and the subtle shifts year-to-year are not material.
They will vary in type–places like Lawrenceville or Milton may have a bit more of a certain kind of day student that comes from an academic household, but then there may be an offsetting decline in another area (for example, college professors, while usually financially comfortable, are unlikely development targets).
Any of the top schools will have anecdotal evidence of non-athlete, non-URM, non-legacy success stories, and the reverse. Do high school well at any of these places and your college will be fine. Don’t attend BS to get into a particular college–but also, don’t NOT attend BS because of your fears on this topic.
If you look at the common data set for Harvard and its cohorts, you’ll see kids that were accepted with test scores below 500. A small percentage granted, but that’s a pretty low threshold. Not all of these special admits have stats in range.
@lizzie123 sorry to hear about your experience… we have experienced absolutely opposite when it comes to teachers being available… Teachers are available after school hours to meet with you, yes you need to make an appointment but its for everyone’s sanity and works great. My child’s teachers have even facetime-d him over to weekend to explain the concept, I believe that is rare !! pretty happy on the advisory front too… Milton has been very open about receiving feedback, especially Mr. Ball and Mr. Bland, I would sincerely urge you to voice your opinion to them so that the practice can stop. Sorry to hear about the advisory experience, the fact the person left the school says a lot…
Here’s an interesting tidbit – this is a scatter graph showing the GPA and SAT scores of the Harvard class of 2017 when they were incoming freshman. http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/admissions.html
Yes, there are a couple of really low SAT scores, but actually not as many as I might have thought, and not as low as @doschicos suggested. Also the same publication says that recruited athletes scored, on average, 173 points lower on the SATs than their non-recruited classmates. This is using the 2400 scale, so 173 points lower isn’t that huge of a difference.
If you want to fact check my information: Page 8, section C9. If you haven’t been through the college process yet, Common Data Sets are a great resource. Although a handful of schools don’t make them public, most do.
http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2014-15.pdf?m=1457640342
And then there is the Z list where kids who were waitlisted are accepted under the condition that they defer for a year and start the following year.
Sorry, @doschicos, I wasn’t doubting your data, I just meant something slightly different. If you look at the Common Data, it sort of gives the impression that you could have a kid admitted to Harvard who had sub-500 scores on each of the three sections. In reality, though, the Common Data just means that there were kids who had sub-500 on one section (or more). If you look at the data I linked to, it then shows you that the lowest total score (at least in that year) was a 1660. Not saying that’s a strong score, but at least it’s not the 1200-1300 or so that I envisioned when I first looked at the Common Data.
The problem with attending ANY high school with the expectation that it will absolutely lead to a top college matriculation is that we are talking about people here… in particular kids. Kids will make mistakes, change their minds, lose focus, and grow exponentially. If you don’t buy into prep school in and of itself having value, then it is not a great choice to make. No one can predict the future. No one can tell what your kid will accomplish or how he might change during the high school years. Humans vary widely. You can’t expect attendance at any school to be an automatic ticket anywhere.
Apples and Oranges. The Crimson data is self-reported, so it’s sort of like using the results threads on College Confidential to compare against the CDS.
I dont think that people are looking for a guarentee that they are getting into a top school but rather a higher probability. This is analogous to how some parents send their children to SAT prep or hire a college consultant. Some parents would like to believe that there has to be a justification to spending the time and the effort.
@laenen The problem is with any expectation beyond receiving a first class high school education as well as (for boarders) an increased maturity and learning of life skills. It is that expectation which (unfairly) creates disappointment. There are no guarantees… and there is not really an increased probability - see my reasons for that in comment #50. If you do not believe in prep school education on its own merit then it is, perhaps, not for you.
Do you think when someone enrolls in Kaplan parents think to themselves that taking a Kaplan course is really about the education? No they are looking for the increase of scores that Kaplan “promises”
Do you think when a parent pays $40+k to a college consultant who has a solid track record of results, do not have the same expectations for their child?
Lets be honest. Schools report their matriculation to the top colleges to entice parents to enroll and take the chance that their child might be 1 out of the 3 that goes Ivy.
Now is that prudent for the parents to have those expectations, maybe not. But the expectations are there and elite schools both public and private feed it either directly through matriculation lists or through SAT scores.
And the OP is trying to determine how real the numbers are! If SAT scores and matriculation to the Ivy was no better than an average LPS, do you really think there would be such demand for the prep school experience. The increase in demand for prep schools especially from abroad is driven in large part by the desire and the hope of making it into the Ivy league or other similarly selective schools.
"Do you think when someone enrolls in Kaplan parents think to themselves that taking a Kaplan course is really about the education? No they are looking for the increase of scores that Kaplan “promises”
Do you think when a parent pays $40+k to a college consultant who has a solid track record of results, do not have the same expectations for their child?"
Kaplan and the college consultant exist for the sole purpose of helping one get one’s student into college. The boarding schools don’t make that claim. They promote themselves as institutions of learning. Notice that boarding schools (at least all the ones I have looked at) bury their matriculation stats deep in the bowels of their websites. You have to go looking for them, even the ones that you could claim do have something to brag about. Also, most of the schools seem to post their entire matriculation lists, not just matriculations to top colleges. Additionally, if you go to a BS visit or revisit and college matriculations come up, its the college advisors and administration there who will be the first ones to tell you NOT to choose boarding school for that reason and to discuss the changing college admissions landscape. They don’t want families to choose them with college matriculation as their main priority.
I don’t think your comparison above is a valid one.
@laenen I agree with you that many prospective BS families will check out the matriculation stats and would want the assurance that their kids’ chances of getting in a good college will not be significantly reduced by attending BS, but I think you are exaggerating the universality of the appeal of Ivy League schools. My kids are in Ivy League schools and I think they are great institutions, but I also think other top colleges and LACs are great institutions too. And I sincerely believe that a lot of families ours included would want the BS experience and more importantly what could be gained from that experience knowing that their kids possibly won’t be attending an Ivy League school out of BS. You have to acknowledge the diversity of BS families. Now, my “ideal” is that my kids get to attend a high quality BS, gain a lot from it, enjoy it and move on to a top college. But we don’t live in a perfect world and we make compromises constantly. An Ivy League school is a compromise some families are ready for.
So I have been able to understand the question I first raised. I have also been able to do it with hard numbers. It is possible to build a rough picture through data, estimates and graduate/parent/school administrator interviews. It is not precise but a rough picture does emerge. The rough range at top BS/day schools is 35 to 55 percent for the schools that I looked at. My conclusions are as follows:
Every school is trying to build an advantage to drive the college matriculation. Each has their own strategy in the marketplace to compete. So it may be useful to see if the advantage that the school has built and pursued fits well with your child and family or not. Many of you have rightly talked about ensuring “fit” with the child to ensure engagement and positive experience.
Chicago school was right - there is no free lunch. Schools have to compete and so do the students. Even the hooked students have to compete within themselves as well as broadly. After choosing “fit” it is still incumbent on the child to put in the effort to succeed.
The bar for unhooked students is higher but it was so even getting into the prep schools. If you can get in, at the least the prep school thinks that you are in your correct weight class (boxing analogy). But as a family you should make sure that their judgement is correct. Fighting in your correct weight class is extremely important. Being a weight class higher or lower is bad for both development and outcomes.
Milton does absolutely fine on the overall analysis but so do all the other top schools. I found the exercise to be very useful in making our decision and understanding the different options. But my child reached the same conclusion from the revisit days from just feel and their personal response to the community.
There is likely a “better” school for your child. Nothing is guaranteed but it is worth going through the exercise to understand what is “better” for you. But that answer is only for you and your child. Broad judgements about BS/Prep schools/Public Schools, various kinds of hooks etc. dont work. Everyones situation is different, their choices of accepted schools are different and likely what is right for them individually will also be different.
My understanding is that our son would have a much greater chance on being accepted to a super competitive school had he remained here in our rural school district and placed top few in his class vs being top quintile at Loomis.
I am sure you are right about that.