Our public school’s top 10 (class of 450) appears to have done reasonably well with regard to selective school admission:
MIT - 2
Stanford
Dartmouth
Brown
U of Pennsylvania
U of Chicago
Carnegie Mellon
U of Michigan
Northeastern
Below the top 10, there are kids going to Stanford, Yale, Cornell (4 or 5), Princeton, Wellesley and Carnegie Mellon.
Niiiiice
Which region are you in, if I may ask?
Sounds comparable to TJ. Must test to get in?
Boston metro area. No test to get in. But 40% Asian, and somewhat of a pressure cooker environment.
Our school - class of 166 - doesn’t rank but we know the top 10% through who got into Cum Laude early, who are going to:
Oxford (England)
MIT (2)
Stanford
Duke
Rice (2)
Northwestern
Princeton
Harvard
Bryn Mawr (U Chicago)
Barnard (Cornell, Northwestern, various “higher ranked” LACs)
Other schools below top 10%, some below top 20% (with athletes and we are heavily URM): Yale, Brown (2), Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Wash U (4), Carnegie Mellon, Notre Dame, Cornell, Rice, Bowdoin, Amherst, Wesleyan, Michigan, UT Austin (2), NYU (5), NEU (a few)., BU, Tufts, Emory (2).
Not bad for a small school in the SW, which helps, I think, mostly at LACs for geographic diversity, but the student body mostly goes to universities.
Lol, I know the school you are talking about (we considered it for our S21 at one point when we thought of relocating). Excellent school, and the student body there has more raw horsepower than just about any school in the West except for Davidson Academy. Maybe Harker and Lakeside as well.
Not surprised at the college placement for the top of the class there.
When you are done with the AP test, done with AP final, done with all of your senior finals, on the senior retreat, graduating two weeks later than public schools and your AP Calc teacher assigns more circuit homework. 
. Really wth? Rant over.
This whole thing is turning into so much stress tbh. My daughter still doesn’t know if she’ll get even a dorm space, disability service has denied her because she doesn’t have enough history with her doctor (and her previous doctor is deployed), and fb chatter is making me worry that classes won’t even be all in person in fall (apparently LA is a particular kind of cautious)- particularly yuck for performing arts majors. Also, her college transcripts were supposed to be evaluated by 6/1 but they’re still pending.
Added to that my husband’s car died in spectacular fashion (think smoke and parts flying off) on his way to work today and the whole family is on the verge of saying maybe four year college isn’t for my daughter, at least right now. The community college she had previously planned to attend just seems so low stress and low key at this moment.
I think I need a woosah and to take a short break from thinking about any of it. Whew.
Sending a virtual hug your way.
Honestly, LA’s Covid rules were one of the reasons LMU fell off the list. LA county was one of the most locked down in the country and LMU’s hands were tied. It was the least expensive school for us by a good amount but it just seemed too risky.
If you do decide to make a change for fall, I wonder if you could have your D reach out and talk to someone about entering as a transfer in fall 2022.
They’ve offered her a gap year, which would solve the under 18 and worry about further restrictions issues.
If I’m being honest, she’s just too embarrassed to take the gap year. First she was going to Goucher after a gap year, then canned the whole thing to stay at her ballet company, then switched to LMU after her surprise admission, and now she is horrified to have to admit to any further changes in public. Poor kiddo. It’s been a crazy year.
You said earlier she could take a trainee position at her studio? Since she’s only seventeen, it does seem like an attractive option…
Since LMU will let her defer for a year, she could package it to her peers as a temporary delay until Covid gets under control in LA to (maximize her experience there)rather than any kind of major change.
@milgymfam I agree with @inthegarden. I understand all of the changes are hard but lots of kids are making decisions on the fly during this Covid time. Things change as you get more info. Maybe it’s just something to sit with but, in the meantime, find out when you need to confirm a gap year with LMU. She is pretty young.
Has she connected with any current LMU students to get a sense of what next year might really be like? My brother lives in LA and I think things are finally opening up as the majority people there are either vaccinated or have antibodies and the whole state is opening in a few weeks.
My friend also was able to go to her son’s USC graduation after being told for months only CA residents would be able to go. But as things got better, things opened there too.
My friends in LA say, yes, things are opening up but they do not trust it will last. They are afraid LA county will be on the cusp of shutting down for a while since the county’s reaction for the last year was so intense. They couldn’t even open restaurants outside! And it’s in the warm weather of LA! We were eating out more here in Chicago.
We also do not know exact rank, but top 10%(first group cum laude) includes:
Harvard
Penn
Duke
Gtown
UVA(multiple)
UNC
Wm&mary(mult)
Notre Dame
Next 10% has
More UVA, wm&mary
Duke
Emory
W&L
UNC-ch(mult)
Mich
UofR
Colorado
Below top 20% are Vandy, more Gtown, Dartmouth, Davidson…and many more UVA
The “rank” at ours isnt really helpful past a certain point because we have a handful of less-rigor kids who are in top 20% and did not get in to UVA , then there is a decent group of top rigor kids who didnt make top 20% because they took classes where Bs are common. Honors and AP both only get a 0.5 boost, and most classes are only available as regular in 9th and 10th. It is a top test-in day school which has 30-40% go to top 30 unis , almost half take AB or BC calc by 12th, but it is very interesting how they do weighting—the goal seems to be to keep a path for the mostly-regular kids to get to top 20%.
She hasn’t connected with anyone and isn’t likely to- she’s really quite shy and keeps to herself. That said, they’ve said they’re planning full capacity for dorms but have not made a decision about course modalities yet.
That’s interesting. After years of complaints, our school introduced weighting for APs and “advanced” classes and Cum Laude is based on that. Otherwise, you’re comparing apples and oranges.
So, has anyone’s son/daughter gone through orientation/registration yet? Mine just finished and really a different experience than in person. Of course he doesn’t know better but is what it is. It was only about 1/2 day each of today and yesterday but in all the emailing before they kept pushing the fact that it was full day. No big deal either way, other than I assume for people who clear their whole schedule. They did make a point umpteen times that it was for kids only. I can only imagine how many helicopter parents were sitting behind their kids computers listening in though. Although, according to my son it was so boring yesterday. Lol. They required he watch a bunch of videos beforehand and stuff like that but then went over the same stuff yesterday. They also put him in a randomized group of 30 (guess it really was random) with a friend of his, but even funnier, when the breakout rooms of 5 were done, they were also in the same group! They were doing ice breakers, so not sure that was overly helpful, not to mention it wasn’t by school/major but again it is what it is. So far, nothing for parents yet, although we think just random webinars throughout the summer and so far not anything for us until maybe July.
As far as registration today, that was at least divided by college so his was all engineering. More helpful than yesterday and then he had a set appt with an advisor. He had picked what he wanted to take beforehand and the adviser did have his scores and transcripts in front of him, other than final grades and this year’s AP test. The kicker though is that he couldn’t register for certain courses because his major apparently, doesn’t enter the AP scores in until they have official college board scores, and even if they had been sent previously, they don’t start entering them until sometime later in June. Now instead of waiting for them to be sent with his AP results in July, he ran and expedited them being sent now so that the sooner they do get there and can be entered (by June 30 according to the adviser) he can register for 2 of the classes. The holdup is that they need to “prove” he had to AP prereqs for them. Such a pain. He walked away only having registered with 1/4 classes. 2 need the AP scores from sophomore year and last year and then the other class he learned over the weekend that because it’s an Honors class and Engineering doesn’t have a Freshman Honors program, he had to talk to an Honors Adviser to get literally “grilled” and approved. I think it was actually great they grilled him though because it was like an interview and really went into depth on what material our school covered, what he knew, etc. So he got permission after he registered this morning and was able to add that 2nd class. So now his schedule is 1/2 full. He’s not exactly thrilled especially since he had a prime first day slot of registration but at UM the good news unlike my other kids schools is that you can add/drop throughout the summer, but now the worry is not getting into the other courses he does want because everyone else in a similar situation between now and the end of the month when those scores get posted will have as much a shot at getting in them as he will and there are not that many spots left since sophomores are already registered in them and taking most spots. My son however, is pretty intuitive and also realizes that many kids need their July AP results to know if they meet the prereqs and not all actually want these courses so he’s banking that the actual numbers are not as many students as actually going through engineering orientation. I honestly cannot keep this all straight and am happy I don’t have to.
For anyone still hoping for waitlist movement, kudos to you for putting up with that. I honestly don’t think I could stomach that. This gives me a headache and we’re making so many plans - buying sports tickets, planning for move in, outfitting the dorm room, etc.