In our D’s HS, I wouldn’t say there is grade deflation…but A’s in AP courses almost always correlate to 5s on the AP test and are awarded to much less than half of the class. She has several B’s or B+ over her four years, and she’s in the top 5-7% of the class. I think for many top prep schools there is…not necessarily grade deflation…but a true grading policy. Makes it much easier for AOs to parse over time.
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The elite prep schools dole out massive amounts of financial aid. Does that mean everyone who needs financial aid gets to attend? Nope. Does everyone who’s full pay get to attend? Again, nope.
Some schools have already recognized that the middle class gets squeezed and have programs to remedy this. Some schools are just figuring it out.
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What are the programs? I haven’t heard of those. The one thing I can think of is that a few schools froze tuition for a year or two. Other than that, not much. And those who froze it, it was already among one of the most expensive schools.
@G07b10 , some have publicized them (Groton comes to mind) while others just do it (I know George does.) I think that middle class families are far more likely to have good public options, so for many, spending any money for private education seems unnecessary.
But back to the topic… I think one way that prep schools help kids in college admissions – beyond simply having made them stronger applicants through however the school has transformed them – is by very personalized college counseling. Teachers, advisor, coaches, CC really know these kids and can write compelling recs and can make sure that the app they are submitting really hangs together.
Throughout the 4 years, the CC office can make sure that the academics will position the kid for what interests them.
The CC can work on fit. Results are definitely better when kids are targeting schools where they will thrive and bring something to the school it wants as well.
And if they can see an issue (i.e., 5 of the other kids at the top of the class are all fac brats at a school you’re targeting), they can help you strategize around that. (This may be part of the comment above about college counselors at one school blaming poor results on families who “did their own thing”.) Over the years, people have fretted about this for their kids on these boards, and it varies from school to school, but to the extent that schools are nudging kids to or from certain options, it is often because of some insight that an outsider might lack. It’s also one of the reasons that most ask that if you are using an outside CC, you let them know (and even suggest collaboration. )
The CC also does a lot of communication with families over the 4 years, and again, it really helps everyone get on the same page. Even at accepted student days, it is stated that this is not meant to be an extended admissions test for college but its own experience.
I recall that when DS graduated, more than 90% of families said they were highly satisfied with college counseling and the results. Given that they headed off to about 100 colleges, they weren’t all T20 acceptances! But I do think that people felt like their kids had been guided to schools where they would thrive.
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Completely agree. The college preparation and admissions process at the prep schools discussed here is not remotely impersonal or random and is curated for great results for each student.
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This is definitely conventional wisdom. The concern, though, is that the college admissions game has changed so much in the past two years that conventional wisdom and practices don’t apply.
To be clear, I am firmly in the camp that college admissions is not the reason to go to a particular, or any, boarding school. And I completely agree that bs college counseling offices do an excellent job by and large.
But the admissions landscape has changed a lot. Legacy boosts are going away. In the zero sum game, more spots are going to historically marginalized students. Privilege is suspect and even disfavored. The rules have changed, and assumptions that previously gave the tip to a bs student now tip the other way. Top kids will still get into top schools, but expectations are being adjusted- by the CCs, the kids and the parents. While it has always been true that a parent should not expect their kid to walk into an Ivy just because they attended bs, it is even more true now.
It is what it is, and it isn’t wrong, it is just different. Some parents might feel like they were promised something that the schools can’t deliver on (despite the mantra the schools all repeat about not going to bs for college matriculation).
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The changing landscape does not make college admissions a zero-sum game. There are seats at the college table for every BS student; no one is shut out. The disconnect is when families/applicants view that table as being smaller than it actually is.
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I actually do think it’s a zero sum game though. Not in an absolute sense, i.e. it’s not “College XYZ will accept 5 kids from BS A.” But in a relative sense in that College XYZ says “hey look we’ve already accepted 5 kids from BS A so let’s not get too crazy now and accept too many more ok?”
To the extent that the CC offices steer kids this way or that, manage expectations, try to curate/hone lists so that not too many people apply, or the “wrong” people apply (@gardenstategal 's example of the 5 facbrats also applying) - and we do think/know that CC offices do this - then it is somewhat zero sum in that sense.
I mean, you can of course always check whichever boxes you want on the common app, and include College XYZ. And of course College XYZ can choose to stretch to 6 from BS A. But 7? 10? No…at some point they will cap it regardless.
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At a minimum, it is a zero sum game in that school Y accepts 2000 students each year.
If the admissions office mandate shifts to accept a higher percentage of bipoc and first gen/low income students, and the schools are not shy about saying that is what they are now doing (and the most recent CDSs bear this out, btw), then the spots have to come from somewhere.
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Definition of zero-sum game
a situation in which one person or group can win something only by causing another person or group to lose
There is a misunderstanding of the term zero-sum game in this discussion. A zero-sum game is a winner-take-all strategy. Say there are ten marbles and two players. The one who gets all ten marbles wins. There is nothing left for the other player.
Neither limited seats nor capping seats at a particular college fits this definition. “Losing” a seat at college X does prevent any student from “winning” a seat at another college. Each applicant can only attend one school, so if there are ten marbles (seats), there are ten winners. None of the other qualified applicants are losers. They just end up winning a marble from a different pool. They are not shut out from being admitted somewhere.
If you want to say that there are limited seats at college “X” so only some and not all can “win” that seat, that has always been the case. At every school. I think we’re just arguing over who is more likely to get those particular seats now. Meh.
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It is a zero sum game if we define the group, say T20 or T50.
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I don’t know much about how this process works. This is what I’ve noticed for our school.
In previous years, our school seemed to match a relatively fixed # of students to top universities. Some universities always took more of our students. Others took fewer students. Some rarely took any of our students. There definitely seemed to be a geographical relationship. Even in unusual years when a large number of our recruited athletes were accepted to the same school, the total number for the graduating class would still remain about the same. It will be interesting to see what happens this year.
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Excellent post. The question that remains, however, is whether what is happening right now is an over-correction to what was seen as a broken and unfair system.
Was privilege and legacy providing decades’ long acces to the private elite universities at a rate that was patently unfair to the average American student? Without question. I might argue that before the perfect storm of the past few years (USC scandal, Covid, racial justice movement), colleges were slowly moving to adjust away from the “auto admit” model.
But the past few years it appears as if prestige and privilege is actively being punished by some schools. Current students are being asked to pay for the inequities of the past admissions process. Are these students much better prepared to adapt and succeed without the shiny Ivy degree than the students that are being admitted? Yes. Maybe that’s the point. But an unfair system previously is still an unfair system- it’s just shifting the parameters to a group that is much more palatable for the public to digest. Who cares that rich kids are now having a hard time!
Penn is the one school we’ve heard about and that I feel most confident in saying is punishing legacy and privilege. They didn’t publish legacy stats for ED for the first time, and there is an absolutely stellar candidate in our school (top 3 in the class, 36 ACT, all state field hockey, great research, etc.) whose parents also sit on multiple panels for Penn each year and have donated over 7 figures. Didn’t get in. They made some calls to find out why (yes, this IS the very privilege that is part of the reason for the movement, but we digress lol). Someone who they claim would have this knowledge said that ED round was specific and goal-oriented to build a class that was “exceptional but not the typical Penn class…different in every good way.” I would not be surprised if this was not an exception amongst the sister schools…
Again…is it wrong? Was the previous model wrong? Is there likely to be a correction back towards a solid marriage of equity and meritocracy? Yes, Yes, Yes perhaps? At the end of the day, meritocracy HAS to rule the day for elite institutions- lest they be passed by those who will embrace it. The question is…how do you measure meritocracy most accurately?
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If you look at the matriculation lists (this again) of every BS, there isn’t a clinker in the bunch and every student goes to one of those colleges. Where’s the problem?
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I’m assuming we’re done debating definitions.
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Disagree about the clunkers. Perhaps that’s the point in the end.
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Respectfully, this change hasn’t happened in the last 2 years. There have been disruptions related to covid - gap years, etc. – that have made certain schools less predictable. But this
has been happening for quite a while. It just started before you needed to pay attention!
My kid’s college did its first Questbridge match in 2016 – 6% of the class – and was, imho, late to the game. (And those kids knocked it out of the park!) Some of those QB kids may be at BS with yours. If you read Privileged Poor, they talk about how BS educated FGLI kids are the ones who really thrive at places that may otherwise be unwelcoming.
As,for actual #s, the total # of u.s. high school graduates is dropping so there are in total fewer kids applying for the same # of seats.
At any universe of schools though, same # of seats.
Kids are applying to more schools, so on a % admitted basis, it looks insane. But each applicant can only attend one school. It really will shake out okay. And I know you can’t really believe me on that until the process is over for you… I wouldn’t have believed it either. 
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It has always been the case that there is a finite number of seats at each college, so that has always meant that not every qualified applicant can attend any particular college. It seems to me that all we’re discussing now is which qualified applicant will get one of those finite seats. But isn’t that what this board has always been talking about? I’d hate to think that we’re now whining about which privileged applicant isn’t getting the seat they want.
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Yeah, not really interested in debating whether this is technically a zero sum game situation or not (though I still think it is ).
My points are just is that
(1) there has been a seismic shift in priorities in the past two years - which I believe is acknowledged by all stakeholders- AOs on down.
(2) I think that is a good thing
(3) People who expect the rules from three years ago to apply now, will be surprised. And pleased or disappointed, depending where they sit. Many bs parents and students will be disappointed that their kids aren’t as desirable. It has been trending that way for a while, but is now on hyperdrive.
My kid is likely one of the unhooked students who freshman year looked like he had a solid shot at an elite, but not anymore. We were straight up told that he/they needed to present him in a way that distances him from the stereotype of the white prep school boy, as much as possible. That’s fine with us. He isn’t that. And we aren’t Ivy or bust anyway. But I highly doubt that was such a concern a few years ago.
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Along the same lines about definitions. Move the conversation forward. I have been here long enough, as have many participants in this thread, to have come across users who view any college outside Ivy + SM as a clunker, so don’t need the debate.
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