<p>How do you find out which Level you are in? Or is it more of a process that no one knows for sure?</p>
<p>What I’m saying StB is perhaps the Ivy’s are doing the same thing as Exeter, and not admitting as many FA students this year, so the change in Ivy admittance would be a wash.</p>
<p>Financial aid for SPS has increased each of the past three years in both dollars and as a % of total tuition. The coming year it will increase again in both measures. Luckily SPS does not have the endowment liquidity issues that Harvard, Dartmouth and a number of others have faced. It is clearly their intent to actually increase their financial aid to continue to attract and support the most qualified possible applicants. All schools have to continue to have well balanced classes with gender, geography and personal traits impacting the admission decisions. </p>
<p>For the year just ended, national educational charitable donations are down 3.9%. Luckily at SPS annual giving is up 3.1% and total giving (including endowment) is up considerably more. Having said that, applications to SPS + A + E were all up last year and yields are strong, but for many less competitive schools the opposite is true on all measures. All of this will impact boarding school FA in a variety of ways.</p>
<p>“All schools have to continue to have well balanced classes with gender, geography and personal traits impacting the admission decisions.” -W</p>
<p>This is all well said and done this year, but what if the trend in philanthropy continues its decline? (Top few BS’s set aside)</p>
<p>The professional estimate (CASE) is for an increase next year. Depending to the market, that is probably a good prediction (good to date). However for foundations, which generally operate on 3 three year trailing average, giving will almost certainly and with close to statistical certainty decline next year from this.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but can someone please explain Winterset’s last post to me?</p>
<p>I’m curious Winterset: would you be willing to post the SAT means of these schools?</p>
<p>The most accurate source is each school’s profile that is sent to colleges. Most will have it somewhere on their website, often in the College Counseling section. You can also go to Boarding School Review but their data is not always accurate (Andover’s average SAT is wrong but the 25th-75th percentile figures look about right).</p>
<p>It’s nice to peel the onion.:)</p>
<p>^^^I’m not sure what that is referring to, but just to clarify, Andover’s average on BS Review is too low. It’s listed as 2008 when the correct value from the profile for the class of 2008 was 2076 (my guess is someone accidently grabbed the number from the wrong column in a spreadsheet). Of course, even a casual observer would recognize it as an obvious error given the 25th-75th percentile range is 1960-2210. It would have to be an almost impossibly skewed distribution to get an average of 2008 from that.</p>
<p>It wasn’t referring to your posts, metaphorically speaking.</p>
<p>Nevermind. I completely forgot about Peterson’s.</p>
<p>Exeter 2085
Andover 2063
St. Paul’s ???
Hotchkiss 2015
Deerfield 1990
Girard 967/1600
Peddie ???
Woodberry Forest School 1290/1600
Groton ???
Choate Rosemary Hall 2020</p>
<p>As you know Prep Review Rankings change from year to year, so here are the rankings for the top ten<a href=“note%20there%20are%20some%20ties”>/u</a> boarding schools for the past five years<a href=“2006-2010”>/u</a>. Where they were greater that the top ten, in is shown as a “>”. </p>
<p>I do this reluctantly, because some people will like the numbers, others will flame me citing all sorts of statistical problems. So… sit down, relax and accept that these are the facts, whether you like them or not. Milton may like them, and Andover who Really want to be 1st will argue and feel insulted or offended. PLEASE do not blame me, I am simply the messenger. There are many reasons why we all love one or more schools (and yes my nephew and father-in-law went to Andover, a brother to Exeter, and great friends to Groton and others). They are all great and colleges are certainly NOT limited to the Ivy’s + Stanford + MIT! </p>
<p>So… with all those efforts to assuage hurt feelings, here are the Five Year Rankings:</p>
<p>St. Paul’s: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1
Milton: 4, 3, 2, 5, 2
Andover: 1, 6, 4, 2, 4
Groton: 4, 4, 3, 4, 3
Exeter: 1,6,6, >, 5
Deerfield: 7, 2, 7, 3, 6
Nobles & Greenough: 6, 8, 5, >, >
Middlesex: 10, 5, 9, 8, 7
Lawrenceville: 8, 10, 10, 7, 9
Belmont Hill: 9, >, >, >, >
St. Albans: 10, 9, >, >, > </p>
<p>Based on averages (for those years in the top 10 only) the overall rankings and the school’s average ranking are therefore:
- St. Paul’s (1.0)
- Milton (3.2)
- Andover (3.4)
- Groton (3.6)
- Exeter (4.5)
- Deerfield (5.0)
- Nobles & Greenough (6.3)
- Middlesex (7.8)
- Lawrenceville (8.8)
- Belmont Hil (9.0)
- St. Albans (9.5)</p>
<p>Obviously, averages are more meaningful than any single year. So maybe these numbers will be useful to some people. Day students and PG’s can also skew some of these numbers. Attending any one of these schools probably has no impact on your chances of attending one of these colleges. Whatever school you are at is the best.</p>
<p>I don’t see why anyone would flame you for publishing factual data. I would question your assessment of what “Andover really wants” since you cannot possibly know that unless you are conversant with the Head of School or Board of Trustees.</p>
<p>I think the statement was hypothetical.</p>
<p>According to Boarding School Review, St. Paul’s SAT average is 2075.</p>
<p>Where is Hotchkiss in these rankings?</p>
<p>Good compilation of the facts on how Prepreview has ranked boarding schools over the years. How far apart they are away from the actual “facts facts” is another matter. SPS is a fine school. In our time when data flows like never before, an inaccurate ranking system doesn’t really help or hurt the school, not to the nerdy and wise ones anyway. :)</p>
<p>Boarderkid, These rankings are based solely on an estimate (prepreview’s word, not mine) of Ivy+SM graduation rates. Unless that’s the sole criteria that’s important to you it’s better to focus on what you want to get out of a prep school and how well each school will deliver. It may be Hotchikiss, SPS, Andover, Hill, Kent or wherever, but at least it will be based on you and not someone else’s metric.</p>
<p>BTW: If you want to use the actual figures I think we calculated Hotchkiss had about a 16% rate of Ivy+SM matriculation. I don’t know how that fits relative to the estimated top 10 (which you will notice changes from year to year), but it means kids from there have a legitimate shot at attending such colleges.</p>
<p>Edit: With apologies to Hotchkiss, I understated their matriculation statistics. The actual figure for the last 4 years was 18.4% (versus 32.9% for Andover and 30.4% for St. Paul’s). These are based solely on the figures published on each school’s website. I caution, however, that without being able to normalize for the student body, culture/interests, etc. it doesn’t say anything about the relative likelihood of an individual being accepted by (or even wanting to apply to) any school. For all I know Hotchkiss, with its remote location, might attract more kids with a burning desire to attend Middlebury over Harvard.</p>
<p>Consistent inaccuracies over a 5 year period would put prepreview out of business, or at least bring along a competitor.</p>