I don’t disagree. That said, she ended up feeling like the more connected kids were getting more support, better advice, more time, whatever. But everyone is very grateful to the dentist who made the suggestion. It didn’t come from the school’s college counseling. Maybe they’ll suggest Rice to more kids now. Though I suspect it’s a hard sell. A lot of prejudice against Texas and Houston I am sure. But if you are looking for medium sized research universities with strong residential college systems, it should be on your list.
Yeah, but “on financial aid” means incomes at $250K a year at some elites like Harvard, Amherst and that tier. I think the number of low income kids - let’s say Pell eligible - is a better indicator. And that number is much lower.
And she may not necessarily be completely wrong as college counselors are human like all of us and have biases which influences their advising which may favor some students/families over others for a variety of reasons.
Saw some of this at my public magnet as some college counselors clearly favored and gave more attention to students within the top 10% of my graduating class even though plenty of folks outside of the perceived top 10% who felt they were given the “cold shoulder” ended up gaining and accepting admission to Ivies and comparable elite colleges.
And that perception was not limited to my graduating class…but was also prevalent when older alums who graduated in the '80s and earlier were applying to colleges. It was one topic of conversation which provided a “bonding” moment between older and younger alums at alum gatherings.
There may also be a factor that Rice, rightly or wrongly, isn’t considered as STEM-oriented as schools like MIT.
A factor which was definitely in play with classmates favoring schools like MIT over ones like Rice regardless of regional/geographical factors.
With half of students on financial aid, that means that those schools have half not on financial aid. Since not getting financial aid at (for example) Harvard probably means top 2-3% income and/or lots of wealth, schools like Harvard have a student SES background distribution that is heavily skewed toward those from high SES backgrounds. Even many financial aid recipients come from high income backgrounds compared to the overall distribution of income in the US.
Pell eligibility actually goes up to the solidly middle income range (up to about $60,000 or so, depending on state (try the FAFSA4caster at https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/f4cForm ), although students from families with incomes at that level are getting only a few hundred dollars of Pell grant). So even a highly selective school with lots of Pell grant recipients (e.g. 39% @ UCLA, 30% @ Columbia, 19% @ Harvard, according to http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools ) still has a distribution skewed toward higher income backgrounds.
My child attended one of the independent schools that UESmomof2 listed in Post #203. I agree with her about legacy, development, & URM. I’d add children on financial aid who have an excellent transcript, or is that considered a hook?
All these “famous schools” have excellent college counseling. And, their curricula provide a superb window on the expectations of college academics. Alumni from my child’s school often say that academic demands at college/university were less. (this is in contrast to the approach at the NYC specialized high schools)
Also, Collegiate is famous for stellar college placement. (and, bear in mind, culling happens at the independent schools by the time kids reach high school… so the probability of admission to the family’s preferred colleges is very good)
As a graduate of one of those NYC Specialized high schools, I’d only agree with the part about college counseling.
As for curricula and academic demands, my experience* and those of most HS classmates was also college/university academic demands were less/more reasonably paced…including classmates who attended the Ivies/comparable elite schools.
I ended up making good money as a private academic tutor for many private school alums at my undergrad despite the fact they graduated somewhere in the top 5-20% of their respective graduating classes whereas I graduated near the bottom of mine*. Some also seemed to have been given far more leeway regarding deadlines and extensions/do-overs than my HS classmates and I were ever afforded by our HS teachers. Something which factored into their rocky experiences in college and in some cases, after undergrad.
- To this day, some HS teachers who knew me back in HS couldn't believe how well I did in undergrad/grad whereas my college/grad Profs found it extremely hard to believe I was an academic dunce in HS.
Elite education has been skewed in favor of the well-off - it has been and still is, but I haven’t said anything wrong in my earlier post. Diversity is a major focus of elite college admissions and it’s true that they are too small to take all top students.
In my opinion, the price these kids and their parents pay is too high. I wouldn’t trade one minute of the eighteen years we had with our kids in our home for a higher probability of acceptance at an elite school.
(ok, if pushed, I could probably pick a minute or two…
Most of the schools we are talking about here are day schools, not boarding schools.
When parents send a child to boarding school, there are usually strong reasons to do that beyond merely getting a higher probability of acceptance at an elite college. Or at least I hope so. Including first and foremost that the educational opportunities available to (and wanted by) the child at the boarding school are significantly better than would be available if the child stayed home, regardless of what happens with college admission.
It’s crazy to do something that makes you unhappy to improve your chance of admission to Harvard by 1% or 5%. It’s not crazy at all to do something that makes you happier, smarter, more engaged, a better person. Even though happier, smarter, more engaged, better people may also have a somewhat higher chance of admission to Harvard than those who are less happy, less smart, less engaged, and not so good.
@jhs , it’s tough to measure happier, smarter and more engaged and then weigh that against the value of deeper family relationships. I do understand there’s a valid counter-argument which is why I prefaced my statement with “IMO”
^^ Haha. Whatever makes you feel better. 
There are probably some special situations for a small percentage of families that can make boarding school a desirable option. For example, if the parent(s) have jobs that involve frequent relocation, that may be disruptive to the kids’ schooling to change schools that often. Or if the jobs involve relocation to places that may be less desirable for the kids to be in. Or if the jobs involve the parent(s) being away for extended periods of time, being at a boarding school may be preferable to being at home with absent parent(s).
Of course, choosing a different kind of job that does not have these characteristics is preferable for more and better family time. However, parent(s) invested in a career track may find it hard to start over in a different kind of job, even if hindsight tells them that they should have chosen differently when they were starting their careers.
Or the public and private* HS options in the local area are so woefully lacking that boarding school or a day school much further away are the only options to ensure the students get a reasonably decent education. Those were the circumstances which prompted my Mississippi relatives to send one student to an elite NE boarding school and another to a private Catholic day school much further away(nearly a 2 hour drive each way).
- Former segregation academies which had such an abysmal academic curriculum that one of the cousins who attended for a year before being pulled out by the parents said it made the curriculum of an academically average NYC public HS look academically elite in comparison.
“I’d be interested to know how @tk21769’s list would change if size of the colleges were considered.” (#83)
For one school, Forbes’ #1 ranked Trinity School, this is how colleges would rank by concentration of representation (minimum 5 TS matriculants, 2011-2015):
- Hamilton
- Yale
- Harvard
- Colgate
- Columbia
- Brown
- Kenyon
- Amherst
- Dartmouth
- Penn
- Wesleyan
- Bowdoin
- Chicago
- Pomona
- Middlebury
- Williams
- Duke
- Princeton
- Emory
- Cornell
- MIT
- Johns Hopkins
- Northwestern
- Bucknell
- Stanford
- Lehigh
- Tulane
- WUStL
- Tufts
- Georgetown
- Vanderbilt
- Boston College
- NYU
- U of Virginia
- U of Southern California
- U of Michigan
@merc81 It is interesting how heavily the list is weighted toward Ivies and LACs. The first dozen places are taken up by 6 LACs and 6 Ivies. I think that the first non-LAC, non-Ivy university that is listed at a higher position than its US News ranking is Lehigh.
@uesmomof2 I go one of these schools and can say that this is completely 100% true.
Re #234, Yale had been miscalculated:
- Hamilton
- Harvard
- Colgate
- Columbia
- Brown
- Yale
- Kenyon
- Amherst
- Dartmouth
- Penn
Lots of wondering on previous pages about why Michigan would be so popular with California’s status-conscious preps. Obvious answer: “If it’s good enough for Madonna’s kid…”
What is the top destinations outside of the USA? I am seeing many more kids looking outside the US, Scotland in particular is popular, and will likely become more so as the weaker pound has international tuition fees around the $20- $22k level. Likewise I can see Canada as always being popular but I am not sure numbers are increasing.