@elguapo1 In my son’s HS class, 3 went to Edinburgh. That was almost 2% of the class overall.
Not a private school, just a highly regarded public in an upper middle class town.
Two points:
- I've noticed prep school alums are putting their prep school on their LinkedIn profiles and if you think headhunters, etc. don't notice you're sadly mistaken.
- In re to @merc81 's matriculation list, everyone that shows up at a specific college isn't an equal. The prep and polish you cultivated from age 0-18 will impact your grades, networking, success in undergrad. Big difference between NYU BA ... and NYU BA, UChicago JD.
McGill is very popular with our students (public school in NY suburbs). My niece is going to Ottowa. (She went to prep school in Boston.)
On the Lake- I would love to see a scintilla of evidence that an NYU BA who went to prep school has a better chance of being admitted to U Chicago’s law school then one who didn’t.
Sadly, you have picked two institutions to highlight (NYU and Chicago) where your theory has almost no credence. Admissions to U Chicago Law school is about as stats driven as they come. LSAT scores. Undergrad GPA. Chicago is very transparent about what it takes to get admitted. You can be Prepped and Polished to the nth degree but it won’t get you a single point in Chicago’s admissions.
A Groton grad whose biggest challenge in life was deciding between sailing and tennis every afternoon during the summers?
Evidence for your theory please.
“A Groton grad whose biggest challenge in life was deciding between sailing and tennis every afternoon during the summers?”
What does this mean?
Probably akin to the quote…"being born on third base and going through life thinking they hit a triple’
On the Lake has posted that getting polished from ages 0-18 will impact your grades and success as an undergrad. Specifically, the kind of polishing one gets in prep school.
I’m pointing out that none of that polish has anything to do with admissions to U Chicago law school- contrary to on the lake’s example.
There are law schools which will note if an applicant was raised in a homeless shelter, born on an Indian Reservation, having a parent who was incarcerated. Whether or not this helps in admissions is a debate- and depends on the law school. But the theory is that creating a class of would-be lawyers who come at the legal system with different perspectives is a good thing for society and the law.
But I am not aware of ANY law school which believes that a prep school background is somehow an under-represented point of view in our current legal system.
I get your point about getting into Chicago Law School.
You are aware that Groton and all the top boarding schools accept students from a range of backgrounds including socioeconomic status, correct? I just find your tennis/sailing comment stereotypical, inaccurate, and not necessary to your argument. I guess I’ll chalk it up to narrative embellishment. 
Don’t even remotely kid yourself that the % of people who know what Groton (or similar) even is, much less know that it accepts scholarship students, much less care in the least, is anything above 2% of the population. And lol that “headhunters notice and care”! Since when are headhunters from elite backgrounds?
Doschicos- I am thrilled to engage in a discussion on the relative merits of Groton et al as it pertains to academics. I am a big booster of the focus on writing and fundamental skills that goes on at these schools. I am even a big fan of the (mostly, when not involving sexual abuse) intense relationships that BS kids develop with faculty. And I even think that for a lot of kids, the residential component of prep school life is hugely empowering.
We did not choose prep school for our kids, but I fully concede that there are some things that prep school does better than some other types of schooling.
I remain skeptical that the 0-18 "polishing’ that OnTheLake refers to is a positive component of the prep school experience. And certainly not relevant for grad school admissions. And most assuredly not for U Chicago law school. And definitely not for admissions to NYU.
Sorry for the narrative embellishment. That one’s on me, I shouldn’t have written that. But exactly what polishing are we talking about??? I was blown away in college by the academic/intellectual preparation of some of my prep school classmates. I was struggling through Year 1 of Greek as a Classics major (hadn’t been offered at my HS) and some of them were in advanced Latin and Greek simultaneously. I had never (willingly) had a conversation with a teacher or administrator at my HS (admittedly, my graduating class had over 1,000 kids in it) and I was so impressed with the ease with which the prep school kids were able to engage with faculty.
But “polish”? Come on. Many of them were just as unpolished as any other 18 year old adolescent. And all the prepping and breeding in the world wouldn’t change that for quite some time. Someone on my hall Freshman year (who had grown up in NYC, summers in Maine) didn’t think she’d ever met a Jewish person until she met me. I explained that this was not possible, growing up in a city which had the highest Jewish population in the world. She explained that since her BS, “club” and coop were “restricted” (I had never heard the term before), that yes, one can be as cosmopolitan and well educated as she was and yet…
So color me skeptical on all that polishing.