Kids follow trends. I have seen that with my three kids’ high school seniors. There are always the outliers that go somewhere “different” for a reason, but generally you see clusters of kids. Applying to the same places and then a few years later the clusters change. We always send a couple to the service academies and one or two to the Ivy League or a top LAC but with UofM and MSU and places like. UofChicago and good instate LACs aa affordable options we don’t see a lot of longing for obscure for Michiganders colleges.
I think I talked to my GC once at my public HS, and that was because the school required it! It was very much a “checkbox” meeting, not in the least bit productive.
Regardless, I ended up at a private college that isn’t even on the national radar and absolutely loved my experience there. In fact I loved it so much, I don’t think I would have changed my decision in hindsight (even if I were offered more money to go elsewhere).
Sometimes it really is best to just block out all of the trends and go with what works best for you.
My kids spent over a decade at a well-known, highly academic private school, but ultimately graduated from a public academic magnet. I was intimately familiar with college counseling and admissions outcomes at both schools.
On the face of it, it would have looked like there were vast differences between the schools. The private school had only one full-time college counselor, but senior faculty also acted as college advisors, at a ratio of six students to one advisor. The school carefully cultivated long-term relationships with colleges. At the public school, there were five counselors for a class of about 550, but they also served as guidance counselors for the whole school, with 2,400 students. The best they could do was to make certain everyone completed at least one application to a school that was a realistic safety, and they didn’t totally succeed in that. The principal devoted effort to maintaining ties with the local Ivy, to which this school was probably the #1 feeder over time (but declining sharply in recent years). The private school sent about 40% of its class to Ivies or the equivalent (including top LACs), a quarter of whom went to the local Ivy. The public school sent 4-5% of its much larger class to those colleges, 80-90% of whom went to the local Ivy. In general, many more of the private school students went to top or near-top LACs. The public school sent only one or two kids a year to top-ranked LACs.
If you looked carefully, however, a lot of the differences disappeared. The schools were demographically very different. The private school had mainly kids from very affluent families (although sometimes it was the grandparents, not the parents, who had the money), with a smattering of very poor kids on scholarships. The public school had some affluent kids, too, and a number (but not so many) of really poor kids. But most of the kids there were from middle class families. Part of what that meant was that the public school students were much, much more cost conscious than the private school students, and were often searching for merit money or slightly lower tuitions. They also tended to stay relatively much closer to home, in part to cut down travel costs, and in part because they were less accustomed to traveling.
The kids at the public school who were demographically and academically similar to the kids at the private school had virtually the same taste in colleges as the private school kids. My son’s class had a number of students who had gone to private middle school, and the colleges they applied to and chose were essentially the same as those of their private school friends. My daughter was one of two people in her public school class even to apply to the University of Chicago. When she got there, she joined four other people who had been in the same 24-person 4th grade classroom with her, a fifth former classmate who had been in a different 4th grade room, plus a longtime ballet school classmate. Private school scholarship students who were not academic stars or sports stars made the same choices their demographic peers at the public school made.
Both schools had their fashions and quirks. The public school kids generally stayed away from rural schools. If they went to an LAC, it would be Swarthmore or Haverford, never Williams. Few applied to Cornell or Dartmouth, they just couldn’t see themselves there. There was a rumor that Princeton hated their school, so they didn’t apply to Princeton. The University of Richmond was very popular, as was Pitt. Few of the private school students ever applied to those colleges. The private school had a quirky roster of go-tos for hard-to-place students, including Elon, Redlands, and Earlham. The private school kids shunned Catholic colleges, except for Georgetown; lots of the public school kids went to Catholic colleges, local or within 100 miles.
Did the public school have a much higher Catholic population?
Let’s not forget that about 25% of kids at prep schools are internationals (generally very wealthy full pay) and generally parents of internationals are not familiar with smaller colleges in the US. Therefore, they encourage their prep students to apply to Ivys (if they are qualified) and other famous named schools, because they value the prestige factor and don’t want to spend 60K on a college no one as heard of. For that reason, NYU, BU, Georgetown, etc… are immensely popular with this type of student. NYU is generally the most popular university at the local prep schools in my area (New England).
In other words, unless the name of the college has the name of a well-known person in history, it is better for the name to have the name of a major city – at least the name of a well-known state. If it has many international graduate students there, it is usually a “good sign”. /sarcastic.
@mcat2 Yes, true! George Washington U is also in the most popular college list at many prep schools. The combination of famous name and a cool/famous location is key for internationals. Boston, Chicago, DC, and NYC are at the top.
Maybe that’s true for the boarding schools (and I still think that sounds high, but I don’t know), but definitely not true for the top day schools.
Adcoms try to cultivate relationships with highs school GCs where they want more students. Top private school GCs are known to be wined and dined by college reps. Years ago when my friend’s son was encouraged to apply to a well known university down south. The GC told my friend that the school wanted more kids from the NE preps, therefore the son would have a good chance of getting in.
My kid’s counselor never discouraged her from applying to any school she wanted to apply to, but the GC definitely knew certain schools better than others. The GCs regularly visited those colleges and knew most of those adcoms by names. Prior to the decision day, they would have conference call with adcoms to go over each applicant. My kid’s GC didn’t know for sure, but she had a very good idea which school my kid was going to be admitted to.
Very few students from my kid’s school went to OOS publics, except for UMich, Berkeley, UVA. They also tend to go to smaller privates (LACs), rather than large Unis. In 2014 they sent 20% students to Ivies and Stanford. Hamilton, Bucknell & Lehigh are some of the favorites for middle tier students.
Adcoms from many universities and colleges visit my children’s prep schools. A charming college representative can persuade a student to apply to a college which might not have been on her parents’ list.
Many of the parents and students at my children’s prep schools like liberal arts colleges. Many of the students play sports well enough to play at a D3 level in college, and many are full-pay as well. The students are also persuaded to apply to their favorite college or university early if possible, and then not to apply to lots of other schools in the regular round.
It’s tricky to look at the college placement lists from small prep schools though, because there really are years in which some schools are not “hot.” You really can’t assume that anyone applied to Harvard, etc. The kids might all be dying to get into Bowdoin.
I have the impression at our local public high school the students underestimate their chances of admission at various colleges. It seems they get scared, and thus opt too often for early decision at a high safety, rather than a reach. I think it’s due to a lack of good advising.
Re: #29 and “early decision at a high safety, rather than a reach”
Wouldn’t ED give the most advantage at an apparent “safety” that considers “level of applicant’s interest”?
Why would you apply at a school that’s not your first choice? Hard for me to believe anyone’s safety would be the top choice.
Re: #31
Not everyone’s personal college ranking is based on admission difficulty.
Surely there are top 7% rank students in Texas whose first choice is some Texas public university that they have automatic admission for.
When I was in high school, there were students whose first choice was BYU, which was a safety for them.
If it is automatic admit then there would be no need to do ED.
Did those students do ED at BYU as their safety?
@ucbalumnus Apparently you aren’t from the East Coast. The prep school college selection process is all prestige and selectivity based with a fallback on location if things don’t work out. Get ready for lots of rationalization if God forbid the child goes to American University or BU, for example.
^ I have a friend whose D left our very good public school district and went to a top (THE top? close if not) boarding school and at college selection time he definitely said, more than once, that he didn’t send her to [that boarding school] to go to [ not very selective] college. She chose the Ivy in the end.
I think one of the reasons that private HS kids don’t apply to public colleges is the fear that that will be lost in the large population. They are more confortable with smaller school sizes and think that they will be treated better at private colleges.
The “hot” colleges is an interesting phenomena. I have experience with kids from both expensive private and highly ranked publics in California.
I see a lot of the results, but don’t really know the “why” some schools are “hot” and others aren’t.
At the public high schools, the best and brightest generally choose UCB and UCLA. The yield rate for these schools at the publics are the highest of any colleges. Many of these kids have very high numbers and ECs and would be very realistic candidates at any school in the country, but many don’t apply to many out of state schools.
This, I suppose, is understandable given the very high reputation and value of UCLA/UCB for a California resident.
Most of these kids also get into USC, but the vast majority choose UCLA/UCB.
For the “lesser” accomplished public students looking for 75% acceptance rate type schools, Oregon, Colorado and Arizona are popular. I think this is mainly from name familiarity from the PAC12, and reputations as fun schools.
At the privates, the UCLA/UCB numbers are much smaller. I think many at the privates feel those are too big or impersonal. USC is very popular. There’s usually a few to the Ivies. They seem to know Amherst and Williams very well, most of the other LACs not so much. The success rate into Amherst and Williams does not seem very good, about the same as the Ivies, maybe worse. The brass ring for most is Stanford.
The “second tier” and “third” private kids are the most interesting, on what’s “hot” with them. U Michigan is very hot (“Cal State Ann Arbor”). NYU. SMU. Boston U. Wisconsin. TCU.
Highly ranked schools that aren’t hot: UVA, Tufts, Wake Forest, BC, UNC and a ton of others from the US News top 50.
However, for other schools which may appear to be “safeties” by stats but consider “level of applicant’s interest”, applying ED can make them safer than they otherwise would be.
No idea, and no idea whether BYU had ED at the time.
But why is it so hard to understand that there are some students whose first choice is not the most selective college that they can get admitted to?
Re: observations at high schools in California…
At that public high school, are other UCs and CSUs popular among those who cannot get admitted to UCLA and UCB?
UCs are too big, but USC is not? Yes, UCB and UCLA are bigger than USC, but USC (with 18,000 undergraduates) is not exactly a small school.