Private prep schools and "hot" colleges

I thought California publics couldn’t consider race for admission, so how can URMs be bringing down the average ACT score?

I doubt there are 500 freshmen athletes admitted at either UCLA or UCB in any year (I’d actually guess the number is much closer to 150 recruited freshman athletes, but I’ll use the huge number of 500, as if almost every athlete is a freshman when usually only about 1/3 of the team is). If every single one had only the minimum ACT score of about 17 (it’s a sliding scale for D1 schools), I don’t think it would bring the overall freshman average down that much. Aren’t there like 7000 to 10,000 freshmen? Some athletes have much higher than the minimum ACT too. Not every athlete is a dope.

I don’t see how the athletes can be bringing down the ACT average by that much.

“One elite college that appears to be universally unloved by elite preppies (unless it’s the other way around … with tons of rejections):
Caltech, #10 ranked by US News, gets zero matriculations from elite NE prep schools and only 2 elsewhere (both from Harvard Westlake in LA).
A couple other technical institutes also do poorly relative to their US News ranks:
MIT at #26 and Harvey Mudd at #126 by total matriculations.”

True preps don’t do tech! Brainpower is not associated with preppiness and too much work and no play take one off the preppy list.

^^ That’s been true “historically”, but things are changing as these schools are becoming more diversified, a similar pattern of changes as in Ivies (eg CS is expanding but is still some distance away from being the most popular major)

Or few prep grads are looking to work in CS or engineering, preferring other businesses instead (finance, IB, film, whatever…)

I’d be interested to know how @tk21769 's list would change if size of the colleges were considered. Would some of the LACs top some of the Us if measured that way? If Williams takes 450 frosh and Cornell takes 4500…which one is getting more prep kids per slot?

Nice analysis, but I where’s SUNY Binghamton and Rutgers on the lists? I didn’t see their names anywhere, must have been an oversight on your part.

As far as UCs not considering race, they have their ways, and, in addition, a lot of low stat low SES kids are let in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/lifting-the-veil-on-the-holistic-process-at-the-university-of-california-berkeley.html

At Berkeley, for example, over 35% of students are pell grant eligible. This level of poverty is a “stressor” that allows for admittance with much lower stats.

Looking more closely at Phillips Academy’s matriculation lists, UNC, Michigan, McGill in Canada all enroll about same number of graduates. They are certainly not as as popular as Ivy+ by a stretch, but it seems outside of the most famous, “regional” is not that a determine factor is it? (Except, yes southern schools have never “caught on” in NE prep schools)

What I got from that article, 8bagels, is that the admissions is not based so much on gpa or scores but more holistic, and that the minorities and athletes are establishing the scores. A 35 ACT and 3.9 is not guaranteed admission. If half the class is admitted with lower than then ‘minimum’ scores, there really is no minimum score.

They have this at the University of Florida too. Those at the top top top almost always get in. Then there is a huge group, 75% or so, who are all qualified and the do the holistic thing, some get in, some don’t. In the real world, is a 3.5/30 ACT all that much lower than a 3.7/32 ACT, especially if the lower scoring student had a lot of other fantastic things in his file?

There are a boatload of UofM alum in the NE. And Michigan has always had good yield from the NE going back a couple generations. I have always found that interesting. My father’s roommate after WWII was from New York. I had friends and my kids had friends that prepped in the NE and returned to Michigan for college. Even with deep pockets it is hard to walk away from a 30000 dollar a year reduction in college costs compared to the NE private colleges. UofM seems to be an acceptable alternative to other equally expensive colleges for the Northeasterners if their kiddo wants the big 10 experience although I also hear that IU is gaining favor with the NE now so flux is beginning.

@oldfort years ago Vanderbilt came to our public high school (not a fancy district like Scarsdale!) and said they needed more Jewish kids from New York.

And another data point from the Andover matriculation list against the “regional” notion:
Northwestern in Midwest: 15
Northeastern in Boston: 7

Out of 5,924 matriculations, I observe 1 to Rutgers, 5 to SUNY Stony Brook, 2 to SUNY Purchase, 1 to SUNY Albany, and 1 to SUNY Geneseo. I don’t see Binghamton at all.

31 LACs get 10 or more matriculations.
I only observe 8 state universities with 10 or more matriculations:
188 Michigan
76 Berkeley
55 Washington
46 UCLA
27 Virginia
16 W&M
14 UNC-CH
12 Vermont

I’ve thought about this, but really don’t know how one would go about normalizing by size.
It’s possible that USC, NYU and Michigan get a bump (relative to their US News ranks) just by virtue of their huge size (plus, maybe, desirable locations).However, if we count only Michigan’s OOS population, we’re probably down to ~Ivy numbers of entering students. But then, how do we account for admit rates? All I’m considering are the matriculation numbers, not the application numbers, the admission decisions, or the cross-admit decisions.

Michigan surely isn’t twice as prestigious as Berkeley (as the matriculations might suggest), but benefits from a nationally central location, a better college town, and better sports (right?). An East Coast preppie Mom & Dad can load up the Volvo and drive Chip or Buffy out to Ann Arbor in one long day (or have one of their people do it). There are other confounding factors, I’m sure, but by and large the preppie matriculations seem to track pretty well with the publication rankings (USNWR/Forbes) … and may be an even better indicator of public prestigiosity.

Does anyone have a sense of why Bowdoin and Colby are popular with preppies but swarthmore is not?

my son didn’t attend prep school but we guided him to u mich over ucla or Berkeley for the reason you mentioned above:

"“An East Coast Mom and Dad can load up the minivan and drive Max out to Ann Arbor in one long day”

Hello, Maine. LLBean. Rugged. True prep.

LOL. I feel much the same way - the three colleges my older son visited all rejected him, the four he didn’t? One waitlist and the rest acceptances. Of course the selectivity of the colleges just might have had something to do with it too. All of the rejects were reaches for anyone colleges.

Swarthmore, MIT, Cal Tech- all suffer from the “where fun goes to die” stereotype among HS kids.

Thanks @blossom ,I didn’t realize that about swat. Haverford too?

The lack of matriculations from the prep school crowd at the SUNYs really doesn’t surprise me. None of the top students at our public high school in the NYC suburbs wanted to go there, though many applied and a fair number ended up there due to finances. There’s a perception that it’s in the middle of nowhere and full of other New Yorkers.

I think Caltech may not show up because it’s so tiny and its M/F ratio is lousy too (67/33 with 2200 undergrads)

I also think Swarthmore is considerably less sports oriented than Colby or Bowdoin. All the kids I know who went to those schools liked hiking and watersports.

@mathmom , I suspect 8bagels was being sarcastic when he asked about Binghamton.

Not sure if you’re right about swat, we were told during tour 1/3rd of the kids play a varsity sport.

Swat doesn’t have an athletic culture to the same extent. That doesn’t mean kids don’t play sports for fun. Athletic culture - in the sound-mind-in-a-sound-body sense - is associated with preppy culture.