Private prep schools and "hot" colleges

Parents Forum
141

^^^ Yes, Catholic high schools would comprise another set I’d like to consider.
Notre Dame was another US News T20 (besides Caltech) that does not show up too high in my elite prep matriculation count. I don’t have the data in front of me now, but as I recall it was pretty far down in the count. Georgetown did better.

I don’t think Philly/DC would be too different. My own kids went to Quaker high schools in that region. I did not pay too much attention at the time to where their classmates were going, but in retrospect, I think LACs were at least as popular there as they appear to be at the elite 10 I’ve surveyed.

Sidwell might be different, but I cannot find numbers for it.
For Westtown 2015, the only colleges for which I see multiple matriculations are LACs (including Harvey Mudd) and universities in PA. Nearby UPenn, nearby Princeton, and Brown are the only Ivies.

Scattergood (Iowa) does not show matriculation numbers, just a list. I see one Ivy (Cornell). The only other T20 national universities in bold (which I assume means multiple matriculations) are UChicago, ND, and WUSTL (all midwestern schools). No Stanford, no Duke … no Michigan (but Wisconsin is in bold). Lots of LACs (including Haverford, BMC, College of the Atlantic, Earlham, Grinnell, Gullford, Macalester, MoHo, Reed, Smith, and Wheaton College.) However, Scattergood’s average SATs are 1420 - 1850, which is lower than the averages at some elite boarding schools like Exeter or Andover.

I’d like to focus on “top” high schools. If I venture too far from the Business Insider T25 list, I’m afraid I’m not getting the kind of demographic I want: high-scoring, well-informed kids who are not too bound by money or geography. In other words, I want a sample of HS students many of whom could go almost anywhere they want. I’d like to think their choices offer one interesting representation of America’s “best” (or at least, most prestigious) colleges (as a counterpoint to the US News PA scores or overall ranking.)

I’d love to see UChicago Lab School matriculations, but cannot find them.
UChicago lab school seniors have very high average test scores (pushing 700 in every SAT section, I think). Presumably they are well informed about colleges … and are somewhat removed (geographically at least) from East Coast bias. However, they may be more constrained by money than kids at, say, the St. Grottelsex schools (which would comprise another interesting set.)

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http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/data/files/gallery/ContentGallery/HS_Profile_1415_FINAL_online_version_923.pdf

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at #141, surprised to see that outside of Illinois, the most represented, in order, by the Lab School kids are Yale, NYU, and Tufts.

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Are we using prep to denote high academic college preparatory, or are we using it to denote actual preppiness? Two different things. They overlap but they are not the same.

Similarly, when we talk about prestige are we using it to denote academic prestige or social prestige? Again, significant overlap but not the same.

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It appears to denote a bias against STEM focused schools. The upper class is not into engineering careers for there kids.

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Engineering is more of a meritocracy, Clarinet Dad. For example- MIT does not consider legacy status. A kid either has the “goods” to get admitted or not.

The headmaster at Exeter can’t pick up the phone and lobby for a kid- however beloved- who doesn’t have the right profile for Cal Tech, MIT, etc.

147

@quietdesperation … If you’re looking for Colby but easier to get into, I’d take Middlebury and Bowdoin out of the mix. You might look at Bucknell (as suggested) and Colgate as well as Trinity (in Hartford, CT.) Bucknell and Colgate both are D1 schools and have a culture that involves partying and sporting events, and all 3 have some kind of Greek life (which Colby no longer has.) Connecticut College may have a bigger mix of students (some artsy) but no Greek life. You may want to look at Lehigh and Lafayette (which come to mind as “fun” not-too-big sporty schools.) I don’t know as much about these two beyond anecdotes, but @JHS might have some input given familiarity with PA schools. The others you may want to consider looking at up north are Hamilton and Hobart William Smith. I don’t know a lot about the latter but have watched several athletes go there and bloom. Denison and Dickinson might be ones to look at too – easier to get into, as well as Kenyon (more selective than the first two.). We visited these with my son (who also liked Colby) and he liked the vibe (as well as F&M). Carleton could be interesting as well but it’s more selective than some of these. Sort of a wild list, but I think most attract the kind of kids that @JHS describes – smart kids who are still figuring it out and want to have some fun while they’re doing that – rather than more serious kids. I’m guessing that other posters here have good input on some of these.

These, btw, were all on a list prepared by my son’s CC at his prep school based on the feedback he gave after reporting that he really enjoyed his visit to Colby.

148

^^ Thanks!

As I would have expected, UChicago gets by far the greatest number of matriculations.
I think this result reflects a bias not only of geography/familiarity but also of cost.
I believe a high % of Lab School students are UChicago faculty children who can attend UChicago at reduced cost.
Also, many faculty kids may be caught in the upper middle income doughnut hole. That would account for the state flagship being the #2 choice (which doesn’t seem to be the prevailing pattern for elite, high-scoring boarding school kids).

It’s interesting to see the midwestern LACs (Carleton, Macalester. Grinnel, Oberlin), and Pomona, outpacing the NESCAC schools. 10 Macs, 7 Carletons, 6 Pomonas … 2 Amhersts, zero Middleburys, zero Colgates.

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The thing is, at every one of these schools, except maybe for the Daltons and Trinities, there is going to be some layer of kids who are not quite as high-scoring as the others, and some layer of kids who are bound by money and/or geography. And even when kids are not “bound” by geography, they may be bound by other things that wind up being proxies for geography. My kids had dozens of friends who went to Penn (between my daughter’s two classes at a public and a private school, she had 36 high school classmates at Penn). Some of them wanted Penn because it was the first-rank college closest to home. For some, it was just what they wanted academically, and they were willing to overlook the fact that it was close to home. Some wanted it because, at least at the time, it offered local residents meaningfully better financial aid packages than other Ivies or equivalent colleges did. And some (often with legacy or facbrat status) would have been happy to go elsewhere, but saw Penn as their best shot at a first-rank college.

I suspect factors like those are present essentially everywhere. Kids at Trinity and kids at Harvard-Westlake, for the most part, can afford to go anywhere, and do not necessarily expect to stay home. I’m sure there are kids at Trinity who go to college in or around Los Angeles, and kids at H-W who go to college in New York City. But even at East-oriented H-W, there is going to be relatively high percentage of kids in and around Los Angeles compared to Trinity, and vice versa for New York and Trinity.

There will be other quirks too. As everyone has said, Catholic schools, even the preppiest ones, will lean harder towards Catholic colleges. Quaker schools will send a surprising number of graduates to Earlham and Haverford. My kids’ private school sent a steady stream of students to the Maine LACs, but which Maine LAC was favored shifted over time. Before my older child’s class, Bowdoin got the most applications and enrollments, but a bad situation with a popular girl who had been a year ahead of my daughter meant that for a number of years no one went to Bowdoin, and hardly anyone applied.

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“It’s interesting to see the midwestern LACs (Carleton, Macalester. Grinnel, Oberlin), and Pomona, outpacing the NESCAC schools. 10 Macs, 7 Carletons, 6 Pomonas … 2 Amhersts, zero Middleburys, zero Colgates.”

Right … because in these parts, Carleton and Grinnell, at least, CARRY the prestige that Amherst and Middlebury do in the east. Because … prestige is regional!

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  1. Colby-like colleges: @gardenstategal has a pretty good list. Among the larger Pennsylvania LACs, Dickinson and Franklin & Marshall probably are most similar, but Bucknell and Lafayette (both considerably more Greek-y) are pretty close, too. Lehigh is bigger and more engineering-oriented, but that would be a plus for some. Ursinus I think is a little artier than Colby, but also has a similar vibe, and it has lots of fans.

Bates, of course. My sources at Colby have a list of reasons why Colby is superior to Bates, but I see a lot of kids choose Bates instead who would fit fine either place. Elsewhere, I’d look at Skidmore, Union, Hobart-William Smith, Conn College, St. Lawrence and, further afield, Beloit and Lawrence in Wisconsin, St. Olaf in Minnesota. Hamilton, Bowdoin, Colgate are probably a tick more selective. Middlebury and Carleton are closer to the Swarthmore/Williams selectivity level. I have seen kids aiming at those schools consider Colby as a safety.

  1. UIUC being the #2 choice at UChicago Lab School: My guess is that will be replicated throughout the center of the country. UIUC has tons of fans, increasingly so in a world where even preppy kids want to major in computer science. The New York prep schools send a kid to a SUNY once every few years; ditto New England prep schools and the public universities there (except for UVermont, which has build a nice niche for itself educating well-heeled, bottom-half-of-the-class out-of-state preppies). But as @Pizzagirl often reminds us, legitimately, in the Midwest (and elsewhere, like Texas, and even in Pennsylvania), practically everyone considers the state flagship(s) a legitimate option for high-performing, ambitious students.
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Dalton has kids on financial aid. Why would you think that everyone at Dalton can apply willy-nilly regardless of cost and distance?

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@ClarinetDad16 Engineering is certainly looked down upon but not like nursing. That is something for other people.

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I know three kids finishing up nursing programs this year- all from private schools, and one from a family which is comfortably a 1%-elite type family. Ferrara- I don’t know where you get your information. Their D has been interested in transplant-unit nursing since an early childhood illness and her family could not be more proud of her.

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@ferrarepatrick73 - That may be a regional thing. I can promise you that CS and engineering is not looked down upon by kids at top prep schools in CA. In fact, there are parents that push kids to get these degrees.

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@blossom They should be proud of her but students coming out of elite prep schools simply don’t go into the field in any measurable numbers. Moreover the vast majority of nurses don’t attend elite colleges anyway.

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At HW they seem to be against engineering schools:
http://www.hw.com/aboutHW/School-Profile/Matriculation

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I don’t think one can make blanket statements about “prep schools” and student preferences. It comes down to family preferences much of the time. Family preferences will usually reflect local preferences.

At one point in the distant past, a local prep school and our local public high school would publish graduates’ college plans in the newspaper. No longer, sadly. At that time, though, idly reading the list (my children were toddlers), the two lists were quite similar. A few more children got into elite colleges from the prep school. No one from the prep school enrolled in our state college system that I recall. On the whole, though, there were many graduates from both schools who chose liberal arts colleges in rural New England, a bunch of city folk choosing medium sized private universities in cities, and a few adventurous souls heading South and West. You could have swapped most of the two lists.

As to engineering, etc., contrary to popular belief, many people in non-stem careers are able to afford private school tuition. They are convinced their children do not need to be engineers or scientists to be successful. Some of them are even (whisper) lawyers! The intense instruction in composition skills at local prep schools is attractive to people who believe their children may make a career in writing things. That will skew the list toward humanities.

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The vast majority isn’t what we are talking about here (prep schools and the like). Yale, NYU, U Penn have Nursing schools and as far as anyone can tell, their nurses manage to get jobs even up against their peers from various directional state colleges.

Ferrara, you seem to be wanting to wage a class war in your own head.

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141 and #142 re: Lab School .... Not at all surprising that students at a day school in a major metropolitan area (in other words, used to living in a happening city with public transportation) are opting for schools that are not in the middle of nowhere. And while New Haven isn't Chicago, it's a train ride away from NYC.

I’ve observed that at my son’s BS, the vast majority of kids who are from cities are interested in urban (or easily urban-accessible) schools over the more remote ones. They feel that BS gave them the opportunity to legitimately say “been there, done that” to the somewhat isolated community of a small school. Just another angle on some of the regional/geographic differences as to what’s “hot”.