Private prep schools and "hot" colleges

Matriculation List for the Latin School in Chicago:

http://www.latinschool.org/ftpimages/348/download/CCprofile13-web.pdf

Frances W Parker Day School in Chicago:

https://www.fwparker.org/CCAttended2005-15
https://www.fwparker.org/CCAttended2011-15
https://www.fwparker.org/CCClassof2015

Parker breaks their data into three time series. Someone enterprising can track the changes over time if they so wanted.

These, along with Chicago Lab, are the three most prestigious private high schools in the city.

Chicago Lab was listed earlier at:

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

An advantage that Lab has is that many of the students are children of UC faculty. That by itself is a great advantage in college admissions.

Super-techy kids also have the option (in many states) of public math and science boarding school. The admissions list (no matriculation list published) for the public math and science boarding school in my state includes the usual techy suspects: CalTech, GATech, Harvey Mudd, MIT, Embry-Riddle, RPI, etc.

Here is the list for St. Ignatius in Chicago which is the top ranked Catholic school in the area.

http://www.ignatius.org/media/2064/2015-final-college-report.pdf

Among the Chicago private high schools, UC Lab seems to have the best placement, although that is skewed by the large number of kids who end up at UChicago.

I am not sure prestige is regional. Knowledge of colleges among the common people is mostly regional, but prestige is really not about what your neighbor knows or not. For example, for prestige of biochemistry programs in the world, you need to survey professors/researchers instead of the traffic at Walmart, just as if you want to know what cars are most “prestigious” you need to ask people who are car fans instead of anyone who drives. People choose to not pursue the most prestigious schools for various reasons (e.g. can’t afford, can’t get in, too far, too remote, too liberal…), but it doesn’t mean they consider whatever they choose is the most prestigious.

I don’t see the disdain for engineering in my area. The private preps and the public preps both seem to value the chance to pursue STEM education in college. But then I can’t see how the H-W matriculation list demonstrates a bias against engineering. Of the 58 who attended Columbia in the past 5 years, how many enrolled in the engineering school? Same question regarding the 62 who chose Stanford. Or Brown. Or USC. These are all schools that had large numbers of enrollees from H-W over the past 5 years and are all schools with strong engineering programs. What I do see is a decided preference for elite schools. So, you might reasonably ask, why not MIT? The problem is that we don’t know how many applied and how many were accepted.

Here is a 4 yr list 2009-2012 for Regis in NYC, a top boys Catholic high school
34 to Georgetown, 12 to Notre Dame, only 1 to Michigan and 2 WUSTL
http://www.regis.org/section/?id=121

@Zinhead, your comment makes me wonder about the role of the CCs at the private schools AFTER decisions have been made. It reminds me of a friend’s daughter who spent an entire weekend in tears because she wanted to go to Tufts but was being strong-armed by her prep school’s CC into going to Yale. Clearly, the school thought it would do them more good to show that a matriculation to Yale rather than Tufts. (Never mind what this student wanted and why!) Or of another school in our area in which a full 20% of the class did not return to the colleges where they’d matriculated their sophomore years. How could SO many kids have chosen poorly?

I really wish these lists showed where the kids were accepted rather than where they ended up. Using this data as we’re using it here – yes, we’re part of the problem!! – creates a perverse incentive for the schools to push their graduates to enroll at colleges that may not be the best for the student, but serve the school’s marketing campaigns very effectively.

Tech/engineering may not be “looked down upon”, but my limited first hand knowledge of NE prep schools is that “tech schools” are indeed not that popular (except maybe Exeter, which is known for strong math/science programs and enroll more students to MIT, CMU etc compared with its peers). Even the students with interest in tech/engineering tend to choose a non-tech college of the same tier when they have options. It’s a cultural fit thing.

@gardenstategal The anecdote you shared is eye-opening. What school is that? Firstly, if it’s like most of the elite prep schools that have been discussed here, trust me, the girl would be a darling to CCs. Many of her peers are just as strong candidates for Yale and would love a seat there. Secondly, it sounds like she fell in love with Tufts. How could anyone stop her from applying ED to Tufts in that case?

What path do the uber wealthy want for their kids?

Georgetown and Boston College were popular even among many non-Catholics. The former for being an elite university in its own right and the latter for big sports/party/spirit aspects with some respectable academics for HS classmates who prioritized that for their college search.

There were also a number who applied and went to Notre Dame, but its reputation for social/behavioral restrictions*, more visible Catholic religious emphasis in many more aspects of campus life, and a much more social/political conservative student body turned off students for whom these would be issues.

  • Limits on hours in visiting dorms/sections of dorms belonging to the opposite gender.

My HS college counselor recounted to our college advising group how he felt the need to strongly dissuade an older HS classmate from turning down admissions to an Ivy(Think Cornell, Columbia UPenn) to attend Boston College because he felt Boston College’s academic level was far beneath that classmate considering his academic stats and achievements and his reasons for choosing it because he was a big BC Eagles Sports fan and wanted to be part of the big sports/spirit/party campus culture were in the college counselor’s opinion “bad reasons” for choosing a college.

Later heard from other classmates he ended up transferring to BC despite doing well at the Ivy because he felt being part of the BC Eagles big sports/spirit/party campus culture was far more important for him.

One thing to note was in the early-mid-'90s, BC was regarded with some suspicion by many parents and some college counselors at my public magnet because it had a reputation as a big party/sports school with a heavy drinking campus culture.

On the flipside, most HS counselors did their best to recommend and encourage applications to Brandeis and Binghamton*. The former without much difficulty as it was considered respectable and not so much with the latter.

  • Moreso than BC at the time.

** My college counselor tried equating Binghamton as an east coast version of UCBerkeley. A comparison which drew much eye-rolling and caused many classmates in our college counseling group to tune him out on that particular point.

The prep school I went to shows both by using italic and regular typefaces. The problem with the “where they got in” lists is that you can’t tell if one kid is responsible for all the HYPSMC acceptances or not. http://www.madeira.org/academics/college-counseling/college-destinations/

“** My college counselor tried equating Binghamton as an east coast version of UCBerkeley. A comparison which drew much eye-rolling and caused many classmates in our college counseling group to tune him out on that particular point.”

Was your college counselor’s name ferrera by any chance?

thanks @gardenstategal and @JHS ,We thoroughly covered less selective than colby ground with S2… In fact, I was looking for schools more selective than colby but with a similar vibe. Something closer to the academic engagement of swat but with a more fun/happy vibe. Here’s my stab on a grouping, does it seem close? thanks again for your help!

High Academic Engagement
williams
swat
amherst
haverford
carleton
bates

More balanced academic engagement/fun
bowdoin
middlebury
colby

@quietdesperation I’d personally put Bates in the more balanced category, we visited twice with D1 and both times Bates felt really welcoming with a very happy/fun vibe. BTW D1 visited all the schools on that list so we did get a sense of each of them… albeit a brief introduction… and the vibe at Bates felt pretty different from Swat.

@gardenstategal -

If you stay on CC long enough, you will read posts that say college counselors will limit their recommendations to highly selective schools in order to maximize the opportunities for individual students to get into those schools. It could also be that the counselor recommended your friend’s daughter to Yale over some other students, and does not want to see that recommendation go to waste because it might impact her ability to get kids accepted to that school in the future.

We had a situation at our HS in which a large number of kids applied and were accepted to a highly ranked university, and almost none of them attended that year. The next year, the highly ranked university accepted no one from our HS, and the talk was that our HS was “frozen” out of admissions in retaliation for the prior year’s actions. This was a college that normally took 10 or so kids from our HS, so some colleges certainly look at historic yield figures in an attempt to protect future yield.

I haven’t seen counselors put undue pressure on students to attend certain schools, but I have seen kids swayed by their peers.

My experience mirrors JHS’s. Many prep schools are quite small, on the order of 250-400 kids total, so the kids all know each other and may have a lot of information about where everyone is applying. Certain schools become hot or unpopular, often based on where one or two kids went or on stories grads bring back with them when they visit their HS. Even where the Headmaster or the popular English teacher attended can make a difference. Because the kids are more tightly clustered academically than at an average HS they’re also often applying to the same sets of schools in droves.

My D liked HWS when she toured but was less enthusiastic when she returned to school and found that her classmates referred to it as “Snowbart” (and not for the skiing opportunities). This may well be based on something someone’s cousin said two years ago, but in such a small pool it can easily recirculate. Similar opinions about other schools, positive and negative, seemed to be popular lore in her class.

I would be willing to bet that if you looked at matriculation from day schools you’d see even more regionalism than you find at boarding schools; not because day schoolers are more provincial, but because BS students can be from other areas of the country while DS’s are by definition local.

@ferrarepatrick73 Bucknell is very similar to Colby
I can see some similarities between Bucknell and Colby, but Bucknell is so heavily Greek with a party/drinking culture that it ends up being quite different from Colby

@lr4550 I’d personally put Bates in the more balanced category
I would agree with that and also propose that Williams falls somewhere between the 2 categories

Maybe my impressions are out of date, but I don’t see Bates as higher academic engagement than Bowdoin. More the opposite. And, honestly, Williams and Amherst are more balanced than Swat or Haverford. Hamilton, Colgate, and Oberlin, and maybe Wesleyan, too, probably belong in your “more academic engagement, but fun/happy vibe” category.

I agree with JHS on that assessment. My sense is that Bates and Colby are quite similar now. (Bowdoin, too, but significantly more selective.) Bates had a reputation for being a bit crunchy/artsy back in the day, but it seems that in the last decade, under a new president, that’s less the case and they’re all looking more the same. A little different, for sure, more the same than not. My son did an overnight at Bates and loved it – thought the kids were fun and engaged.

@panpacific, my friend’s daughter did EA at Stanford and was turned down, so that’s why she didn’t ED at Tufts. Her CC had thought that she’d get into Stanford (apparently her school has enjoyed a fair amount of success there with students with her type of credentials), so she didn’t really have her head wrapped around Plan B until she’d applied RD. It could have been the situation that @Zinhead mentioned – perhaps the CC felt that she’d made enough of a case for this student at Yale that it’d be an embarrassment if she didn’t go there. Or the CC may have felt that it’d reflect better on the school (a day school in MA) if they could show they had sent someone to Yale. I know that for many prospective parents, where students matriculate is a measure of a school’s quality. (It’s only after you get in do you realize that there are a million other determinants of that which have nothing to do with the school.)