I was shocked to learn that 66% of St. Paul’s 2016 incoming students were from private schools. This compares to 48% at Exeter.
Why would SPS allow their ratio to becoming so skewed? Or are the stats misleading (SPS including international students and domestic parochial in their 66%)?
If anyone else has private/public stats for top-tier BSs, please upload them. Thanks!
A friend of mine was equally shocked to find an even higher % at DA a couple of years ago. That private school number most likely includes international and parochial schools. But, honestly, I’m not that surprised! SPS, DA and others have a long history of taking kids from private schools in the northeast.
I think it’s really about the school. I’ve heard from some people that Deerfield and SPS are known to be the “preppy” and sort of “elitist” schools, although I don’t know enough to have an opinion on the matter.
Do they have more legacies? Might legacies be more likely to come from private schools?
@CaliMex I’ve heard that Deerfield has a ton of legacies, so that is definitely possible.
They all have legacies, and they’re all “preppy” - they are Prep Schools after all. Some of the preppiest legacies that I know are at Choate @Nico.campbell ;-). Seriously, for the most part these schools have made great strides in the last few years to increase diversity of all kinds on campus - including the types of schools that they pull from. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and for most of their history they took primarily upper class kids from private schools. This history is part of what leads to their appeal even today - the quintessential New England prep school that was founded in 1902, ivy-covered walls, etc. So I don’t think that SPS is “becoming unbalanced” as someone said earlier, I just think that they may not be “balancing” quite as quickly as Exeter (for example), for whatever reason.
Some one answer my new thead plz! :(( I don’t think that the fact the schools has alot of legacies is bad. Not all legacies come from rich families you know.
These stats were shocking, in the name of raising standards bla blaa these elitist schools have biased their criteria.
Lots of kids come from feeder private schools. No surprise here.
Parochial schools are definitely in the private category.
Not surprising data to me either.
If you watch a video from Andover (after 5:52) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgsO2JfWZCE ), you will discover that Andover’s admission rate for legacies (alumni children) is 58%. Deerfield’s is actually lower (48%), according to DA Executive Committee meeting minutes I found on the internet. The point here is that all boarding schools (including Choate) admit a significantly higher percentage of legacies than they do from the general applicant pool.
As a parent of an ivy school student, I can confirm that this phenomenon is replicated at the college level in the US. Part of the reason has to do with the fact that alumni children, on average, are more cognizant of the benefits of a quality education and have more resources at their disposal to develop their potential. As such, their scores are usually higher than the general public. Boarding schools and colleges also benefit from the financial and non-financial support that loyal alumni provide. As such, these instutions have an incentive to reward loyal families. Finally, legacies are much more likely to accept admission offers, which helps the yield rates at all these institutions. European universities which do not “reward” loyalty usually have much smaller endowments, which in turn restricts available funds for scholarships of needy students. In short, it is dangerous to come to quick conclusions on the desirability of higher admission rates for legacies. By the way, our DS is not a legacy student at DA and had to overcome the very competitive admission acceptance rate that applies to most DA students.
The missing piece of the puzzle is the percentage of private school kids who applied to DA and SPS. Perhaps the applicant pool is a rather self-selecting group, and there are relatively fewer public school kids applying to those two schools in the first place.
In any event, I would expect that the admission staffs at both DA and SPS are committed to putting together the best possible incoming class, however that is determined. I wouldn’t assume that they consciously favor private school kids over public in that endeavor.
Indeed, we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle. Still, as you suggest, all the top boarding schools actively seek diversity (economic, social, racial, private vs public school, domestic vs international, etc) in their incoming classes. Their respective admission committees devote a lot of time and resources to implement this diversity. Furthermore, the schools that maintain healthy endowments have a leg up on achieving the noble objective of “youth from every quarter”.
Something to keep in mind is that for many public school folks — and I’m talking out in the burbs and more rural parts of America, not the cities — awareness of boarding schools is VERY low. And the thought of attending one is not really in the consideration set of parents/students, even in relatively affluent areas. Some people just don’t believe in private schools…much less boarding schools.
And boarding school in particular is a “radical” idea for malt families that do not have the tradition. That’s why, I think, more than colleges, BSs are relying on their alumni to provide a steady stream of applicants.
Maybe among applicants. But they can’t and don’t outreach public high schools in rural area all over the U.S. In fact, they can barely mount 1~2 information sessions per major states, and most of the public school students never hear of them, or unable to connect them to their future.
Noticed a typo, so reposting the original:
I was shocked to learn that 66% of St. Paul’s 2016 incoming students were from private schools. This compares to 48% at Exeter.
Why would SPS allow their ratio to become so skewed? Or are the stats misleading (SPS including international students and domestic parochial in their 66%)?
If anyone else has private/public stats for top-tier BSs, please upload them. Thanks!
I’m certainly not surprised there is a high percentage of private school kids at boarding school (which is simply a different form of private school), but I thought SPS would try to dig a little deeper in trying to broaden the profile of their incoming classes, especially in light of some of the media the school endured the last few years.
“but I thought SPS would try to dig a little deeper in trying to broaden the profile of their incoming classes, especially in light of some of the media the school endured the last few years.”
Not sure how those things are related to each other?
@doschicos Related in that SPS has been repeatedly portrayed as a self-entitled, closed and elitist institution in the NYT, WSJ, Vanity Fair and others, and one would think it would seek to actively counter those perceptions, partially through admissions and its recruiting initiatives. I don’t entirely share these views, and it is a school my child would like to attend, however no BS school has had more unflattering media attention than SPS the last several years.
I may get in trouble here, but I get a sense that Exeter is more into meritocratic applications and diversity than some other top-tier boarding schools (I say this even though Exeter is not my child’s first choice).