<p>@SharingGift, haha this is nothing-- you should see the excruciatingly nerdy, gargantuan-sized spreadsheet I compiled for ferreting out good opportunities for S2, which even had an algorithm for calculating likelihood for 10th grade admission for boarding. Now that he’s done, it would be a pity for the insights to go to waste.</p>
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<p>@boardingschoolx, here is the source of the data:</p>
<p>general school stats:
<a href=“Sort Boarding Schools by Key Criteria”>http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/school_ranking.php</a></p>
<p>demographic data:
<a href=“Search for Private Schools”>http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/privateschoolsearch/</a></p>
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<p>@GMTplus7 Oh cool! Thanks so much for compiling all the info for us :)</p>
<p>@GMTplus7 As always, excellent analysis! I believe endowment is a very important factor when selecting a school. Not only for sustainability, but also to attract qualified faculty, and to provide required campus improvements. Just another FYI re: EHS - campus facilities are complete. Over the last 10 years they have added new (Baker Science, Centennial Gym, Townsend Hall-Humanities) or renovated all other buildings. As expressed by the Headmaster at last year’s Fall Parent’s weekend, now EHS will concentrate on building their endowment to support more FA. EHS, like others, recognize the FP pool is shrinking and they need to provide more aid. </p>
<p>GMT: How accurately did your algorithm actually perform?</p>
<p>GMT: Thanks for your analyses–super fun, thanks!
It makes sense that more endowment = lower admit rate, because we are likely to flock to schools where we think we can get more aid, right? But that assumption may be false. Do you feel like correlating endowment with actual FA awards (Amount/percentage of kids receiving full/partial)? And it could vary annually too, I suppose…what if they rotate because every third year they’ve got a bubble expense? (Skipping market fluctuations here altogether too, although that probably has as much effect as anything else.) </p>
<p>@ccprep9: Hope you don’t mind me weighing in 
It depends on your extracurriculars. If your ECs are extremely strong, your SSAT score won’t hinder you from getting accepted to the more selective, “first-tier” schools (even with FA). I believe it would be easier for us to recommend schools for you if a little more detail was provided.</p>
<p>@booklady123 and @twinsmama I’m with @stargirl3 on this. I felt quite welcome at Andover and had the total opposite reaction at the-school-that-shall-not-be-named. It’s all about fit I guess.</p>
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<p>In fact, there are no correlations between endowment size and %FA students, as I have done the exact analysis more than a year ago:</p>
<p><a href=“Where Boarding Schools Spend Money... - Prep School Admissions - College Confidential Forums”>Where Boarding Schools Spend Money... - Prep School Admissions - College Confidential Forums;
<p>The correlation coefficient between the two was 0.07, which is basically a big gigantic hairball or, in GMT’s words, “a random clouds of data-no trend.” BS with big endowment spend just a few percent of their endowment (typically less than 3%), whereas those with much smaller endowment ante up with a bigger proportion of their endowment (8-17% below). </p>
<p>School | Endowment Size | Enrollment | Percent Students on Financial Aid | Average Financial Aid Grant | Total FA amount | Total FA as % of Endowment</p>
<p>First Tier Schools with Huge Endowment, or HADES
Exeter | $992M | 1085 | 45% | $38.4K | $19M | 2%
Andover | $800M | 1141 | 47% | $38K | $20M | 3%
SPS | $433M | 536 | 35% | $44.3K | $8.3M | 2%
Deerfield | $398M | 630 | 35% | $39K | $8.6M | 2%
Hotchkiss | $362M | 594 | 37% | $37K | $8.1M | 2%</p>
<p>Lower Tier Schools with Small Endowment
George School | $105M | 545 | 50% | $30.2K | $8.2M| 8%
Salisbury School | $45M | 305 | 32% | $37.0K | $3.6M | 8%
Dana Hall School | $33M | 467 | 20% | $35.0K | $3.3M | 10%
Suffield Academy | $25M | 414 | 38% | $26.5K | $4.2M | 17%
St. Andrew’s School-RI | $15M | 215 | 48% | $25.3K | $2.6M | 17%</p>
<p>Disclaimer: The use of “tier” is arbitrary, just reflecting a wide-spread sentiment in CC, and not my classification.</p>
<p>What this tells us is that the “second-tier” schools with smaller endowment do offer FA package as competitive as HADES schools. Furthermore, some of these schools are just as good as or better than HADES schools in helping their students improve academic performance, which was illustrated by GMTplus7 in previous reply and by myself last year:</p>
<p><a href=“SSAT-to-SAT - Prep School Admissions - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1550335-ssat-to-sat-p1.html</a></p>
<p>The “second-tier” schools like Salisbury and Dana Hall are quite impressive in both generous FA package size and academic preparation for college. They have 10 or 20 times smaller endowment but have FA budget 3-4 times higher (in percentage of endowment) than HADES schools, giving out overall similar size of FA packages. They also take students with lower SSAT scores but produces higher SAT scores (in terms of percent improvement) than most other schools, HADES or not. I would call these schools “best value” schools! So if your qualifications are strong and need FA, you might be better off with these best value schools.</p>
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<p>@ccprep9 I recommend that you apply to the schools you like. Even if your SSAT score is 10-15% lower than that school’s average, you still have a very good chance.</p>
<p>Canterbury is often passed over because it’s a Catholic school, but if you look at their numbers- they’re impressive, too. My nephew was accepted to Salisbury and Canterbury and he absolutely loved both schools. ( Full disclosure: My nephew is not Catholic and applied FP ). Of all the schools he looked at Salisbury was definitely the sleeper. </p>
<p>@SharingGift: Big gigantic hairball… LOL. I love it when you and GMT get it going. Your enthusiasm is contagious!</p>
<p>I absolutely agree that fat endowment does not equate w more FA. It only means the school can better afford more FA. The rich schools spend a lot of their earnings from endowment on other stuff to make the experience there more deluxe. </p>
<p>Your best bet in chasing FA is to seek schools with:
- big FA budget
- where your stats/talents are above the school’s average
- have a more forgiving admit rate
- admit a large number of kids in the grade</p>
<p>1) big FA budget
A high percentage of kids on FA is meaningless if all the kids are getting just a $1000 grant. You need to find out exactly how much money is in their budget and divide it by the # number of kids on FA to determine the avg grant size. Often times, the school’s website will show how much money per year they give out,</p>
<p>2) where your stats/talents are above the school’s average
This is the school’s opportunity to “buy” a smarter / faster / more diverse class. If your academic stats are at or below the school’s average, you better have some compelling draw like being a recruited athlete, URM, or some elite talent.</p>
<p>3) have a more forgiving admit rate
I’m always reading posts from people that they are applying to Andover because its need-blind. So what? The chances of getting in are so painfully bleak. </p>
<p>4) admit a large number of kids in the grade
It doesn’t help you if you fulfill #1-3, but the school has few slots for new 10th graders. See my thoughts in the following post about targeting schools with a higher number of available slots.</p>
<p>from another one of my posts:</p>
<p>Legendary bank robber Willies Sutton supposedly said he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.” </p>
<p>Well, a rational approach to deciding which schools to pursue is to determine which ones actually have the most available slots for new students. All schools have plenty of slots for 9th graders, but after 9th grade the picture changes. </p>
<p>When formulating a list of schools for GMTson2 for 10th grade admission, I looked closely not just at admit rates and SSAT scores, but at how many slots were available for new 10th grade boarders. Some schools are particularly difficult for 10th grade boarding applicants: Thacher, Cate, St.Andrews, Groton-- too few available slots. We just didn’t bother with these.</p>
<p>This is a helpful U.S. Dept of Eduction website for getting data on how many kids are in each grade:
<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/privateschoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&SchoolName=groton&NumOfStudentsRange=more&IncGrade=-1&LoGrade=-1&HiGrade=-1&ID=00603075”>http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/privateschoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&SchoolName=groton&NumOfStudentsRange=more&IncGrade=-1&LoGrade=-1&HiGrade=-1&ID=00603075</a></p>
<p>This is my estimation of the approximate number of new 10th BOARDING boys or girls admitted (i.e. it’s already divided by 2), w yield already factored in. Do NOT take these numbers literally. Just use them as rough indications of whether a school has plenty of slots or few slots. This is not an complete list. I excluded schools that are single-sex or have high % day students, or have SSAT scores below 65%.</p>
<p>66 Berkshire School
66 Northfield Mount Hermon
56 Kent School
55 Loomis Chaffee
47 Taft School
41 Phillips Academy
40 Deerfield Academy
39 Phillips Exeter
37 Choate Rosemary Hall
37 Hotchkiss School
31 Lawrenceville School
30 St. Paul’s School
25 Hill School
25 St. George’s School
23 St. Mark’s School
19 Peddie School
19 Webb Schools
17 Episcopal High
17 Middlesex School
15 Blair Academy
15 Groton School
11 Cate School
9 St. Andrew’s School
3 Thacher School</p>
<p>I can take into account that schools have different levels of selectivity. Therefore, if I multiply the number of available slots by admit rate, then this is the “risked” number of new 10th BOARDING boys or girls admitted:</p>
<p>22 Kent School
20 Berkshire School
19 Northfield Mount Hermon
15 Loomis Chaffee
11 Taft School
9 Hill School
7 Lawrenceville School
7 Choate Rosemary Hall
7 Episcopal High
7 St. Mark’s School
7 Hotchkiss School
7 St. George’s School
7 Phillips Exeter
6 Phillips Academy
5 St. Paul’s School
5 Deerfield Academy
5 Webb Schools
4 Blair Academy
4 Peddie School
4 Middlesex School
2 Cate School
2 St. Andrew’s School
2 Groton School
0 Thacher School</p>
<p>If you want to run your own numbers for other schools or grades, I’ve determined a fairly decent empirical formula for yield rate:
0.06*(avgSSATpercentile ÷ admit rate) + 0.35 = Yield</p>
<p>So for Choate:
0.06 * (85% ÷ 19%) + 0.35 = 0.62 Yield</p>
<p>Obviously, picking “winners” is not just math. This was just a starting point to delineate which schools are an especially good or risky bet. </p>
<p>@ccprep9:
Since going to a school that accommodates your interests/talents well is important:
-music: possibly Milton? Milton’s concert and jazz bands travel a lot around the world and hold numerous concerts. Milton’s arts program is extremely prestigious. Maybe you can look in to it?
-debate: Hotchkiss has a really strong debate program, and they do have a MUN club.
-soccer: hard to pinpoint any schools. Most schools have pretty great soccer teams.
-track: SPS’s track team has won loads of accolades this year…</p>
<p>Since you don’t want to attend a BS that puts TOO much emphasis on academics, I recommend you don’t apply to Exeter or Andover. Sure, they also focus on their arts & sports programs, but they have 1000+ students, which is rather big- in my opinion. Succeeding at highly selective schools like PEA and PA require strong academic capabilities, so I believe you’ll be happier at other schools. Choate, for one, doesn’t stress their academics as much as other first-tier boarding schools (in my opinion).</p>
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<p>Where on earth did you form that opinion? I bet I can find 850 students who will refute that. Can you elaborate?</p>
<p>@ChoatieMom: As I’ve stated before, my opinion is VERY subjective. From the interview, tour, and research I’ve done, it quickly became evident that Choate was a very well-rounded school. Unlike other, smaller schools, they put loads of emphasis on other areas (other than academics). I am, by no means, insinuating that their academic prowess is any worse than other boarding schools. I am simply stating that if you want to focus more on your extracurriculars rather than attend a BS that’s “all about academics”, Choate might be a viable option.</p>
<p>I applied for Choate myself, and I believe it’s a great institution… hopefully you didn’t misunderstand my intent.</p>
<p>Thanks for your clarification, but I wouldn’t want anyone to apply to or choose Choate thinking that academics can take a back seat to ECs. Choate may offer a wide range of activities, but if you think the school is “forgiving” of putting those ahead of your academics, you’re in for a rude awakening.</p>
<p>@boardingschoolx, I don’t think it’s such a good idea to state certain things about certain schools when you don’t know them well.</p>
<p>Earlier in this thread (p. 4), you stated:</p>
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<p>This statement was far from the truth, as I found out and followed up with:</p>
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<p>This type of data is public information if you just know where to look. When you make a false claim without revealing its source, you not only make yourself less credible but also risk spreading misinformation, whether that was your intention or not. You’re a young, bright person with great promise. But what good is it if people can’t trust what you have to say? You will better reach your potential and fulfill your promise if you learn when to speak and when to listen and learn.</p>
<p>Sorry if it sounded harsh, but no offence was intended.</p>
<p>@SharingGift:</p>
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<p>** Thanks for the advice! ** I have not had the patience to consult Andover & L’ville’s websites myself (Andover did state that their average SAT score for the 2013-2014’s school year was “688; Math, 701; Writing, 690”- * <a href=“About”>About; * - however, I couldn’t track down their results in ** 2010, 2011, 2012 ** , or any of L’ville’s results from their school websites).</p>
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<p>As I couldn’t find these results from the school websites (the information was not very “available”), ** I would appreciate it if you cited the actual websites <a href=“because%20andover.edu%20and%20lawrenceville.org%20just%20lead%20me%20to%20the%20homepages”>/b</a> ** for future reference **.</p>
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<p>I referred to other sources-- a few reports my mom had printed out when we were visiting boarding schools (as I did not do the research myself, I was unsure of the websites she received the information from). ** These sources must be less reliable than yours, since they aren’t from the actual school websites themselves, so I want to * sincerely * apologize to anyone who was misled by the information I posted. <a href=“I%20hope%20this%20doesn’t%20affect%20my%20credibility,%20but%20I%20understand%20if%20it%20did.”>/b</a></p>
<p>I will “listen and learn” from now on.</p>
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<p>It’s alright. Since no offense was intended, no offense was taken 
I know that you’re just trying to help preserve CC’s quality.</p>
<p>L’ville data for the class of 2013 can be found in the page 2 of: <a href=“http://www.lawrenceville.org/data/files/gallery/ContentGallery/Information_Sheet_2013.pdf”>http://www.lawrenceville.org/data/files/gallery/ContentGallery/Information_Sheet_2013.pdf</a> For the class of 2012, here: <a href=“http://www.lawrenceville.org/data/files/gallery/ContentGallery/information_sheet_1213.pdf”>http://www.lawrenceville.org/data/files/gallery/ContentGallery/information_sheet_1213.pdf</a></p>
<p>Now the '13 data is directly accessible from About>>Fast Facts at <a href=“http://www.lawrenceville.org”>www.lawrenceville.org</a>, but '12 data can be only accessed if you open the L’vill home page that was available about a year ago. You can do the same for '11 and '10. And the same is true for Andover.</p>
<p>Almost nothing gets deleted permanently in the Internet. Old data get stored somewhere not clearly visible, or archived. Sounds creepy, huh? Just to clarify, I am not working for NSA, and if you’d like to learn how to do this kind of data mining, PM me.</p>
<p>BTW, I appreciate your reply. Everyone makes a mistake, especially when s/he is young. It takes courage to admit it and improve upon it. Not everyone does that. :)</p>