@TooOld4School : Post 506 used an extremely limited sample and was therefore an experiment. Beyond that, controlling for regional considerations, institutional structure and even relevance are topics that were simply not discussed in my original post. Nonetheless, the discussion of these significant factors, as well as a consideration of the importance of sample size, would be much better undertaken with an awareness of enrollment-adjusted data than without it.
I donât believe NYU, USC, and Michigan make the top 20 (by matriculation count) because students at these high schools necessarily believe these universities are âbetterâ (or more prestigious) than JHU, Northwestern, Williams, WUSTL, Duke, or Amherst. NYU, USC, and Michigan are good, respected schools in desirable locations that happen to be less selective than the Ivies or the top LACs. If you want a private university in NYC or Boston, but cannot get into Columbia or Harvard, then NYU is a nice fall-back. If you want the best private university West of the Rockies, but cannot get into Stanford, well then USC may be the next best thing. Michigan is one of the 2-5 very best public universities, itâs set in a great college town, it has better engineering programs than any of the Ivies (or NESCACs, of course), itâs ~centrally located, and may be more receptive to OOS students (or less than perfect GPAs) than some of the other public Ivies. I think such factors probably explain the matriculation patterns (if they need explaining) a little better than size, per se (or a prestige-is-all-local concept).
Note that the top 20 colleges in my list account for about 3500 matriculations from 10 private high schools. Thatâs out of ~6000 matriculations spread over 200 colleges in a not-too-steep Pareto/Zipf distribution. Well over half the students are matriculating to 20 colleges. The 8 Ivies can accommodate maybe 10000 freshmen, so if they wanted to, they could accommodate all 3500 of these T20-seeking students. But the 8 Ivies wouldnât want 1/3 of their spaces going to 10 prep schools (maybe back in the day, but not anymore.) Not all 3500 necessarily want to go to one of the 8 Ivies. So where do they (or their lower-ranking/lower-scoring classmates) look? They donât all prefer LACs. After the 8 Ivies and peer private universities, some of the slightly-less-selective alternatives in the US News top 20-30 range do happen to be large. However, a school like Indiana wonât leap ahead of GW or Tulane just because itâs larger and therefore has a more powerful prep-school-sucking vacuum.
The list below is generated by using admission and yield rates to normalize my matriculation counts.
I divide actual by predicted matriculations, then rank the top 30 colleges by the resulting quotient.
Key
AM the actual matriculations from 5926 students at 10 private high schools to each college
AR the national admission rate for the college
YR the yield rate for the college
PM the predicted matriculations (= 5926 matriculations X AR X YR)
AM/PM actual divided by predicted matriculations
AM, AR, YR, PM, AM/PM, RANK, SCHOOL
271 , 0.07 , 0.6 , 248.892 , 1.09 , 1 , Columbia
235 , 0.06 , 0.81 , 288.0036 , 0.82 , 2 , Harvard
219 , 0.07 , 0.66 , 273.7812 , 0.80 , 2 , Yale
210 , 0.06 , 0.76 , 270.2256 , 0.78 , 2 , Stanford
198 , 0.09 , 0.53 , 282.6702 , 0.70 , 5 , Chicago
220 , 0.2 , 0.31 , 367.412 , 0.60 , 6 , USC
182 , 0.09 , 0.59 , 314.6706 , 0.58 , 6 , Brown
237 , 0.12 , 0.63 , 448.0056 , 0.53 , 8 , Penn
139 , 0.07 , 0.65 , 269.633 , 0.52 , 8 , Princeton
253 , 0.16 , 0.52 , 493.0432 , 0.51 , 8 , Cornell
241 , 0.31 , 0.35 , 642.971 , 0.37 , 11 , NYU
118 , 0.16 , 0.34 , 322.3744 , 0.37 , 11 , WUSTL
97 , 0.1 , 0.49 , 290.374 , 0.33 , 13 , Dartmouth
152 , 0.17 , 0.46 , 463.4132 , 0.33 , 13 , Georgetown
112 , 0.18 , 0.36 , 384.0048 , 0.29 , 13 , JHU
106 , 0.15 , 0.41 , 364.449 , 0.29 , 13 , Northwestern
120 , 0.22 , 0.36 , 469.3392 , 0.26 , 13 , Wesleyan
109 , 0.19 , 0.38 , 427.8572 , 0.25 , 13 , Tufts
82 , 0.13 , 0.42 , 323.5596 , 0.25 , 13 , Duke
73 , 0.13 , 0.41 , 315.8558 , 0.23 , 20 , Vanderbilt University
75 , 0.08 , 0.72 , 341.3376 , 0.22 , 20 , Massachusetts Institute of Technology
101 , 0.26 , 0.3 , 462.228 , 0.22 , 20 , Emory
188 , 0.37 , 0.4 , 877.048 , 0.21 , 20 , Michigan
68 , 0.14 , 0.41 , 340.1524 , 0.20 , 20 , Amherst College
76 , 0.18 , 0.37 , 394.6716 , 0.19 , 20 , Berkeley
79 , 0.17 , 0.45 , 453.339 , 0.17 , 20 , Williams
64 , 0.17 , 0.39 , 392.8938 , 0.16 , 20 , Middlebury College
75 , 0.26 , 0.34 , 523.8584 , 0.14 , 28 , Colgate University
48 , 0.14 , 0.41 , 340.1524 , 0.14 , 28 , Swarthmore College
61 , 0.25 , 0.3 , 444.45 , 0.14 , 28 , Carnegie Mellon University
By examining the number order in the first column, you can see which schools have been bumped up or down (out of the original order) by this normalization process. You also can compare these results to the ones I shared in post #494.
Of the USNWR T20 national universities, the only ones that donât make the above T20 are Caltech, Rice, and Notre Dame. The only schools in the above T20 that are not in the USNWR T20 national universities are USC, Emory, and Michigan (but those 3 schools are in the USNWR 21-30 range).
The injection of statistical data into this discussion is likely to cause confusion.
âColleges have access to any schoolâs profile, public and private. Prep schools do not have a monopoly on brainpower , high SATâs , great GPAâs and character. Public schools need to educate all and donât have the luxury of being able to âtestâ kids and interview them as a barrier to admission.â
I didnât say any different. I am a product of public schools, and tons and tons of brilliant kids come out of public schools. Public schools are the backbone of our nation. No need to be defensive.
All I said was that getting a super high gpa at a public school is a significantly lower hurdle than getting a super high gpa at a difficult prep school due to the higher level of competition. The quality of the work demanded of my kids in their prep school is far beyond what I was ever asked to do by my high schools, and far beyond what their friends in public schools are asked to do. The elite colleges know this and take it into account, at least to some degree.
âThe injection of statistical data into this discussion is likely to cause confusion.â
Indeed. It appears that the entire point of the exercise has been is lost on some here. 
"âThe injection of statistical data into this discussion is likely to cause confusion.â
Indeed. It appears that the entire point of the exercise has been is lost on some here."
I am guilty.
I understand that the pointlessness of the exercise was the original point. I just find myself drawn to additional data like a fly to the light. Great stuff, but it really does not belong in this thread.
Re: Number 524. Getting a âsuper high GPA " because a kid is in a public school is not that relevant as all schools calculate things differently. An average unweighted 3.49 GPA at SF University prep school is high as it doesnât look like they add on for APâs? Colleges know that. Their middle SATâs are math 660-760 and CR 670-780. Iâm not a mathematician but looks like the average SAT is in the mid 1400âs. The public TJHSST average GPA is much higher but they weight things and colleges know that. And I doubt the school is handing out Aâs like candy. The average SAT there is 1472 (M 759 CR 713). I donât doubt that the average prep school is more demanding than the average public high school and that the average public school kids your daughter knows are not having to work as hard as your daughter. But what difference does it really make. Itâs not a competition. I really didnât care what other kids were doing at other schools . Even at my kidâs diverse city high school, the top kids were plenty challenged. One of my kids had 10 APâs and great SATâs as well as very time consuming ECâs, including being a two sport athlete. I actually was concerned at the time that he was doing too much. The prep schools you describe where " high schools are like 4 years of college level work before the student even goes to collegeâ would hold no appeal to me . But if someone wants that for their own kids, thatâs great. A kid in my other sonâs high school class did get a 2400 on the SAT and I guess he was considered a âfreaking geniusâ too. Best of luck to you and your daughter @ThankYouforHelp .
I thought the premise of the ranking is based on what CC folks find prestigious. So we donât need no statistics. 
Unless the statistic is how many âChance Meâ threads there are for the school, and how often âIf I donât get in my life is overâ comments there are in the ED/RD threads.
HuntâŠyou January postâŠis good stuff and seems pretty accurate
âRe: Number 524. Getting a âsuper high GPA " because a kid is in a public school is not that relevant as all schools calculate things differently. An average unweighted 3.49 GPA at SF University prep school is high as it doesnât look like they add on for APâs? Colleges know that. Their middle SATâs are math 660-760 and CR 670-780. Iâm not a mathematician but looks like the average SAT is in the mid 1400âs. The public TJHSST average GPA is much higher but they weight things and colleges know that. And I doubt the school is handing out Aâs like candy. The average SAT there is 1472 (M 759 CR 713). I donât doubt that the average prep school is more demanding than the average public high school and that the average public school kids your daughter knows are not having to work as hard as your daughter. But what difference does it really make. Itâs not a competition. I really didnât care what other kids were doing at other schools . Even at my kidâs diverse city high school, the top kids were plenty challenged. One of my kids had 10 APâs and great SATâs as well as very time consuming ECâs, including being a two sport athlete. I actually was concerned at the time that he was doing too much. The prep schools you describe where " high schools are like 4 years of college level work before the student even goes to collegeâ would hold no appeal to me . But if someone wants that for their own kids, thatâs great. A kid in my other sonâs high school class did get a 2400 on the SAT and I guess he was considered a âfreaking geniusâ too. Best of luck to you and your daughter @ThankYouforHelp .â
Again, I really donât understand what has gotten you all riled up here. I didnât disrespect you or the many tremendous students at public schools all over the country. Nor would I ever say anything negative about TJHSST, which is the best public school in the country. Iâm a product of Fairfax Country public schools myself, and they are great schools.
I was just trying to explain a minor point about why the small handful of elite prep schools do as well as they do in the admissions process, and it is not because they have âconnectionsâ to the colleges as some people here have implied.
Please, relax. No one is attacking you or your kids or any of the great kids at public schools.
I never said you were attacking me or anyone else. I just found it curious that you not only made your minor point about these small handful of elite privates but also tied it into the high GPAâs that the public school kids you know seem to be getting. My minor point is that all schools, public and private, calculate GPA differently and the colleges know that. Your prep schoolâs 3 something GPA being tops is not relevant to another schoolâs (public) 4 something GPA (you were noting so many public school kids getting 4 + GPAâs while kids at your school are not). Itâs apples and oranges. And of course within public schools , some kids are going to get easier Aâs in easier courses and their GPAâs can get inflated. But other kids are taking rigorous courses and the GPA may or may not be as high. But again, colleges know this and can evaluate a transcript accordingly. There are so many variations of quality within both private and public schools that it really is impossible to generalize. But this is getting off topic so letâs move on. All the best.
I just found this thread and I absolutely love it. Looks like Iâm late to the party, though.
Hereâs a âprestigiosityâ ranking based on the opinions of first generation Asian immigrants and your average uninformed Asian-American high school student in California.
Harvard (best school in the world. linsanity came from here): 1000
Stanford (ivy league school): 999
UC Berkeley (where at least 5 of your relatives go to - all of whom you think are really smart. youâre pretty sure itâs an ivy league school, but one the asian mothers told you itâs not.): 995
MIT (ivy league school): 994
UCLA (sunny, with good sports. almost an ivy league school): 993
Yale (some school in the east coast somewhere. not an ivy league, and probably not as good as UC Berkeley or UCLA): 991
UCSD (your friendâs son goes here and you think heâs pretty smart): 982
All other UCâs except for UCSC, UCR, and UCM: 821
UCSC, UCR, and UCM: 739
Bard: 420
Duke/Chicago/Northwestern/Amherst/Williams/Swarthmore/Princeton/Cornell/Brown/Dartmouth//Vanderbilt/Hopkins/Penn(state)/Columbia/CalTech/Emory/WashU/Georgetown/Rice/USC/and every other university in the U.S. that doesnât have a Chinese translation (LOL what are these schools? never heard of them. are they in Canada or something? how come you didnât get into Berkeley like my son?): 69
This is not an overstatement. Iâm serious.
@yinuos As someone quite familiar with Chinese students trying to get to US colleges, Iâd say this is pretty close, with some modifications based on my experience:
Harvard / Stanford: 1000
MIT: 999
UCB: 995
UCLA: 990
Columbia: 990
UCSD: 900
Cornell: 900
Carnegie Mellon: 800
Other UCs: 800
Wisconsin-Madison, Washington-Seattle, Penn State, UIUC: 700 (very popular destinations for Chinese)
Northwestern/Duke/Chicago/Brown/Dartmouth/Vanderbilt/JH/CalTech/Emory/WashU/Georgetown/Rice/USC (never heard of them but I see theyâre on the US News University Rankings so theyâre good): 600
Other big public universities, including UVA, UNC-CH, Michigan, UT-Austin and anywhere not on the West Coast: 400
Amherst/Swarthmore/Reed/Ponoma/and all LACs: 0 (what are these? some sort of second tier community college training school? I donât see them on the US News University Rankings.)
Why do Chinese students consider Columbia and Cornell to be so prestigious (I get the whole UC thing and CMU has a great computer science program)?
Um, hello⊠This is a joke thread. Apparently only some realize that
@NerdyChica Itâs because theyâve heard of Columbia (has the highest % of Chinese of any top-20 school) - I think because itâs in NYC - and Cornell because many Chinese study engineering abroad.
@jym626, I think these recent posters are mostly in on the idea of this threadâtheyâre just making the argument that recent immigrants from China may have different ideas of âprestigiosityâ than the average CC denizen.
Is not clear⊠but I hope so.