<p>Boardingschoolreview has St Mark's admissions rate listed at 40% and that just doesn't sound right to me. Do any current parents have better information?</p>
<p>Peterson’s has the same figure (I checked.) If accurate, that would be the admissions rate for the class of 2013. They were applying during the latter half of 2008. I think the market crash made in an anomalous year for many schools.</p>
<p>I have the impression that that figure will be lower for the class of 2012. Erkybk may know more–she (he?) seems to ask the admissions department for figures at times. I attended a parent event in the spring, and the administrators seemed happy about the outcome of the admissions season. They didn’t cite figures, but they did say that the school is fully enrolled for the coming year, and that the new class has fewer Massachusetts residents than before. As the Massachusetts parent of a student applying this year, I have mixed feelings about that!</p>
<p>I presume they’ll update the figures in early September. At any rate, Neatoburrito, you should add it to your list for this year.</p>
<p>I believe it was somewhere between 24-27%, according to my interviewer, but I might be wrong. I think in the bottom of boardingschoolreview.com it says that the last time the St. Mark’s page was updated was sometime in 2008, like Periwinkle stated.</p>
<p>I checked the ssat search engine and they have it at 34%, which is closer to what I would expect but still higher than seems correct considering their other metrics.</p>
<p>And Periwinkle, it IS on my daughter’s list for this year! :)</p>
<p>That SSAT site has flash which really slows down my old but otherwise trusty computer.
Does it give the date such information is updated? I wonder if a different methodology is used than what the schools provide…or is that just a dumb question?</p>
<p>Here is a fact I am sure of:
43% of all statistics are worthless.:)</p>
<p>Neatoburrito, my other thought is, it’s a school which doesn’t try to manage yield. (Think of the Tufts Effect.) As someone* expressed it, St. Mark’s will accept you if they want you. I think they don’t not accept a student they believe they might lose to Andover or Exeter, for example. That means that they lose some kids to the Big Name schools, but it also means that they aim for the best class possible. </p>
<p>*who knows more than I do about prep school admissions, but is not affiliated with St. Mark’s</p>
<p>On an unrelated tangent, one problem St. Mark’s has in the internet age is…its name. There’s an apostrophe. It can be “Saint Mark’s” or "St. Mark’s.‘’ It’s on Marlborough Road, in Southborough, Massachusetts, which is fairly challenging to spell accurately every time. And, to top it all off, there are many other schools named “St. Mark’s School” in the world. This makes it hard to find it with simplistic search engines.</p>
<p>Periwinkle, I had considered that as well (that they’re not trying to micromanage yield). </p>
<p>It makes me like the school even more.</p>
<p>Yes, SMS doesn’t try to manage yield. Last year’s acceptance rate was very unusual. Their acceptance rate has been upper 20’s or lower 30’s at most. Due to the economic situations, some of those good students who were admitted did did not register at the last moment and they had to pick up some from the waitlist, which is very unusual. That is what I guess since I found some sutudents who were picked up from waitlist. The data
in the Boardingschoolreview is old and will be updates soon. I am sure it will be back to normal range because I heard that they had an excellent quality and record high pool of applicants this year.</p>
<p>After decided not to go to SMS, we received two surveys, one online and another over the phone by a consulting firm hired by SMS. From the questions particular the one by the consulting firm, I can tell, SMS is trying hard to find out why admitted students not going to SMS.</p>
<p>I don’t know about to other schools, not sure how common this is.</p>
<p>We also received such a survey from 2 of the schools my son declined last year. Perhaps it is common based on that, but I am not sure. Just my experience.</p>
<p>When My D applied to BS two years ago, we chose SMS over Concord Academy and Taft. We recieved the same call and written survey from those. I guess it is common. The other thing is that BS get consulting from consulting firms for many things such as curriculum, college counseling, admission, and etc. To remain as a competitive school, it is good to get consulting service and that is how they keep improving and prospering. That is one of the main differences between public and private school.</p>
<p>St. Mark’s listing has been updated on boarding school review. The admission rate is listed as 35%. The SSAT score of 85% now places it into the top nine boarding schools, when listed by average SSAT score*. </p>
<p>*I don’t understand how Boarding School Review calculates this. Is it the average SSAT score for new freshmen, the school as a whole, or the graduating seniors? As other schools’ entries are updated, the rankings will shift. Also, some superb schools, such as St. Paul’s and Choate (as of today), don’t list an average SSAT score.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that Boarding School Review (“BSR”) calculates the figures presented on it’s site. It, like Peterson’s or any of the other guide, serves only as an information clearinghouse. The respective schools provide the figures and BSR publishes them. The SSAT score average is not likely that of the entire student body but of the incoming students (III, IV, and V Formers). That said, it is notable that the School’s number have definitely taken a very nice turn upward. The numbers are impressive, even moreso than my class, which was a pretty bright group (e.g., 4 to Harvard, 3 to MIT, 3 to Yale…). The School’s return to the upper echelon of boarding schools is clearly in full gear.</p>
<p>Managing yields is a technique used not only at boarding schools but at colleges and universities as well. For better or for worse, many people use yield as an indication of a school’s inherent prestige. Personally, I think the School might better serve it’s own interests by managing its yield more effectively. You will note, though, that schools with particularly low admissions rates also have fairly large waiting lists (no names but their mascots include, among others, zebras).</p>
<p>The admissions rate is a number calculated once, based on the initial ratio of acceptances to applications and does not change when, for example, a school resorts to the waiting list to fill its class. Yield management could also be useful for the school in as much as a student who’s applied to St. Mark’s, Exeter, Choate, and Concord really hasn’t done his/her homework. The schools are extremely different and my impression, as an admissions person, would be that the applicant simply looked up some generic ranking and applied to the “Top 10-15” schools. Yield management in this case would allow the School to perhaps accept a student with slightly less impressive numbers but with the possibility to contribute something to the School’s environment. Because of the size of the School, it is exceedingly difficult to gather as wonderfully diverse a group of students as the Admission Committee does. In the end, you want every student to thrive at the school and a small school cannot, for example, absorb someone who just isn’t into being part of a community whereas that would be perfectly acceptable at a large school like Exeter, Andover, or Northfield Mount Hermon.</p>
<p>St. Mark’s continues to do an excellent job with, in the words of Molly King (former Director of Admission–now Head of School at Greenwich Academy–and, in my opinion, the person who deserves the most credit for turning around admission at the School) winning battles with the likes of St. Paul’s, Deerfield, and Hotchkiss; school which, even 10 years ago, didn’t consider St. Mark’s a serious competitor.</p>
<p>Signed,</p>
<p>A Very Content 80s SM Alum :-)</p>
<p>Molly King is the greatest. When we interviewed at SMS, she rushed out to meet us to let us know that she had worked with one of our relatives at Greenwich Country Day years earlier. We had no idea that there was a connection and were completely surprised and touched. I thought to myself, “wow, this Director is totally on her game.” I’ll never forget it.</p>