@gardenstategal - I don’t know if prep schools consider college admissions when admitting students. So many prep schools are PK3-12 grade. They can’t possibly worry about what college a 3 year old is going to attend can they? My kids made the switch in 6th grade and most of the kids had been there for many years already. At the senior dinner they ask all the kids to stand up and ask them to sit if they have been there for 2 year of HS, 4 years of HS, MS, etc. At the end there are always quite a few kids standing who were there from the time they were 3 or 4 years old.
At the school my kids attend faculty are required to have their kids attend and they get a great deal on tuition so there are plenty of middle class kids. The school offers need based financial aid and for high school only and competitive academic and fine arts scholarships for high school only. While there are plenty of kids in the school with modest incomes there are also some really wealthy kids there. The school is a favorite of professional athletes and international business people but the student body isn’t homogeneous.
I meant the BS that take kids starting in 9th grade. The K-12 model is different, especially if they don’t make the kids reapply for HS (when there’s generally a shuffle depending on rigor.) Especially the super selective ones. But then again, I am tinged by cynicism.
Those schools probably worry more about college admissions. I am not a big believer in parents making adolescence revolve entirely around college admissions.
You are right about a reshuffling. We always get some kids from the Catholic schools in 9th and some our our kids wind up at the Catholic schools. Most of that reshuffling has to do with sports or other ECs. We also get new kids in 9th grade from the public schools.
Here in FL there are no PGs so we don’t have that mess.
How much of a bump is being Hispanic? I’m Hispanic and I’ve never actually known how much help it would serve.
@seniorkid1234 it depends on your stats and where you are applying to. If you are a good student with good grades and test scores and are applying to selective colleges, it can be very helpful.
“How much of a bump is being Hispanic?”
not as big as many people think
@gardenstategal
You make a lot of excellent and valid points in post #34.
At ‘prep’ schools 100% of the kids are on the selective college track vs publics, where there could be a significant portion of students who aren’t going to college or are not competitive for selective colleges, so that does skew the numbers. At the same time, colleges do cap the % of kids they take from private schools. Many aim for a 50%private/religious to a 50% public ratio, so if you are a prep school kid you may be competing in a tougher pool.
My children attend a “prep” school and I must say that I feel that my African American daughter may have faired better on her admission decisions (that we have received thus far) if she attended our local failing public school. Prep school students are sometimes hindered by the fact that there are so many high achieving achieving students within their particular class. While she is an exceptional student with a high GPA and great test scores, she happens to be just one of an extremely competitive class, which has already gotten her deferred to a school that many though would be a safety. I truly feel that in the current college application “climate” that nothing is certain and there really is no such thing as a safety, especially with students who have high stats being deferred from state schools and the sort.
@mom2princesses , did your daughter show interest in the school she has been deferred from? Did her GC tell her the school was a safety? Or was it more a situation that given her high stats, it should have been a safety but has an acceptance rate of around 40% or lower? I am curious. IME, a safety has an acceptance rate of 50% or higher, and the applicants stats are at or above the 75th percentile.
@Lindagaf I apologize for my tardy reply. I am new to this board and did not realize I had a reply. To be honest, she did not go out of her way to show interest. Many of our family members attended this particular school and we have many affiliations with the school. This being said, she is pretty familiar with the campus and all that it has to offer. To my knowledge, demonstrated interest is not of consideration during the admission process. The school has an acceptance rate over 50% and her stats are well above the 75th percentile. It’s just one of those things. As I stated before, nothing is certain and we are definitely not taking it personally. She has great options (many with scholarships attached) and will continue with the application process in an effort to see how it all works out.
Well, that is very puzzling. It’s impossible to say why she was deferred, and my guess is she will be accepted when regular decisions are released. it could have been her essay or her recommendations. I hope she gets into the best school for her.
^^The school may be protecting their yield a la Tufts effect. They probably see her stats are above their mean and URM and other things may give them the impression she will be admitted and accept a better offer. This happens all the time, hence the crap shoot argument, which isn’t true. This gun shot approach makes students apply to record numbers of schools they may not be qualified for.