<p>I would secon CountingDown. Competitive High Schools are not only a door into a top college. These are 4 years of life of a child. And at least for my daughter her competitive school was the best place to be for these for years. She already had one great experience. If she gets into a top college she will have two. A kid who gets into a top college from a "nothing-to-remember" high school will have one (or zero if he is not lucky enough in the college admission process). At least this week my daughter cares more about upcoming events at her school than about acceptance letters (I know it will change closer to April 1).
Plus, an average kid from a really competitive school usually have opions that are not that bad. Sure, not everyone goes to Ivies. But NYU accepts pretty average students from Stuy. And so do other schols ranked between #20 and #30.</p>
<p>I took a look at the scattergrams from my son's school (includes IB magnet program) to see if I could get a feel for this. It's certainly true that kids from this school do get rejected from Ivies, even if they have perfect grades and top scores, and it's also true that any one Ivy rarely takes more than a few in one year. However, here's an interesting bit of info--below is a list of schools that accepted all the applicants from this school who had over 1500 on the 1600-scale SAT:
Boston College
Carnegie Mellon
Emory
UNC-Chapel Hill
Tulane
Vanderbilt
Wake Forest
Wesleyan
William & Mary
Those are pretty good schools. If this is the "floor" for high-performing kids in this magnet, I think they're doing OK.</p>
<p>Here is Dean J's point of view: (sorry I don't know how to put it in the neat darker frame.)</p>
<p>"A student taking four top level classes at a school that has a full AP/IB program is very different from a student taking four top level classes at a school where only four AP/DE courses are offered. </p>
<p>Do you penalize the student at that smaller school for not having access to more top level classes? Or, should you look at the fact that the student exhausted the curriculum at their school and give them a chance?</p>
<p>UVa has many, many students from competitive schools. If you lined students up by GPA at those schools, you'd probably see that we go fairly deep into the class. That's why a good portion of the class is from Northern Virginia. Students there have access to fantastic programs. We also have top students from some schools that don't offer the same great programs."</p>
<p>citymom, your comments about how going to a competitive HS gives a student at least one great experience is a wonderful way of looking at it. D1 had to make the choice last year between staying at her perfectly adequate magnet, or transferring to a highly selective HS magnet. She knew that if she stayed at the perfectly adequate school that she'd finish at or near the top of her class, but that she'd be middle of the pack at the highly selective school. We talked about what that might mean in terms of college admissions. Bottom line--she was going to be far, far happier transferring, both socially and academically. Not the right choice for all kids, but certainly the right choice for her.</p>
<p>why are some dissing Jay for a column he wrote seven years ago? Moreoever, his column was just reporting on a study that was published in a peer-reviewed academic publication; what's wrong with that?</p>
<p>BlueB, I don't like his rankings of high schools (which are ridiculous) or his focus on AP/honors.</p>
<p>I think that the value of a rigorous high school, just as with a rigorous college lies in the * education*, not in the perceived prestige of the next step.</p>
<p>My older D who attended a competitive private prep also attended a rigorous private college. Her classmates went into similar schools or careers.</p>
<p>While we chose a slightly different high school environment for younger D ( inner city magnet), the value of a competive school is strengthened by a common focus- virtually everyone there is planning on attending college & many have parents who are researchers/college profs etc. The whole level is bumped up, and whatever area they choose, the students already know what it is like to be engaged and challenged.</p>
<p>I'd also say however- that out of older Ds class a good chunk went directly into a gap program- Americorps- journalism intern- Marines...</p>
<p>None are working at McDonalds if that is what Jay is concerned about.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I would secon CountingDown. Competitive High Schools are not only a door into a top college. These are 4 years of life of a child. And at least for my daughter her competitive school was the best place to be for these for years. She already had one great experience. If she gets into a top college she will have two. A kid who gets into a top college from a "nothing-to-remember" high school will have one (or zero if he is not lucky enough in the college admission process). At least this week my daughter cares more about upcoming events at her school than about acceptance letters (I know it will change closer to April 1).
Plus, an average kid from a really competitive school usually have opions that are not that bad. Sure, not everyone goes to Ivies. But NYU accepts pretty average students from Stuy. And so do other schols ranked between #20 and #30.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Agree with citymom. My daughter would not trade her high school experience with a less competitie neighboring school. She has been challenged and will do well in college. She did not kill herself for grades but so far she has been accepted/invited to honors program for all her colleges. In addition, her high school is not only competitive academically but also offers a wide range of curricular activities. She will look back and be proud of her high school experience. The reputation of a high school does count in college admissions. It's not a risk that adcom has to take, as long as a student is in the top 30%, not even in top 10%.</p>
<p>I strongly suspect that Hunt is talking about the same selective-entry IB program that Counting Down's younger son attends and that my daughter graduated from last year.</p>
<p>I mention this because the other posters on this thread probably ought to know that there are three of us talking about the same school, which produces about 100 IB diploma graduates per year.</p>
<p>Among the destinations of graduates from this program last year were seven of the eight Ivies (all except Harvard, with Cornell, which got 4 of them, being the most popular choice that year), Duke (where one student got a highly prestigious merit scholarship), Stanford, Northwestern (where 5 chose to go), Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where 8 chose to go), Johns Hopkins, NYU (2 happy film students), Barnard, Smith, and a variety of other liberal arts colleges, and (for at least a quarter of the class) our own state university.</p>
<p>Those who chose the state university were not "bottoming out." They were following the money and exploiting special opportunities. Most got merit scholarships (in some cases, full rides) and invitations into elite honors programs, and many wanted to take advantage of the fact that their high school achievements would exempt them from most of the general education requirements, thereby making it possible for them to do unusual things like majoring in two entirely unrelated fields or completing both a bachelor's and a master's degree during the four fully paid years of their merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Admittedly, it is hard to distinguish yourself at a school where there are many other people as qualified as you are (in my daughter's graduating class, there were 36 National Merit Finalists, for example.) Nevertheless, these kids do OK. Perhaps not quite as well as some of the best of them might have done if they were the superstars of inferior high schools, but then, as Hunt points out, who knows whether they would have been able to maintain their academic focus at high schools where few would share their interests?</p>
<p>It may be too that the friendship network one develops at a really good high school is as valuable as the friendship network that most people wait till college to develop.</p>
<p>TokenAdult said: It may be too that the friendship network one develops at a really good high school is as valuable as the friendship network that most people wait till college to develop.</p>
<p>YES, YES, YES! My kids have wonderful, life-long friends that they have made in this process. Their friends are academically focused, and have goals for themselves. It certainly validates the choices they have made.</p>
<p>Keshira,
Kids who are not in the top 10% at selective magnet programs aren't necessarily at a disadvantage. A good school will discuss in its GC letter (or additional letter included in the materials sent out by the guidance office) the nature of the program, the level of selectivity and application process, and that these students' grades should be evaluated <em>within the context of the program.</em></p>
<p>I don't know if TJ or Stuy rank, but from looking at the profiles of admitted students on many colleges' websites, a sizeable percentage of high schools are not ranking their kids.</p>
<ol>
<li> I am very familiar with college admissions results for the past decade or so at both an elite private school that my kids attended for many years and the large public magnet from which they graduated, and, to a lesser extent, at other private schools in my area (both elite and somewhat less so), the "other", much smaller and more selective public magnet, and various high-quality suburban public schools. The conclusion of the study does not ring true for me at all. First of all, the kids at the top of the various classes look very, very similar at all of the schools. The "better" schools have more stars, perhaps, and a larger percentage of very strong students. Their admissions results fully reflect that. But there are few, if any students, at any of the great schools who could switch to a merely good school and effortlessly claim the top slot, and the really standout students at any of the schools would stand out at any of the others. If anything, the admissions advantage at the elite schools is seen not at the top of the class, but more towards the middle. Top students at all of them generally get accepted at high quality colleges. Some get accepted almost everywhere they apply; some don't, but I think that's normal variation. However, I think colleges taking a risk on a somewhat flawed student are more likely to do that with a student at a great school than one at a merely good one. There are more positive admissions surprises at the great schools, and about the same number of moderate disappointments.</li>
</ol>
<p>Below the layer of schools that send kids to elite colleges on a regular basis: Sure, maybe a kid will get accepted once or twice a decade, but they are students who overcome a lot of odds and have lights that shine really brightly. Kids who are good-not-fantastic students at elite schools might or might not look great in that atmosphere. It certainly isn't a sure thing. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>I saw numbers on Ivy acceptances in the Philadelphia School District for my daughter's class a few years ago. About 90 kids were accepted at one or more Ivy League college. Roughly equal numbers (39-40) came from the two academic magnet schools -- one with a class of 550, the other with a class of 120 --, 10 came from the "best" neighborhood high school out of a class of 800+, and 1 came from the 8,000+ other graduates in the district that year. At each of the three schools, there were probably 4-5 kids who did not get Ivy acceptances who were indistinguishable statistically from some of the ones who did. The one kid from an undistinguished school was generally considered the greatest kid in the history of the universe. Setting aside the many other benefits of attending a really strong school, even if all you cared about was Ivy admissions, what bet would you make for your academically strong 8th grader?</p></li>
<li><p>When the dust cleared, my kids probably wound up exactly where they would have been if they had continued at the private school.</p></li>
<li><p>I can see a unique sort of issue in Northern Virginia, where you have two highly desirable, and comparatively small, state universities, which have something of an obligation to spread the acceptances around. I would be really surprised if you could convincingly support the proposition that Harvard is accepting kids from normal suburban high schools who are measurably inferior to students not accepted from Thomas Jefferson. But I am prepared to believe that is the case at UVa and W&M. And there's probably a similar issue with Texas' 10% rule -- I'm sure there are kids around the 80th percentile at really competitive schools who don't get admitted to UT-Austin and who would have easily been in the top 10% at many other schools.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>"And there's probably a similar issue with Texas' 10% rule -- I'm sure there are kids around the 80th percentile at really competitive schools who don't get admitted to UT-Austin and who would have easily been in the top 10% at many other schools."</p>
<p>Yeah the top 10% rule is ridiculous. I went to one of the best, most competitive public high schools in Texas and pretty much the only kids that got accepted to UT were in the top 10%. I knew several kids that had 1300+ SATs and 97/98/99 GPAs that were rejected. What really sucks is that if these kids had gone to any other school in the area, they would've easily been in the top 10%. To be honest, I feel that anyone that finished in the top 25% of my school could've finished in the top 10% at the majority of the public schools in Texas. There is some good news though, I read somewhere that UT is trying to get it from top 10% to top 7%. It's not great, but it's a start.</p>
<p>"I would be really surprised if you could convincingly support the proposition that Harvard is accepting kids from normal suburban high schools who are measurably inferior to students not accepted from Thomas Jefferson."</p>
<p>In 2006, 11 kids from my son's school applied to Harvard, and 1 was accepted. This is anecdotal, I know, but I can't help believing that at least a couple more of those kids might have gotten accepted if they were coming from the top of their home schools instead of magnet. On the other hand, at least 40 kids in that graduating class enrolled in highly selective schools (including 15 at Ivies), and I'm sure that more went to honors programs at the state flagship. So I think that while they may face a disadvantage at the couple of very most selective schools, they do very well, and the education and experience they get is worth it. (I'll tell you how I really feel about it in a year or so, when we see how my son does in his applications.)</p>
<p>D goes to a top HS and not everyone will head to Ivies or Ivy group schools. Not everyone at her shool is Ivy material (not just grades, SAT's, etc, but in terms of personality, desires, lief goals, etc.) and have chosen to go elsewhere. However, the ones that are Ivy material and want to these schools have gotten into them. Don't know if that helps. So many of the answers to all these threads are "it all depends".</p>
<p>I have an issue with the underlying study. I've only read the abstract, not the article itself. I don't understand how you could reach the conclusions reached, however, because Stuy--the school mentioned in the abstract--does not rank. While I'm sure an admissions officer at HYPSMC/AWS, etc. knows the difference between an 88 and 95 average, I don't see how (s)he would know the number of places between the kid with a 94.6 and one with a 95.3, especially as that number isn't going to stay the same from year to year. I certainly do not see how the PROFESSOR who wrote the article would have a clue what the class rank of any Stuy students would be, since as far as I know, Stuy itself doesn't try to rank them at all. </p>
<p>You don't have to be in the top 10% of the class at the best public magnets to get into HYPSMC/AWS, etc. More than the top 10% of the class ends up at one of those schools. Moreover, to some extent, things like the pattern of grades, test scores, ECs, essays, recs, etc. affect the outcome--as they do for all applicants. I know kids who weren't in the top 20% of the class at some of these high schools who ended up at HYPS. That's not so hard to do when Princeton, for example, doesn't count 9th grade grades. (That's another reason I question the professor's conclusions.) </p>
<p>Still, it's true that some of the kids in the middle of the class at public magnets might do better in college admissions if they were to attend regular high schools. I know that some of the "not so special" kids at these high schools end up being <em>stars</em> at some good colleges. I do think the better prep they got in high school is one reason why.</p>
<p>"I would be really surprised if you could convincingly support the proposition that Harvard is accepting kids from normal suburban high schools who are measurably inferior to students not accepted from Thomas Jefferson."
Not that I care about this "disadvantage" of good schools, but I can support this particular example. Out of 40 Intel finalists 4 are my daughter's classmates. The same amount as in the whole state of Texas or California. But Harvard will take at least a 100 kids from Texas and even more from California and less than 10 from my daughter's school.</p>
<p>I'm very unsure what you're trying to say, citymom. Are you suggesting that there are more than 10 kids at your daughter's school who are clearly superior to the top 5% or so of all of Harvard's applicants from California? Because there are 4 Intel finalists in the class? That doesn't compute at all. (1) I'm sure being an Intel finalist does not ensure acceptance to Harvard (although I bet the acceptance rate is very, very high). (2) It sounds like Harvard takes a LOT of kids from that school, relative to the number applying. (3) Harvard has other admissions criteria besides doing well in science competitions. Lots of the kids it accepts have equivalent accomplishments in other fields. Lots of the kids it accepts don't enter competitions at all -- that doesn't mean they are not impressive. (4) Having accomplished classmates does not automatically make a kid impressive.</p>
<p>Well, to go back to my son's magnet program, in the last seven years, Harvard has accepted between 0 and 3 students from this school (only once did it accept 3). This is a magnet IB program with 100 students chosen competitively from a large county with many good high schools.</p>