the top private high school advantage - is it really like this?

Parents Forum
1

<p>i was at the house of a girl who is at state flagship today. she says she is friends with a girl there who went to one of the most well-known episcopal schools, with very rigorous curriculum and academics. anyhow, she said something that completely shocked me:</p>

<p>"yeah, I was upset when I was rejected from [top choice]. [top choice] was also my friend's first choice, but she was rejected too. [top episcopal school] said that, if she really wanted to go, though, they would make it happen"</p>

<p>***. as if college admissions weren't unbalanced enough. is there even a grain of truth in what my friend told me? fwiw, i was also there with another friend who went to the same episcopal school (avg sat of her class: 1450/1600), and she didn't seem surprised by her comment at all.</p>

2

<p>Unless her family was building a building I doubt what she said was true. Rejection is rejection. Accept it and move on. This girl is obviously of the belief that she is entitled to special treatment. And if she was so “special” she would have been at the very least waitlisted. Now… had she been waitlisted, there might have been some chance of her getting in with some pushing from the counselors office but I still doubt it.</p>

3

<p>That kind of statement could be a discrete way of suggesting to a wealthy family that a significantly large donation would be helpful for admissions. At least that is how I would interpret the use of the phrase “if she really wanted to go.”</p>

4

<p>I think private schools can sometimes help more with waitlisted kids than the average public school GC. Back in my day, my high school got the occasional girl into Vassar if she came up short in the spring. The school had been founded by a Vassar alum. I doubt that still true though.</p>

5

<p>I don’t think it’s a generic “top private school” effect, but the specific relationships of the guidance counselors at a specific school with the admissions offices at various colleges.</p>

<p>Back in the pleistocene when I was a high school student at a very highly-ranked public school in the NY suburbs, our guidance counselors had developed excellent relationships with the admissions offices at various schools that took a lot of our graduates. If someone didn’t get in to any of their colleges, it was understood that our GC’s could make a few phone calls and shake something loose. Not necessarily at the particular school that had rejected a kid, but somewhere. One oft-cited example was a kid who had applied to various ivies and hadn’t gotten in, and our GC got him accepted to Columbia. (I’m not sure whether the kid had actually applied to Columbia in the first place or not.) But admit rates were higher, numbers of applications were lower, competition was less fierce, and things were more loosey-goosey at the time.</p>

6

<p>I have heard/seen/experienced things like that at both top private schools and a top public school. It didn’t mean what calmom suggests, although I’m sure that happens, too. </p>

<p>In the private-school context, where I heard it was where a kid, unexpectedly, was in a bad situation. Two examples, from among my children’s friends: A kid whom the school considered one of the top kids in the class (smart, scholarly, top athlete, social justice resume a mile long and just as deep, and very attractive to boot, which never hurts) and had advised to apply to HYPS had decided to apply ED instead to what looked like a safe-match LAC. The counselors thought the kid was a shoo-in, but the kid was deferred. The kid hurriedly applied to 9 additional LACs, and bad results started to roll in – it was clear something was reading wrong in this kid’s application. The counselors really went to the mat with the original ED college, a faraway place where this school sent a good kid more years than not, so the relationship was probably one the college valued. In the end, the original ED school was the only college to accept this kid. Another kid in the same class was always going to be a little tough, admissions-wise. A great person, but quiet, shy, not terribly academic. Focused on music, but not talented enough ever to be a star at that. Accepted only at a safety the kid had applied to reluctantly, and did not feel good about, but waitlisted at a LAC that the counselors thought was a great fit. Again, the counselors put on a full-court press to get the kid off the wait list, and it worked.</p>

<p>In neither case was there the kind of family resources that would have permitted a “significantly large donation”. It was clear that the statement meant “We will do everything we can (which is a lot) to get a good outcome at this school, because you are a good person who has done everything right and we think this is the right fit for you.” Neither college was hyper-selective, although both would make anyone’s list of top 20 or 25 LACs.</p>

<p>At the public school, the offer was much more direct. The school had an extremely strong historical feeder relationship with one top university, sending 5% or more of its class there year after year. I know that, on occasion, the principal would tell a kid “If you really want to go to X, I will make that happen.” (The kids involved were the sort who would be strong candidates for that college in any event.) Three situations in which I know he did that: A high-ranked kid who had (moronically) applied only to two hyper-selective colleges, and gotten rejected from both; a kid whose ranking and competitiveness for top colleges had been badly hurt by some judgment calls the principal had made and who had later turned out to be a NMSF and faculty-favorite; a top-ranked kid (and personal favorite of the principal) who had been waitlisted by X and was the first kid ranked that high at the school in over 30 years not to be accepted at X. Again, there was no chance of real money changing hands. In all of those cases, the kids politely declined the help, because they really didn’t want to go to X, but I have no doubt that from time to time, at least in the past (things have changed some in recent years as admissions have gotten more competitive), this principal made good on his offer.</p>

7

<p>I believe if a student is waitlisted this could happen; out and out rejected, not so sure.</p>

8

<p>I think that the power of the “old boy” network can be underestimated. William and Mary isn’t the tippy top school in the country, but is well respected. DD’s college counselor was a W&M grad and the admissions dean came to the juniors’ college night to speak. I do not doubt for a minute that the counselor had some pull.</p>

9

<p>OT, but JHS, I’m curious as to what happened to the first kid’s applications that could make them read so wrong, if the student was so across the board exceptional? Do you know if they ever found out?</p>

10

<p>

Sounds interesting. Would you elaborate on what the “judgment calls” were?</p>

11

<p>This is true, but it works both ways. There is a certain level of trust between the top prep schools and many of the elite colleges. Some prep schools get the top kids together with their families and not so subtley tell the students that they cannot apply to all of the top schools, they have to pick and choose. Kid A can apply to whatever school he wants, but if A decides he really wants to apply to Harvard, then kid be should choose Yale or Princeton. Kid D can apply to Harvard, Yale and Princeton if he really wants to, but the GC strongly suggests he apply to Cornell or Georgetown - that is a way of saying, you will not get my top recommendation if you apply to (fill in the blank). These prep school guidance counselors “protect” the the elite school admissions committees this way and in return, there is a lot of trust with them. Phone calls can be made, but only if the student is the right fit and the Admissions Committee made a mistake, not because a prep school really wants a lesser kid to go to an elite school. I know of several instances when a prep school student is told that “if you apply to this school, you will get in (we have a slot allocated), but you should not apply unless it s your top choice because you will be taking the spot of a kid who has been dreaming of this school his entire life.” On the other hand, they are told, "you can apply to [elite school] if you really want to, but I think it is very much an up hill battle. I think you should look at [better match school]. The reality is that said prep school has four slots at Yale and you are not getting one. It happens.</p>

12

<p>^I’ve heard stories like this, but I never experienced it at my “top” private school. In fact, the acceptance numbers at the top colleges from year to year suggest that it doesn’t happen at my school. I was told by a teacher that he’d try to throw his weight around in his old department (in which I had expressed the most interest) at a school I was waitlisted in, but I declined.</p>

<p>I can’t help but wonder if I would have received different results if I had expressed more interest in the school I was rejected from (I didn’t interview, for instance), or if I had updated the school I was waitlisted at on my latest awards (top 15 finish in a national competition, every major award in the school across 3 departments). The reality of the situation is that I did not, and I never expressed much interest in getting off the waitlist.</p>