<p>Great discussion! Let me summarize based on what I’ve learned so far: for those attending HYP and the like is of utmost importance and believe it is the major goal of high school education, then top boarding schools may not be your best option, unless you are a “super star” AND legacies, URM, etc. If you are just a super star :), then stay in your local public school - you have a better shot there. For every other smart and motivated kids, boarding school will not only help you land a top college admission but also better prepare you for your college life and beyond (?). Is that a conclusion most would agree on?</p>
<p>Sorry to jump in here…but I think there needs to be hard data (which would be nearly impossible to find) before we jump to conclusions. Some of the anecdotal evidence we have seems to suggest otherwise.</p>
<p>Don’t forget also, there’s also a big range of public schools. Not every one is like Thomas Jefferson or New Trier. Our local public school, in New England, has NEVER to anyone’s knowledge, sent a kid to Harvard, Yale or Stanford. There have been one or two, over the years, to MIT, Princeton or Cornell all for engineering. The talented students in the district tend to bail after 8th grade for a number of different options, including prep school.</p>
<p>mpicz, I assume you are referring to the “BS is not helping in getting into HYP” part of my statements when you say anectotal evidence suggest otherwise? Well, I used to believe that compared to PS, BS is neither signicantly increase nor decrease your chance of getting into the top top colleges - all things considered it comes down to a “wash out”. Reason being - it’s true that there are more competitions and legacies etc. in top BS, but they send about 30% of the graduating class to ivies, on the other hand it’s easier to excel in your local PS but only the top of top in an average PS get to those colleges and it’s never garanteed. However, if we consider people’s opinions on CC are mostly “anecdotal”, then the anecdotal evidence is that I haven’t yet heard one person actually say (Are you one? :)) top BS is helping/increasing your chance in getting into HYP. That’s where my “conclusion” came from.</p>
<p>mpicz’s comment is certainly worth considering; one really can’t give appropriate statistics to definitively answer this. To do so, we’d have to compare nearly identical students at BSes and PSes and see their results. I personally did not get into YP from a boarding school, but the top student at the public HS was accepted to Harvard. I know I would have been near the top, but I can’t say if I would have been at the very top of that PS, nor do I know what activities I would have had - certainly my hooks would not have existed - I would have completed AB Calc as a senior as opposed to BC as a sophomore, I wouldn’t have been on a math team, and I wouldn’t have excelled in Latin, since it wasn’t offered. However, my public high school was below average. If I had gone to Boston Latin or Thomas Jefferson, I’d have had these opportunities too, and I’d be unsurprised if my college results had remained unchanged.</p>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind is that generally at my public school, the counselors recommend all the top students go to GW (not the right fit for everyone, certainly). With that sort of guidance, fewer of the top students apply to what we think of as stronger, more selective colleges. I’ve read somewhere (maybe even on this thread?) that the percent accept rates for most of the top schools in the country (students from the school accepted over students from the school applied) are roughly the same as at many public schools, it’s just that many more students apply at BSes. If the number of students at PSes applying went up, some of the difference (probably not all, but some) would likely go away.</p>
<p>But that’s just me rambling and thinking about the choices I’ve made in life to get to where I am and wherever I’ll end up.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that I can agree with the recent summary asserted by NoDrama on this thread, even if it may be a fair wrap-up, that top BS’s may not help kids get into Ivy/Stanford/MIT. First, top BS’s send a higher percentage of students to such colleges than do public, non-magnet schools. Second, these BS’s should have such success because they have already put their kids through a rigorous selection process just to enter the BS’s and, therefore, these kids are tuned and then fine-tuned for the rigors of highly selective colleges. It is no surprise that top BS’s are so strong in placing their grads at highly selective colleges. In this regard, see Ch. 17 of Michele Hernandez’s “A for Admission” where she repeats these points, citing as proof the low yields into, and the high placement rate at Ivies from, Andover and Hotchkiss.</p>
<p>St. Paul’s has now posted their numbers for 2006-2009. If I did the math correctly their 4 year average is now 30.4%. That’s down slightly from '05-'08. Because schools report their results for different time horizons, the only '06-'09 comparables reported earlier in this thread were Andover and Hotchkiss at 32.9% and 18.4%, respectively.</p>
<p>One really needs to wait until the actual 2009
SPS numbers are published in the annual report.
Only then can you accurately compare
the already released data from Andover, Exeter,
etc. For 2009. Prepreview just doesn’t seem reliable
anymore and the multiple year averages published
by the different schools are subject to
too many variables.
are subject to too many variables.</p>
<p>^^^???</p>
<p>I’m a little hesitant to get much deeper into this because the Ivy+SM metric as a standalone measure of BS quality is questionable at best. It’s interesting, but just one of many objective and subjective assessments in determining appropriate schools - and probably fairly low on the list at that. However, those figures came from St. Paul’s website (URL below) and were labeled “Forms of 2006-2009.” I doubt they’d publish them for public consumption unless they were considered official.</p>
<p>[St</a>. Paul’s School ~ Matriculation](<a href=“http://www.sps.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=6543]St”>http://www.sps.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=6543)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When was it reliable??? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What variables? Variables only an annual report is not subject to?</p>
<p>Going back to the original request for 2009 college matriculation, here is the 2009 matriculation for Blair, plus 6 year matriculation for colleges with 2 or more graduates [Blair</a> Academy - College Counseling](<a href=“http://www.blair.edu/College_Counseling/cc_mat_list.shtm]Blair”>http://www.blair.edu/College_Counseling/cc_mat_list.shtm)</p>
<p>To me, the HYPSM metric is ridiculous. Many top students attend small liberal arts schools, and other “non-Ivy schools” such as Caltech, WUSTL, Chicago, and Northwestern are of equal or higher caliber than, for example, a Cornell or Brown (at least from the USNWR rankings, which are questionable at best.) Hotchkiss, for example, sends quite a number of students to Williams/Carleton/Amherst/Bowdoin/Colby. I have a friend who turned down MIT to return to the Midwest and go to Rose-Hulman, and was accepted into Princeton’s graduate program this year after spending four years fulfilled at a school he enjoyed.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/business/economy/09leonhardt.html?_r=1[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/business/economy/09leonhardt.html?_r=1</a></p>
<p>The times they are a changing. How do Prep schools avoid becoming an enabler in this phenomena? If they pull certain kids along with inflated grades, won’t the top college admissions folks begin to accept less of that school’s kids, bringing down the BS college matriculation?? Are we enhancing the grades of some of our students?</p>
<p>^^ the kind of colleges that the article talks about, are not the type of colleges that are on the radar of either boarding schools or the cc audience.</p>
<p>The issues identified in this article as the reasons for low graduation rates have nothing to do with grade inflation of “certain kids”. In fact, the article claims that low income kids are typically under matched when applying to colleges, i.e. many apply to lower tier schools when their grades and SSAT scores would gain them admission to higher tier colleges better graduation rates. </p>
<p>Is grade inflation really an issue at prep schools? I hear so often on this board concerns that students are not receiving the high grades that they received at their public schools and non-boarding schools. What is the basis for this claim that schools are inflating the grades of “certain kids”?</p>
<p>I think the issue at many bs is grade deflation!</p>
<p>new to this, but wondering about stats on ivy+ admissions. numbers are great for elite BS, but how much of that is attributable to fact that a lot of ivy+ alums attend those places and skew the data. ie, if you’re an unconnected student at elite BS, does it really help. could it hurt, since well-connected students/ alums will take those ivy+ “slots”? are you better off just standing out in a public/ less high profile school?</p>
<p>That is an area of debate, to be certain! My feeling (comparing our local public to bs) is that the bs helps. Our local public <em>might</em> have one student per year get into any Ivy (and never HYPS). And that is out of 250 students. My son’s bs is rigorous and is not considered one of the “elite tier” bs on this board (it is by me, but that’s another story!) I know that grades at our school are, in essence, “bumped up” by about 0.5 in the college admissions process.</p>
<p>i just wonder how a non-legacy, non-recruited athlete who is, say, ranked (i dont mean literally, since most bs dont rank) in top 20-25 can get into ivy+? wouldnt a public school top 2-3 student, involved in student govt, plays a sport, etc look better than that bs student (who might also be perceived as not having maximized his opportunities).</p>
<p>And therein lies the conundrum of boarding school and college matriculation.
I think you will find that the college counselling offices at the boarding schools can be a wealth of information on this topic. I have also found that they do not “sugar coat” the statistics.
My son is a senior this year at one of the top bs usually mentioned on this forum and his counsellor has been more than frank about his college selections, ranking them as safety, match, reach - but not at all discouraging him to go for the reaches (Ivy’s and top LACs). He has also seen many of his “unhooked” boarding school friends be accepted at top schools - much to their surprise in some cases.
In the end, I think the BS counsellors are very well connected and respected in the college world - they also are much more knowledgeable about schools out of their own backyard (as opposed to local public and private hs counsellors who really have little knowledge of schools beyond a 200 mile radius).They can open up a world of great schools for your child that you may never even have considered.
Certainly being the top dog at a public hs in Nowhere, USA; president of 4 clubs and chief fundraiser for a new hospital wing will get you noticed at an Ivy. So will being a top 25% student at a bs who has great ECs and great recs. Colleges know these schools and know the counsellors.</p>