74 posters provided results; of those, only 10% indicated NO acceptances. This is likely an underrepresented group among CC posters and lurkers.
I added Middlesex, Milton and Peddie because there were at least 10 results posted for each of these schools; I deleted St. Andrews because there were only 7. I have also listed the schools alphabetically. Please feel free to add to this summary and/or check my work!
Several posters reporting results indicated that they were still waiting to hear from some schools, in particular 5 from Andover, 2 from Choate, and 1 each for Milton and St. Paul’s. So although these folks have reported that they applied to these schools, I was not able to include their results for those schools and I had to reduce the sample sizes for those schools accordingly. For example, in the table below the sample size for Andover is 24, but of the 74 posters providing results, 29 had applied to Andover but 5 of them indicated that they were waiting for their Andover decision.
I rounded up for the percentages. In cases with thirds, I added the extra percentage to the WL column.
As far as I can tell, there isn’t a 2015 version…yet!
Lastly, I think the following quotes from the 2014 thread merit being posted here with the 2016 summary:
Just from recall I think Andover and Exeter posted the total number of applicants in 2015. Did they post the number of applications they received in 2016? I didn’t see anyone mention it here.
Also, does anyone know if that number is actually completed applications or inquiries or partial applications?
Not speaking for the users who compiled this info over the years, but I don’t know I would say “more-qualified,” but “self-selected,” sure. I will say that in my experience, the students that post here or on the college forums are not a representative subset of the applicant pool.
The reality, IMO, is that this exercise is a great fun party game, but the sample size is really too small to be statistically significant.
For sure! Just like the “Official Master Lists of Prep School Decisions” themselves. Part of the amusement for me was going back over the decisions which helped me remember who applied where, and that info is interesting to recall when you are reading posts. As mentioned elsewhere, I think that folks are far more likely to post results if they have good news, i.e. one or more offers of admission. So the bottom line is that these numbers, and the “Official Master Lists” on which they are based, don’t have much relevance at all to the business of applying to boarding school.
Taking into account sample size variability, there is general value to these numbers over time. Unless the posters and audience of College Confidential materially changes, you’d expect that two general biases exist: A) More aware and more engaged audiences B) Bias towards posting better results.
Depending on the school, this seems to be worth at least 10%, maybe as much as 30% on certain schools relative to their “actual” admit rates.
Assuming the pool is generally consistent (and why would it change?)–one can use this information to support the general conclusion, for example, that Andover is a lot harder to get into than Loomis. There is enough applicant overlap such that even though it’s not an identical cohort applying to all the schools, it’s still a somewhat consistent cohort in aggregate. The schools that have only 10-15 outcomes are obviously more volatile than the schools that have 25-30 outcomes.
So within this general community, there is some research value in tiering school difficulty. There are of course many other ways to gain this information, but it’s a helpful summary.
@Mr.Wendal thank you for making me feel that my efforts in compiling these summaries were a bit more worthwhile
The other bit I found interesting about the summaries were the number of applicants to the various schools each year. For 2015 and 2016 I tallied results for schools with 10 or more results reported. Which schools made that “cut” each year among CC users seems to say something about which schools beyond the usual suspects (insert your favorite “top bs” acronym here) have most captured the interest of this arguably bs-well-aware community.
Anecdotally, it also appears that applicants are applying to more schools. Perhaps too short of a time series to see such a thing, but we have been told that the same trend that is happening in college is happening with BS. That is driving down acceptance numbers marginally and increasing yield volatility.
=D> 
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