Those who are enlisting in the military do get listed as well.
And at some high schools like the one an older Boston area friend attended in Western Massachusetts, those who enlisted in the military along with those who went off to any college(including community college) tended to be in the top quarter-third of their graduating class.
Top 5 co-vals from this year: OU, 2 to Notre Dame, 2 to Fordham, honors college.
At the risk of saying the good ole days, when I was applying, the admissions process was not nearly as crazy as it is now for the top schools. So publishing where grads went to college wasnât something that turned into people judging each other. CCs were a fine options for cost as well as for those that did 't want to go out of the area, stay home, and have a smoother transition to college. Same for people that went to trade institutes or straight to work. And speaking of LACs, Amherst and Williams were more prestigious than most ivies.
@theloniusmonk Donât get me wrong, Williams and Amherst are terrific top collegesâŠbut exactly what year was this that they were more prestigious than most Ivies?
Just north of Orlando. We have a couple of neighborhoods that think they are in Palm Beach Gardens though.
The student going to Penn had been set on Williams as he was a double legacy but turned them down when when the Ivy acceptance came. He is a really good kid, but he is very prestige driven and seems more interested in the ivy league tag.
My son would have turned down Penn for Williams without much hesitation. Of other Ivys, the same goes for Brown, Dartmouth and especially Cornell.
@moscott Prior to the 1970s, for sure. And among the elite and in academia, they still are considered equivalent to the non-HYP Ivies.
Also, for us Baby Boomers, I used to watch the âCollege Bowlâ quiz show religiously. Back in those days, Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore regularly got to the final rounds alongside the Ivies as well as the Seven Sisters. Therefore, I grew up knowing that WAS, Smith and Wellesley were top schools as did many of my East Coast friends.
Iâm not sure one needs to feel too sorry for Williams and Amherst in the admissions game, but if there has been a modest shift away from top LACs to other top schools, I would guess a reason would be the increased interest in engineering and cs as the major of top students. And even if some LACs have added a form of cs, it still isnât playing to their strengths.
You can blame USNWR ranking for LACs perception (of lack of prestige). They are in a different category from top tier universities which creates this impression that they are second tier.
And globalized economy and job market doesnât help either. Today top ambitious kids have a global outlook and these LACs are simply unknown outside of US either by reputation or global university rankings.
I applied in the early 80âs and for sure the LACs were considered more prestigious than most of the ivies, save HYP. Hereâs US News rankings from 1983, which was based solely on reputation:
Stanford
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Berkeley
Chicago
Michigan
Cornell
Illinois
MIT
Darmouth
Cal Tech
CMU
Wisconsin
You can see that three ivies (gasp!) are missing. In fact the public schools did well until 89, when us news I think changed to look at SAT scores and other things that worked against the publics. So in 89, Berkeley went from 5 to 24 and Michigan from 8 to 25, with nothing changing in the schools. Anyway, I digress, the rankings are trash but another thread for that.
I can only really speak on Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore, but those three were tougher to get in, more prestigious, considered more rigorous and academically better than the ivies, except HYP. It wasnât until the non HYP went to ED and the country got more brand driven that those colleges started to move up in the rankings.
Our HS doesnât publish such information. I think they are over-compliant with FERPA, which I think requires an âopt outâ provision which they often interpret as requiring an âopt inâ.
I only remember one, and he went to Harvard. He ran cross country (which he is doing there as well) and Iâm pretty positive thatâs what got him in (as good grades isnât what gets you in its just the requirement and expectation). Ivy league still cares about sports 
Dâs school officially doesnât rank but does announce the top 10 at graduation. The graduation program also lists where the students are matriculating.
Cornell
Columbia (x2)
University of Alabama
UVA
Tulane (x2)
Ohio State
Vanderbilt
Loyola Chicago
1 to Duke University
6 to NC State University (including the Valedictorian and Salutatorian)
3 to UNC Chapel Hill
3 Dartmouth
3 Duke
1 cal tech
1 UNC
1 Brown
1 Boston College
UC-Berkeley
UChicago
Cornell (x3)
Dartmouth
Duke
Harvard
Princeton
Tufts
Loyola University Chicago
UIUC (x5)
University of Oklahoma
Cornell
Princeton
University of Maryland
@CottonTales is was thinking the same exact thing.
Top 25:
Utah State (the top student only applied this school)
Columbia
Princeton
Wake Forest
Boston College
George Washington (full ride)
Rochester Institute of Tech
Vandy
the rest go to flagship state university.
Just below the top 25:
Carnegie Mellon
Rice (accepted to Cornell)
U Penn
NYU
regular public school with 500 class.