Pomona, Brown, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, Columbia
I go to a small parochial school in a small town in Indiana that has sent 10 kids, including myself, in it’s entire history to the Ivy Plus. This year our top 6 kids, in no particular order because we don’t rank, were:
Vassar
Tufts
Georgetown (SFS)
Hillsdale
Full ride to Purdue
Full ride to IU
This year, in terms of college admissions, is considered by our GCs to be one of the best we had. I got into 4 Ivies (Wharton Dartmouth Cornell Brown), waitlisted at two (Harvard and Yale), and accepted to two top tier non-ivies (Northwestern and Tufts) in addition to Gtown. Our Hillsdale boy also got into Notre Dame, and full ride to Purdue and IU. Tufts boy got in through questbridge which is basically a medium through which kids with less money can apply to schools for free and if you get accepted through questbridge it’s an automatic full ride. Vassar girl has a full athletic scholarship. Usually we sent one kid max to any school considered halfway decent. Last year, the val went to IU, year before that, purdue, year before that, IU again- and no one in any of those classes did better than the Val. This list of schools is probably below average for the kind of prep/magnet schools you guys go to, but for us, it’s probably the highest point in our schools history- truly insane relative to what we get around here. When I say I’m going to Gtown next year, people FLIP out like “DEAR GOD I THOUGHT THAT PLACE WAS JUST A MYTH”.
Class of 2017 (Im a current junior):
x1 Northwestern Mechanical Engineering
x9 UMN Twin Cities
Class of 2016:
x1 Rice Chemical Engineering
x9 UMN Twin Cities(one was accepted to Cornell but decided against it)
Class of 2015:
x1 Yale
x9 UMN Twin Cities
The top 10 at my HS are pretty predictable. Hopefully I’ll be headed to Yale next year, I have perhaps the most compelling app in my class… 
If not, I’ll continue the UMN trend.
To the people curious as to how I know this, I’ve been friends with all of these students for a long time… Its a small school.
public HS ~800 seniors
Stanford
Harvard
Cornell
UC Berkeley (multiple)
Claremont McKenna
UC Santa Barbara
USC
Public high school, with around 550 in the class of 2017. In no particular order, and obviously my estimates because these were just the top ten in my opinion:
1 Stanford
1 Harvard
1 Princeton
3 MIT
1 Caltech
1 CMU
2 Berkeley
1 to U of Virginia
1 to Penn State
2 to the George Washington University
1 to UC Berkeley
1 to Pitt
1 to Vanderbilt
1 to U of Delaware
1 to Rochester Institute of Tech
1 to Bucknell
This is an interesting discussion because it gives a sense of how students and parents with many choices make their decisions. Demographics: a very good public high school in the Philly suburbs, fairly affluent and more diverse than the extremely rich traditional powerhouse Main Line high schools, with lots of striving immigrants drawn to high tech, biotech, and pharma companies in the area. Information from the students make it clear that financial packages matter: some of these academic top 10 have athletic scholarships, all are well rounded with activities and leadership, and most received financial packages that appear to have been more persuasive than Ivy League admits: despite the fabled Ivy yield and the practice of many good schools to provide “100% of demonstrated need,” FAFSA’s demonstrated need seems to mean “what you can afford to borrow until you are kinda broke when the next kid graduates from high school”…Some of the schools on this list clearly are rising stars, and some were just a good fit for a major or career, or that felt right during a campus visit. It’s also interesting that some of the kids in the next tier down are going to Harvard or Princeton…but not this academic top 10.
We’ve a very small private school with a graduating class of student students. We don’t usually send many kids to elite schools, with the exception of UVA. This year was a good year.
This is in order of approximate ranking:
Georgetown
Cornell
William and Mary
Duke
University of Virginia (about 5)
Purdue
Virginia Tech
Berklee College of Music
United States Military Academy Prep School
Public high school in the Northern Plains with graduating class of 220; not sure where all of the top 10 are going, but those I do know of include:
MIT
Brown
St. Olaf
U of Minnesota–Twin Cities
North Dakota State University
Public school. 275 in graduating class. Top students going to Berkeley and Oberlin and Northeastern and Boston university. All others going to state universities.
Public school in Virginia with 400 graduates.
- Columbia
- Duke
- GA Tech
- UVA (3 others also)
- VA Tech
- William & Mary
- VCU
My daughter headed to University of Southern California in the fall.
That’s very impressive. Congratulations to OCSA- Orange County School of the Arts! How many are boys among those students accepted to the top schools? The M/F ratio at this school is 30% / 70%. It has no team sports for boys if I am not wrong. We were concerned that it may not be a good choice for boys. I might be wrong though if the admission result proves to be close to 30/70 M/F. What do you think of this school for boys? We may consider to apply next year for High School for my older son who plays club baseball and also loves music.
1 - UTexas (McCombs Business)
2 - Rhode Island School of Design
3 - UTexas (McCombs Business)
4 - UCLA (Chemistry/Pre-med)
5 - UTexas (Biology)
6 - UHouston (Chemical Engineering)
7 - UTexas (Chemical Engineering)
8 - Purdue
9 - UTexas (Pre-Med)
10 - Texas A&M (Biomedical Engineering)
Public HS class of 540 near NASA in the Houston Area. Son attending UTexas in Chemical Engineering as well (not in top 10).
None of son’s class are attending an Ivy League/Stanford (none that I know who applied were accepted either) Other notables: (25) UTexas in Austin, (50) Texas A&M in College Station, (3) are attending Rice, (1) Carnegie Mellon, (1) GWU, (1) UMich and (1) received a USAF academy appointment.
10 of the top 20 at our two locals schools are going to UVa. 3 to W & M. Only one to an OOS private–BYU. These were large schools with several 100 grads each. I was a bit surprised by the results as we have a large number of highly educated people in town making good $$$$.
@barrons I think we’ve reached a tipping point where a critical mass of full pay families are questioning the incremental value that expensive OOS public and private universities provide compared to the in-state public options. For example, I can’t fathom paying $70K or more per year to send D18 to a school like Carnegie Mellon for engineering if she can attend UF for less than $15K or UCF for free.
Not sure it’s worth to run into debts and than pay them off for like 15 years. And it is not a fact that you’ll graduate and won’t be expelled.
We have 500 kids in the class. School doesnt rank. No validictorians. So top ten is not determinable here. my only bitterness is the fortune being forked out to college board and app fees by parents who can afford it. Im a nationally known speaker who went to a state university and did fine.
My cousin’s school hosts an event for around 40 students that it considers to have excelled in academics (i.e GPA, NMSF …) and these students can list their future plans/ college plans. From there there was
UC Berkeley (4)
Stanford (1)
West Point (1)
Stony Brook (1)
UW Madison (1)
WUSTL (1)
Vanderbilt (1)
UIC GPPA Medicine (2)
Loyola (1)
UChicago (2)
GTech (2)
Truman State (1)
Harvard (1)
Northwestern (2)
UToronto (1) Full ride
MSU (1)
Brown (1)
Notre Dame (2)
Clemson (1)
Purdue (1)
Yale (1)
Duke (1)
UNC Chapel Hill (2)
UIUC (14) - Mostly engineering but two got in for comp sci which is pretty competitive there from what I have heard. And nearly all of them also got some sort of scholarship which is good.
I didn’t mention my school because most of our top students go to UIC, UIUC or NIU and the list would have not been as interesting.
“10 of the top 20 at our two locals schools are going to UVa. 3 to W & M.”
Really nothing new here.
“I think we’ve reached a tipping point where a critical mass of full pay families are questioning the incremental value that expensive OOS public and private universities provide compared to the in-state public options.”
Not necessarily for top students. It depends on where you live.
The yield on UVA in-state offers is usually around 60%. That yield level is up in the Ivy zone. The cost/reputation ratio for in-state at the high end publics is incredibly strong. But in places where the in-state option is more meh, you don’t see this pattern so much.
Not one top student at my kid’s HS picked the in-state public. They all picked privates paid for with (i) ample need based aid, (ii) ample merit aid, or (iii) parent full pay (but only in a few limited instances).
North Eastern, Rice University, Brown University, Purdue University, university of Penn This was top 5 the rest of top 10%were as follows College of Holy Cross, High point University, 3 more for North Eastern,1 RIT, 4 University of Maine, Franklin Pierce University, Elon University, George Washington University, 1 WPI, 2 Boston College, Saint Anselm college, University of New England, University of Vermont
Duke - 2
Brown - 2
Cornell -2
Northwestern - 1
Yale - 1
UPenn - 2