The top GPAs from our son’s high school attended the usual suspects.
@websensation: I’m going to respond to part of an earlier comment you made as I shared this same surprise initially, and it might help to clarify as the path to a service academy is very different from the path to a civilian college.
ALL appointees attend the service academies on “full scholarship.” The service academies are free. Also, the rubric used to determine appointments does not value academics the same way civilian colleges weight them. The SAs value a combination of brains, brawn, and leadership somewhat equally. Our son was a bit dismayed initially at the general academic rigor at West Point. A colonel explained to him that only about one third of the incoming class is selected for academics; the other 2/3rds are chosen for other equally shiny traits. All are academically capable, but only that third is what you might label as “scholarly.” Our son eventually found that the brain trust is there, but he had to seek it out freshman year. Once he was fully into his major, he was fully tapped in to it and is no longer disappointed. And, he has learned to value those other critical “equally shiny” traits in his band of brothers very highly. The corps needs a balance of all of them in a way civilian colleges do not as their missions differ. You will see this quote in several places around West Point, for instance:
As to leadership, what passes for leadership in the civilian college application process differs from what the SAs look for. For example, a long list of club presidencies and community service hours is not as impressive to an SA as the single achievement of Eagle Scout is. The SAs don’t even give points for community service but Eagle Scout (Gold Award) receives top points in the leadership category. Scouting participation is highly valued but might not be something you even know about a HS student as it is an activity that happens outside the school venue.
Anyway, service academies are looking to produce officers for each branch of our armed services. It takes a certain kind of kid to go this route, and those kids don’t always look like the applicants to the usual civilian suspects.
(I know this is a bit off-topic, but I thought it might be relevant to share that “top” looks a bit different to the SAs.)
We’re in the Midwest and nearly everybody stays in-state or close to it, nothing very selective. Our 2017 valedictorian did go to Auburn and another girl went to AMDA in NYC but other than those two I’ve never heard of any local kids going far away.
Son’s HS in California (top school in Silicon Valley) for the Class of 2017.
Valedictorian-Yale
Salutatorian-Cornell
8 kids going to Cornell and 12 to Carnegie Mellon (8 of them in Computer Science). Interestingly enough there are more kids going to UIUC as opposed to Cal (19 to UIUC, 15 to Berkeley).
6 going to Michigan with the majority ending up in the Engineering school. 9 U-Dub, Purdue, 3 UT-Austin and even 1 student at UNC-Chapel Hill. OOS public schools were quite popular for some reason.
@Hamurtle Surprised to hear no one or not many from your top school in Silicon Valley (Gunn?) going to Stanford or Harvard, which of course are not easy to get into. Interesting. Here at NOT a top public school (but a very competitive public HS in Southern CA), always many kids going to UCLA or Berkeley and few to Cornell but not many going to UIUC; maybe 1, 2 or 3 going to HYPSM every year.
@websensation not Gunn. It’s one of Lynbrook, Saratoga, or Monta Vista. There were 18 Ivy attendees. Princeton was actually #2 among Ivies with 3 kids attending. I think there were 3 attendees for Stanford last year but not sure.
USC has always been a popular choice. 10-15 kids will attend on average. This was slightly a down year with 9 attendees. NYU has gotten more popular (11 students attending).
The kid who was most likely #3 in the class was accepted by Columbia, Dartmouth, and Princeton and rejected by Yale-currently attending Princeton as a history major and potentially thinking about public policy at Woody Woo. His being an Asian didn’t hurt in admissions although admittedly he was a unicorn as the Chinese kid firmly determined to be a history major with the parents being OK with it.
Interesting enough, I attended Gunn in the dark ages and the school has always been #1 or #2 in California if not the nation feeding into Stanford. It’s either Gunn or Paly competing to see who can get the most kids attending. Given the proximity of the campus and kids of faculty/alumni attending, this is understandable.
all 10 admitted to Michigan, 6 attend
1 Notre Dame
1 UChicago
1 Penn or Georgetown
1 or 2 somewhat selective Christian privates e.g. Dayton (OH), Loyola-Chicago (IL), Hope (MI)
@Hamurtle I visited Stanford campus several times and ate at the Town & Country shopping center, and right across the shopping center was the Palo Alto HS. If I were a Palo Alto HS student going to Stanford, I thought it would be strange to attend a college which is literally right next to your HS.
Weird year last year. Four kids got accepted to multiple (5+) Ivies and it threw the numbers off. This is a public high school in a Boston suburb. Big STEM focus from parents and therefore from kids.
Harvard 6 (BAD year…usually 10-15 are accepted and go…current year 7 accepted EA)
Cornell 10
Other Ivies: 2-4 each except just 1 to Penn
MIT 4 (bad year with MIT as well…usually send about 10)
Carnegie Mellon 9
Stanford 1 (the HS rarely gets kids into Stanford)
About 500 per class. The sad part for the kids is the number going to these schools has not changed…what has changed is the stress level (through the roof) and the extra homework.
In no particular order… Top 5% at daughter’s small town, public high school with IB and several AP available:
Vanderbilt (my girl #10)
Duke
Georgetown
Notre Dame
Hobart-WilliamSmith
Rhodes
Tulane
Loyola-NoLa
Northwestern
U of Alabama
UABirmingham
UAHuntsville
Auburn
U of Wyoming
Ole Miss
Southern Methodist U
@CottonTales no stalking here… my daughter was #10 and all of her IB Diploma classmates were in the top 3% of the 351 graduating seniors and shared info with each other. Plus the IB students have an end of the year Academic Signing Day picnic and announce where they have chosen. School ranks but doesn’t announce or publish it and we no longer have Val/Sal because there were many ties and it got to be too debated whose child got the ‘title’. They moved to the Latin designations about 5 years ago.
So, from my kid’s HS graduating class this year (around 650 this year, typically it is 500 but a lot of Y2K kids) some of the Top 10 from this vastly majority Asian public HS in Silicon Valley didn’t bother to list their schools for some reason. Nor did half of the 9 NMFs.
Of the Top 10 that did list (in no particular order):
2 to Harvard (both Asian!)
Columbia
2 to MIT
Princeton
UCLA
The ones who listed who were NM winners:
UC-Berkeley
Columbia
Texas A&M
USC
UC-Davis
Interestingly very little overlap between the Top 10 students and the 9 NMF students. There were plenty of other students who got into elite schools who didn’t have either designation.
This is a typically “Berkeley or bust” school and this year we had 36 listed who are going, though I think there are closer to 40 when the official numbers come out. Not a single person to Stanford, though I never hear of any local students who get in unless they are a notable athlete or the like. Stanford is the school that ought to be investigated.
“Interestingly very little overlap between the Top 10 students and the 9 NMF students. There were plenty of other students who got into elite schools who didn’t have either designation.”
Not surprising at all. I strongly encouraged my son to not bother 1) going for the Val or Sal distinction; 2) NMF; and 3) U.S. Presidential Scholar… as these have no correlational benefits to elite college admissions while adding LOTS of unnecessary ADDITIONAL stress.
Also in case anyone is wondering, the designation Silicon Valley are the cities inside the “U” that is bounded by 84/Dumbarton on the top, and 280/680 at the bottom. Though there are certainly tons of STEM corporations throughout the Bay Area.
First off, NMF is not known till spring senior year, after applications are in, and these days there’s not much pressure on the PSAT since many kids apply their prep for SAT to the PSAT w/o additional work. Now if you’re planning to take the ACT, I don’t know how much overlap there is, so there could be additional studying there, which could add stress if you want NMSF, I agree and I don’t want to minimize around taking another test Sat morning.