Where are the top 10 students from your (or your child's) high school going to?

Parents Forum
301

I couldn’t tell you who the top 10 are. I know the valedictorian is headed to Harvard because he is a football player and spoke at the incoming freshman sports orientation at the high school. The class size is about 500.

302

Top ten are:

  1. Texas A&M
  2. Texas
  3. U.S. Air Force Academy
  4. US Naval Academy
  5. Oberlin Conservatory
  6. Texas A&M
    7a. US Naval Academy
    7b. BYU
  7. Texas
  8. Texas
    Class of 692 students. UT was #1 TAMU was #2 Tech/Oklahoma/U. North Texas/UT Dallas also very popular. Suburban DFW.
303

But when the in-states are rarely an option for high-performers, parents are forking out lots of $$ for OOS publics and privates. (See the UC thread.) Maybe CA is just the single exception, and all other public systems are not as impacted, but I will tell you that CA families are routinely crafting OOS Plan B’s and Plan C’s, just so that they can be assured of at least the same quality of higher education “available” (or not) in-state.

304

@epiphany Every state will have some unique aspects. For CA I think it’s as much a cultural thing as anything else. High-performing students aren’t locked out of the in-states. Many are just getting rejected from the 3-5 “elite” universities that they’ve been conditioned to accept as the only acceptable in-state options. My understanding is that high performers can certainly get into the “other” UCs or CSUs.

The question for CA is what is the trend in enrollment for these students at the “other” UCs and CSUs versus OOS with significant merit versus full pay OOS.

305

Top student at my D’s HS is going to Stanford. No Ivy acceptances. A few schools the top(ish) kids are going to are UVA, Rutgers, Stockton, Elon, GWU, WPI (mass), UDel. Pretty small school (130 or so in graduating class), maybe an Ivy acceptance every 2 or 3 years.

306

@shortnuke
Your information is incorrect, or at least incomplete, in that the same quality of performer who has been admitted to the top UC’s over the last 15 years,** including just one full year ago**, is now not being admitted. I have been in the business for this many years and can verify that. Never have such high-performing students of mine been locked out of Berkeley, ever. This year marks a first occasion for that. Not one of them was admitted to Berkeley, and only 1 was admitted to UCLA.

And this experience has been replicated up and down the state. It was a wholesale slaughter this year.

307

My kids are no longer in HS, but the local newspaper lists “top students” for each school. Here’s what they have for the three schools in my mostly middle- and upper middle-class neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota:

Public neighborhood HS:
University of Wisconsin-Madison (2)
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Georgia Tech
Yale
Grinnell
Lewis and Clark
Roger Williams
Colorado School of Mines
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
University of Oregon

Local Catholic college prep HS
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (4)
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dartmouth
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Marquette (2)

Local private day school:
Harvard
Yale (2)
Dartmouth
University of Chicago
Notre Dame
Edinburgh
Williams
Middlebury (2)
Bowdoin
Carleton
St. Olaf (2)
Claremont McKenna
Colgate
Bates
Occidental
Sarah Lawrence
Rose-Hulman
Santa Clara
UVA

308

In order for my information to be incorrect or incomplete, you would need to show that these students are also not being admitted to the CSU’s and “other” UCs. Your original argument was that high-performing California students are locked out of the in-state options. I countered that it was really only a small number of in-state options that they were unable to gain admittance to.

Yes, it’s getting more competitive. That continues to be a nationwide issue for the top ranked universities. However, Berkeley and UCLA are not the only in-state options for CA residents. The point that I was making in the comment that you quoted (with respect to CA) was that I believe many CA residents are choosing Irving, Riverside, etc. over UVA, UMich, and other OOS with no merit because they fail to see the value in spending an additional $40K per year for these schools. What does the data show with respect to this?