In post #53, when I wrote acceptances I meant acceptance of the offer of admission (i.e where they are going).
I’m graduating from a top public HS in NJ with around 280 kids per grade. No one is ranked save for the val and sal, but kids are headed to Harvard (3), Yale (2), Penn (3), Columbia, Princeton, Duke, WashU (2), UChicago (4), Carnegie Mellon (2), Tufts (2), Emory, Vassar, Wesleyan, NYU (5), and Northeastern (7).
My D graduated from an urban private school. Her class has 136 students. The school does not rank, The only identification of the top students is the Val and the top 20% in Cum Laude. Of this group, the Val is going to Princeton. 1 to Yale, 2 to Columbia, 2 to Brown, 3 to Penn, 1 to Cornell, 2 to Stanford, 5 to Rice, 2 to Duke, 3 to Vandy, 5 to Wash U, 2 to U Chicago, 1 to Carnegie Mellon, 2 to Tufts, 2 to NYU, 1 to UVA, 2 to W & L, 1 to Cooper Union, and lots to UT Austin.
People are always talking about how only northeasterners care about collegiate prestige. That (#62) is a very conventional northeastern-prestige list for 25% of a school in (I surmise, perhaps incorrectly) Houston.
It would be even more of a conventional northeastern-prestige list if you told me some kids went to Williams or Amherst, too.
Houston has plenty of smart kids, too, JHS. Given the profile in post 62, it is likely either St. John’s (which, last time I checked, has the highest test scores of any general school in the nation.) or Kinkaid. Both very top prep schools in a city of 5 million, so not really surprising results.
Any top HS in a metro of any size across the whole country would have a similar list, @JHS.
But note that lots of kids in #62’s school are also heading to UT-Austin. Would a comparable HS in NYC be sending lots of kids to SUNY’s?
My kids’ school had a ‘top 20’ designation. Most of those kids went to UF, FSU, and UCF.
@PurpleTitan I know that (sort of – I suspect that’s not really the case in “a metro of any size”), but I wanted to underline it for others. As for SUNYs – probably not, but there is no SUNY that really matches up with UT-Austin, and if there were, the answer might be different. Even in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and certainly in Pennsylvania, you would see a chunk of kids at a good private school going to the flagship public university (or a public equivalent). Remember, what @Houston1021 posted represented fully 1/4 of her child’s high school class going to very selective universities. The “lots” going to Texas had to reach fairly far down in the class (even assuming they were intermingled with the private-prestige crowd).
While there would be lots of kids going to the SUNYs as well, when I attended, the vast majority would be in the lower-middle to very bottom of my graduating public magnet HS graduating class with the possible exception of Stonybrook(lower-middle-middle) or especially Binghamton*(need to be in upper-middle of the class at the least to meet their minimum GPA cutoff).
- And of those who went, so many ended up transferring up to private elites such as Columbia that it became a bit of a running joke among HS classmates from my and overlapping graduating classes.
@JHS There were not many kids wanting to go to elite liberal arts colleges in this year’s class. Last year there were several kids that went to those schools. I know of one kid in this year’s class that was accepted to Amherst but got a full ride to W & L so he matriculated at W & L. If you dip below the cum laude group there is 1 going to Haverford, 1 going to Emory, 1 to West Point, 5 to USC, 2 to UCLA and 1 to Michigan. @roycroftmom your guess is on target.
Actually, JHS, I don’t think you can assume that the more selective colleges took the top of Houston1021s class, and UT Austin the leftovers. In some areas, such as computer science, UT Austin is one of the top 10 programs in the US, and thus probably attracted some very top students in that class, who turned down Ivy colleges for it. Same for business, or engineering. The extraordinarily low tuition at UT Austin attracts students of all rankings. Given the strength of Houston1021’s school, I would expect UT Austin to reach into the middle of that class for students. They are still very gifted scholars.
that makes sense, Houston1021. With 1/3 of the class NMSF, and another 1/3 as Natl Merit commended, the students should have very good results. A very talented group-the bottom quarter was scoring about 2100 on the old SAT a few years ago. They will do well in college.
@JHS:
“Even in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and certainly in Pennsylvania, you would see a chunk of kids at a good private school going to the flagship public university (or a public equivalent).”
From 2012-2016, Greenwich Academy sent exactly one kid to UConn:
http://www.greenwichacademy.org/page.cfm?p=562
10 to SMU
8 to Bucknell
2 to UT-Austin
2 to American University of Paris
2 to Charleston
UT has an elite honors program called Plan 2 that attracts a lot of top students. Many students with professional aspirations such as med or law school go to UT to save $$ at the undergrad level. I am sure top students in other states with great flagships or great programs within flagships do the same.
From an upper middle class large public school in CA. Graduating class 435. Lots of interesting choices (mostly personal) as to why the top 10 chose the schools they did.
- Stanford (admit to Yale, MIT)
- UC Davis (admit to UCLA, UC Berkeley)
- Azusa Pacific (admit to UCLA, UC Berkeley)
- Santa Clara (admit to USC, Johns Hopkins)
- UCSB CCS (admit to UCLA, UCB both regents)
- UCLA (Chapman, Cal, USC)
- UCLA electrical engineering (admit to UCSD, UCSB, UCD all EE)
- UW Aero E(admit to MIT physics, UCLA physics, Cal, physics)
- UCSD (admit you cal, UCLA)
- UNR (admit to UC Davis and UCSD) pre law
I am still amazed as well as a bit creeped out that you know not only where they are going, but other schools they were admitted to. Just TMI and nosy for me. Oh, and intended major! Wth?
At my large public high school in NC:
Georgetown
Duke
Vanderbilt
Georgia Tech
Furman (me!)
NC state (2) (one Goodnite fellow)
NYU
UNC (2)
All of the Ivy matriculations came from kids in the top 30- two at Cornell and one at Dartmouth. A lot of my classmates were accepted into top 20 schools but chose highly ranked honors programs or UNC- I think about 35 will be matriculating into UNC.
@CottonTales At our local high schools, the kids create public FB pages where most students post where they are going and their intended major. No listing of other schools they were admitted to though. So it’s no big secret. Fun to see where kids your child knew in elementary school and lost track of went or where kids that you may have coached or mentored ended up.
@CValle I know which school you’re talking about and i know the person going to Singapore XD
My good friend and my sister attend there!
@CottonTales We were all friends and had gone to school together since elementary and it was big when we all decided where to go. I’m also less than a year from senior year. At the district and school award ceremonies they also kept repeating our intended majors. Our college advising center at school had the whole top 10 for group sessions too so none of that info was a secret.