While CC may in fact be an alternate universe, to my knowledge, I am the only one from my son’s school on CC (I’m asked often how we heard of the scholarships he pursued and I am always greeted with a “what’s that?” when I mention CC.) And certainly, the school my son is going to is the outlier prestige wise in the top 10 from our medium size public high school in Florida.
Also in PA, in a class of 330, most going to Pit or Penn State. But no worries, there will be executives or people of significance in the class, as many Pit, Penn State graduates accomplish greater things in lives than Harvard graduates.
- Harvard University
- Arkansas State University
- University of Pennsylvania
- Northwestern University
- University of Miami
- Cornell University
- University of Missouri - Kansas-City
- Missouri University of Science and Technology
- Truman State University
- Wheaton College
In no particular order:
1 to Northwestern
1 to Central Michigan University
3 to Michigan State University
2 to University of Michigan
1 to University of Virginia
1 to Calvin College
Not sure where the last one is going
At the school I’m going to (No rankings, valedictorians, or percentage) Four are going to JHU, Two to Stanford, and very surprising, four to Cal Poly. Popular choice among seniors in our town (a major college town in Nor Cal)
Not sure of their rank, but heard from a story my sophomore told me that this year’s class at her good public has one going to Yale, one to MIT and one to Rice. I heard about those three because she was disgusted that the first two were announced to lots of cheers and whooping and the Rice kid got crickets. Rice is her numbrr one pick right now so she was disappointed to find people didn’t find it cheer worthy…most probably aren’t aware.
And to those asking how you know who they are, most schools honor the top 10 at the graduation. I know ours does in lieu of Valedictorian/Salutorian.
2 to UC Berkeley (including our valedictorian)
1 to Stanford (one of our salutatorians)
1 to UC Davis (our other salutatorian)
1 to UC San Diego
1 to Harvard
1 to UC San Diego
1 to UC Irvine
1 to MIT
1 to UCLA (Me!)
Anybody noticing a trend in these decisions for top students? Granted I haven’t gone thru all of the 12 pages but sad to see so few choosing the likes of Williams or Amherst etc…Any thoughts as to why?
My high school alma mater had no “top 10 ranking.” We had valedictorians (solely based on academics) and two organizations that measured the overall positive impact to the school separated into two identifying genders (male and female), so essentially top 25 men and women.
large public high school in the Greater Los Angeles area
I was in the male one for my graduating year, so I’ll give that one:
Key: Destination (# of students)
Alabama (1)
Army (1)
Biola (1)
Cal Poly-SLO (3)
California (2)
Chapman (1)
Columbia (1)
Michigan (1)
Oregon State (1)
Richmond (1)
San Diego (1)
San José State (1)
Tulane (1)
Occidental (1)
UC Irvine (1)
UCLA (3)
UC San Diego (2)
UC Santa Cruz (2)
I currently go to SJSU on a full ride
Valedictorian requirements depend on the secondary school, but ours was pretty…easy? Idk if that’s the right word. It’s a 4.0 with a couple of AP classes. We definitely had some questionable valedictorians while others I would bet on to change the world. If anyone is curious, message me…but I probably won’t remember that list (I have my notifications off excluding messages)
@moscott - “Anybody noticing a trend in these decisions for top students? Granted I haven’t gone thru all of the 12 pages but sad to see so few choosing the likes of Williams or Amherst etc…Any thoughts as to why?”
I agree it’s sad that great LACs like Williams, Amherst, Pomona, etc. aren’t chosen more. I think one of the problems is the name recognition, which leads to the second problem, namely, they’re often not on the radar for applicants and therefore they simply don’t apply. My son’s high school is a good example. When my son was admitted to Williams, all of his high school friends had to Google it as they’ve never heard of the school! Naviance indicated that my son’s the only one who’s ever applied to Williams, at least in recent years. I assume my son’s high school isn’t exceptional in this regard.
The third problem is that, although many of these students do get admitted to top LACs, they often end up choosing to enroll elsewhere. Of the students admitted to Williams, for example, 55% chose to go elsewhere. I’m sure quite a bit of the percentage did so because of better name recognition elsewhere, some because of the location, some because of better FA, some because of better fit or campus vibes, etc.
Our school doesn’t really rank, but from what I remember from D’s class—UIUC and Northwestern were probably most represented among the top students. Other schools that top students went to included St. Olaf, MIT, Penn, Iowa State, Rochester, USC (and probably several more that I don’t recall off the top of my head). Schools that are also frequent choices of top students include Michigan, Notre Dame, Pitt (great scholarshps!), Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Purdue, etc.
We’re a big school in the suburbs of Chicago, and many of the top-performing kids tend to prefer big state schools (preferably Big 10) to smaller colleges.
I wanted to give input from my relative’s high school, he told me they also do the US map and indicate where the kids are going. Anyway, as wacky as it sounds, they had 60 co-valedictorians, here’s a breakout:
Stanford (3)
Harvard (3)
Princeton
MIT (5)
University of Chicago (3)
Penn (3)
CMU (around 10-12)
Cornell (6)
Cal Tech
Rice (4)
Columbia (5)
Pomona College
Claremont McKenna
Northwestern
UCLA (15 est)
Berkeley (20 est)
Apparently a few students got into HYS and chose H and S over Y, and five kids got into Stanford, and two of them chose Harvard instead. Most kids that get into Yale from around here go there. Someone mentioned that it looked like the the same kids got into the same schools and that appears to be the case in this high school.
All the kids going to Ivys, Stanford, U Chicago, MIT and other top schools, I wonder how much of them pay full sticker price and what their majors to justify the investment.
My D’s private school does not rank, and is graduating 100 students. I don’t know where everyone is going, but the most selective schools I have heard that students are choosing to attend include:
MIT (2)
Harvard (2)
Princeton (1)
UChicago (2)
Columbia (2)
Swarthmore (2)
CMC (3)
WashU (2)
Brown (1)
Cornell (2)
The school is in CA, and I haven’t heard that anyone is going to Stanford.
My small but competitive HS also does not rank. Some of the schools that kids are going to are:
Harvard (1)
Yale (1)
Princeton (1)
Penn (1)
MIT (1)
Cornell (2)
Northwestern (1)
Berkeley (2)
Michigan (1)
Williams (2)
Wash U (1 - me)
Still beating myself up for not choosing UCLA though >:(
@SincererLove My D’s private costs over 40K/year and less than 25% of families receive financial aid. Those full-pay families don’t really think about education costs in ROI terms, as they can easily pay for college and will. Those of us who get aid for high school generally get good aid packages if our kids get into meet full-need schools, which many of them do.
This might be a better topic for a separate thread, but it has come up here upthread. I wonder how healthy it is for schools to publicize where every kid is going next year? Some kids can’t afford to go anywhere right away, some are going to a CC to save money, others are going into the military, gap years etc. It also sends the wrong image that the only accomplishment that one can get from high school is to get into a name brand school. I see every year on Facebook my US friends with a picture of their kid from “wear your college T-shirt day” which I find to be particularly obnoxious as any kid who is not feeling good about his/her destination (or lack thereof) has to advertise it on their chest all day. FWIW, schools in England would never sanction this type of blatant bragging as it would be seen as elitist (although it could never occur anyway as Uni places are not confirmed until mid-August).
What I would recommend is to just provide a list of universities where the seniors received scholarships or other honors and these could be put into the graduation programme alongside all of the other graduation honors such as valedictorian, best student-athlete etc. Schools could also publish anonymous lists of which schools kids were accepted to and are attending as this is useful information for future parents and students.
My son’s rural public high school posts all post-graduate “schools”, including those going directly into the military. The only thing that they don’t post is anyone who is going directly into the workforce. Of the top 10 kids (more or less), 3 are going to our “local” public universities (NH or VT), one to RPI, one to Columbia, 2 to St. Lawrence University, and 1 to Clarkson. And these are sort of a guess because I’m not actually positive who is officially in the top 10.
Our graduating class of 150 usually has one student attending an Ivy, 2 attending other top-50 schools, and the rest attending smaller private schools or the NH/VT public universities. Only about 60% of the kids attend any 4-year college, with the rest attending 2-year, military, or going directly into the workforce.
Although the public posting of students’ college plans may arguably be inappropriate, it’s nothing new. I graduated from a large public high school nearly 40 years ago, and I distinctly remember seeing a list of where everyone in the class was headed. I don’t think rank was published, but somehow everyone knew it; I was first in an early ranking, and it seemed that not only did everyone know, but some people seemed to know before I did! Where I live now, a list of the top 20 students is posted in local papers, on the school district website, and in the school district annual report that is mailed to all taxpayers. The list includes each student’s name, photo, intended college, intended major, awards, and extracurricular activities. Now THAT is invasive and TMI, in my opinion (but I love to read it anyway 
). It hasn’t been published yet for this year.
Actually both were mentioned several times in this thread.
But only about 500 students a year are going to either one, they are small.
At my kid’s HS she was the first to Amherst in about 5 years. Her school doesn’t Val/Sal or rank top 10, but the brightest in her class mostly went to OSU, often in honors/scholars program. OSU had a freshman class of 12,000 or so that year.