<p>I am working on gathering data on the schools my son is interested in (we have to narrow the field to plan for visits).</p>
<p>One of the factors is the % of kids attending ivies/stanford/mit. I have some of the data, but for some schools I can't seem to find solid numbers. Is there a specific place I can look for this info or do I need to email each school and ask?</p>
<p>These are the schools I am looking for matriculation data on:</p>
<p>Mercersburg, Fountain Valley, Conserve, Midland, Millbrook, Putney, Tabor, Asheville, Proctor and Holderness.</p>
<p>I could try and guess from the matriculation list on their website -- but I don't know how accurate that would be since I am not sure if it includes PGs (probably does) nor how many kids were in the class. Plus, some just show acceptances and not matriculation -- so it could be the same kids that got into all the ivies and no other student did.</p>
<p>thanks -- I tried the boarding school review site, but the info is missing on several schools and for some, the data is not correct. I wasn't sure whether to trust the info I got from them.</p>
<p>I could be wrong, but I don't think the schools on your list have a predictable history of ivy matriculation. It probably varies year to year. There is a service that lists the top 100 or so schools with ivy + Stanford & MIT matriculation. Prepparent has published this info on this board several times. You could pm him to get it or do a search of "Standford" on this forum. However, I don't think your schools will be on that list. </p>
<p>Most schools will provide current lists of matriculation. I think you can ask for the list. However, I think that if you ask some schools how many they get into ivies + Stanford & MIT, they might not be interested in you. I think the time to do an in-depth investigation of matriculation is after acceptance. When you do, remember that sports recruitment and legacy play a role. </p>
<p>An increasingly important measure is how many students matriculated at highly or very competitive colleges as rated by Barrons. Some schools include this information on their websites. Another measure is how many got in early admit and how many got into their 1st choice school.</p>
<p>Burb Parent -- I have the list that Prepparent posted, but the one I have just has the top 20 US boarding schools. I will look to see if they posted the top 100 boarding schools.</p>
<p>I know that sports/legacy plays a part -- and while it might be better to do the research after acceptance, I have to eliminate schools now because we just can't visit them all (we can actually only visit a few).</p>
<p>As far as what my son wants in a boarding school -- he doesn't care about Ivy Matriculation and doesn't currently plan to apply to an ivy/stanford/mit -- but he is 13, so who knows what he might decide in a couple of years.</p>
<p>My thoughts were that as long as some kids were accepted into an ivy, he would have a chance if he was interested and had the stats. I am not looking for that 25% to ivy figure -- but I am thinking that if 8% or so consistently get into ivies, then he could also.</p>
<p>Is my thinking skewed here? Should I drop this variable as something to look at? I know that many kids might be able to get into Harvard or Princeton, but because of fit or finances they don't even apply -- so they wouldn't be in the calculation. But -- if a school only sends one or two kids (out of 200+) to and ivy every year or so, it tells me that his chances for ivy admission would be lower than at a school where they send 10% on to ivies.</p>
<p>I really appreciate any comments on my thinking -- I feel like I am putting too much emphasis on ivy college placement rather than other factors, but I would hate to him to attend a high school he loves and not have a good change to apply for a college that he loves.</p>
<p>I think that you can get a pretty helpful idea of the kinds of colleges kids from School X attend just by looking at the list posted by School X on their website (and I think most every school posts some kind of list). Even if they don't have numbers, you get a general sense of the caliber of colleges attended, and perhaps that is more valuable information than how many enter the Ivy League each year.</p>
<p>smile dog -- that was my original thought, but then I was looking for some hard and fast numbers so that we could start eliminating schools from the list.</p>
<p>I think maybe I need to not worry so much about the ivy matriculation -- my original qualifier was as long as the school sent two or three kids to an ivy most years and many other top schools and lacs were listed, he would be fine.</p>
<p>I was just hoping for any easy way to eliminate some schools from the list.</p>
<p>If you are planning a New England visit, you can certainly do Holderness and Proctor in the same day, if you are on a tight schedule you might fit in Putney (if you are talking about the Putney in VT?). Tabor is in the opposite direction as Millbrook (from NH), but with 3 days, you should be able to do all five of those visits. That may or may not help you.</p>
<p>I think your original criterion was a good one: if they send some kids to top schools then that's a good sign. Probably not one that will allow you to do much shortening of The List, but still useful.</p>
<p>It does seem to me, though, that some of the schools on the list you posted above don't have quite the record that the others do. I don't want to speak ill of any school (particularly when I really don't know what I'm talking about - that's never a good thing!) so I won't name names. But a useful comparison might be to take the matriculation list from one of the most prestigious schools on your list and compare it to the others. I think you will see that, even if they don't give you hard numbers, one gets a notion of how competitive the students from the second school are in the hyper-competitive market of college admissions. As you said, if the list includes some Ivy League and some top LACs each year, then you don't need to know much more on that point, but if the Ivy League caliber school sticks out as one in a long list of less well-known schools, that tells you something and I think at least a couple of the schools on your list will come up a bit short in that comparison.</p>
<p>% going to top school is not really accurate. For example, this year, we have 3 harvard acceptees heading to williams.. i mean..that would be a huge %.. and i mean things like this happen which skew the data...</p>
<p>I was wondering about this... These days the admission rate to ivies (and equivalents) seem to be somewhere between 8%(!) to 15%. If a BS sends about 10% to ivies, is it necessarily better than a public school? I am sure much smaller population of public school students apply to ivies, but it is probably much easier to stand out and excel in those schools than, say, AESD.</p>
<p>I understand that college matriculation is not the main reason to go to BS - providing the best learning environment for our children is - and it is not for everyone. I was just wondering if my thinking was flawed when it came to the expectation for college admission.</p>
<p>We could bat this around like a tennis ball. The Ten Schools plus for or five others send the most BS kids to IVY. That has nothing to do with each individual students increased opportunity.It's the chicken -egg thing.If you stretch to go to these schools you are likely to stretch to the top Universities.Also all of the URMs at the top BS are top canidates at the Ivies.Remember that the majority of the Ivy population comes from other than BS populations.End this thread.</p>
<p>smile dog -- "if the Ivy League caliber school sticks out as one in a long list of less well-known schools" -- that is a great thing to look for, I think we will change the criteria to that.</p>
<p>it is true that some of the schools on his list don't seem to perform at the level as some of the others -- so we are going to have to really look at those. he does want to attend a school where he stands out and is at the top -- but he doesn't want to be the only one at the top and unchallenged. it will be a tricky balance.</p>
<p>akim -- that is really how this all got started. The local public school my son would attend sends quite a few kids to Ivies and top schools. He is looking to attend a boarding school for many, many other reasons -- if his intent was to get into an ivy he would be best served by attending the local school.</p>
<p>Francis -- sorry that this thread bothered you so much. I certainly didn't start it off as a "ivies are the only schools to attend" type thread. I was just looking for some type of quantifiable data to evaluate a school. It gets really tough trying to eliminate schools from a large list -- and he really isn't interested in the "top" boarding schools that most people here post about, so my knowledge on them is even more limited.</p>
<p>As far as visiting schools -- the ones on his list that he is still considering that are on the east coast are: Mercersburg, Northfield Mount Hermon, St. Andrews DE, Millbrook, Putney and Tabor. Can anyone tell me which of these schools would make sense to visit in one trip? I can see them all on a map -- but to someone who lives in Colorado, all those east coast locations look close together.</p>
<p>You could do Millbrook, Putney, NMH and Tabor in three days (with a fair amount of driving). You could start at Tabor in the morning of Day 1 (having flown into Boston the previous day), then drive (about 2.5 hrs) to the NMH area in the afternoon of Day 1. Putney and NMH you could do in one day (one in the morning and the other in the afternoon); that would be Day 2. Then Millbrook could be Day 3 (driving there either the evening of Day 2, or the morning of Day 3; another 2.5 hour drive). </p>
<p>St. Andrew's and Mercersburg would be a bit farther down the road. St. Andrew's is about 4 hours driving time from Millbrook. So perhaps if you drive to Millbrook from Putney on the evening of Day 2, and do the interview at Millbrook on the morning of Day 3, you could drive to St. Andrew's on the afternoon of Day 3, and interview at St. Andrew's on the morning of Day 4. Then drive to Mercersburg (not quite 3 hrs.) on the afternoon of Day 4 and interview there on the morning of Day 5.</p>
<p>It would definitely be a long and tiring trip, especially if your family doesn't like to be in the car that much. But then, interview/tour trips pretty much always are anyway! It would be doable, and that way your son could get all his east coast schools in.</p>
<p>You can visit them all. Unlike Colorado, you don't have to worry about slow mountain passes. However, you do have to worry about traffic. I think your schools are all in the country (Tabor is somewhat suburban), so this should not be a problem. My suggestion is that you post your route and timetable when you develop it. Then east coast people can warn you if one of your routes will bring you into a traffic jam area. Avoid Rt. 95 if you can. Ditto Rt. 84 through Hartford CT at rush hour. </p>
<p>BTW, if you schedule a Sat. morning visit, be sure that it is at a school with Sat. classes.</p>
<p>thanks -- you can see why I am eager to cut the list down! But since FA is so important, I think he needs to be applying to quite a few schools -- and I think that not visiting would really hurt his application.</p>
<p>Is a half day enough to really get a feel for a school? For our other visits (to California to see Midland and Thacher and to Wisconsin to see Conserve), he would be spending a whole day touring, attending classes and visiting the area. We would have more time then because we weren't going to just fly to Wisconsin for a day, but spend a couple of days checking out the area -- and for Cali, we are driving (18 hours -- yuck!) and will also stay a few days.</p>
<p>I think it is time to really evaluate the FA at the schools on the east coast and see if any should be cut. Tabor mentions in their website that "Because requests for financial aid far outpace available funds, awards are made to a percentage of accepted students" and "Traditionally, less than 25% of accepted students who qualify for aid receive an award". To me, this sounds like his likelihood of getting good FA from Tabor is slim to none -- especially because he is not going to be an URM or recruited athlete. As much as he thinks Tabor is really cool, I think it might be one that needs to be dropped.</p>
<p>Millbrook is another school where I am not sure about the FA -- only 25% of the students are on FA, but the average grant is pretty high ($29,700 -- with tuition at $39,250) so it seems as though they reserve the FA for families that really show need. Of course, it could be a ton of loans, too.</p>
<p>I did some more evaluating of the schools -- and I think we are dropping Putney from the list, also. Combination of FA and matriculation facts.</p>
<p>So -- our east coast visit would need to be to: Mercersburg, NMH, St. Andrews DE and Millbrook. I will take a look at planning and see how that trip would look.</p>
<p>He has Asheville on the list -- but is isn't exactly east coast, so I don't know if a visit would be possible there. I am going to see if they would accept an application without a visit.</p>
<p>As you get further into the interview/touring season, I think you will find yourselves very adept at evaluating the "feel" of a school, and a half day will be enough in most cases. Remember, you aren't coming to a final decision now; you're just determining which schools are worth applying to. Next March your son will have a range of schools to choose from, you will know what the FA situation is at each, and you will very likely go to Revisit Days (which all east coast schools offer at this point, although I understand there is some talk about moving away from them) at which time you will be able to gather even more info to help your son make his final choice. The interview and tour is really just a first pass.</p>