Where do I find matriculation data? specifically, the % going to top schools?

Prep School Admissions
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<p>Blairt, UCLAri, clearly a smart guy, got no complaints from me and chose to delete whatever on his own. Please stop commenting on things you have no clue about, if prep school tuition is one phone call away you have no idea of what my family has been through financially. I would have had an equal chance at an ivy from my public because of my sport. I was already good before I got there and my mother alwys found great scholarships to summer sports programs.</p>

<p>I also invite all to see edconsultant's comments on the thread about what to tell in interviews. He/she gets my point across much better than I did.</p>

<p>In my last post on this thread I just want to wish all applying this next year luck in being accepted and making a choice that works for you.</p>

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<p>Well-stated, goalie dad. But don't be too hard on collegekid, I think it takes some time and distance (maturity?) to view what may have been an unpleasant experience as a oppty.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Blairt, UCLAri, clearly a smart guy, got no complaints from me and chose to delete whatever on his own. Please stop commenting on things you have no clue about, if prep school tuition is one phone call away you have no idea of what my family has been through financially. I would have had an equal chance at an ivy from my public because of my sport. I was already good before I got there and my mother alwys found great scholarships to summer sports programs.</p>

<p>I also invite all to see edconsultant's comments on the thread about what to tell in interviews. He/she gets my point across much better than I did.</p>

<p>In my last post on this thread I just want to wish all applying this next year luck in being accepted and making a choice that works for you.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think you underestimate the placement support you got from your boarding school as compared to your public high school. Even second-tier schools that only place a couple kids per year at Ivies have better relations inside the Ivy admissions community than 99% of public high schools. Somebody with some credibility from your boarding school put in a good word for you.</p>

<p>Unless your AI number was somewhere north of 190 and you were recruited to play baseball given your description of your playing level, I'd guess baseball had little to do with your Ivy admission. Between 170 and 190, you have to be a game changer for your athletic prowess to get you in. Above 190 you are used to bring up the average AI to keep the squad within the rules and your level of play is not critical.</p>

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<p>blair - interesting that you/your family was willing to pay full-freight at Tabor but applied/received FA from Exeter.</p>

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<p>One more post just for goaliedad. I hear you, but in my case I am a game changer (your language so no hate mail on modesty) and I did have competitive (above 50th percentile) stats. The coach I play for I knew from 2 years of summer programs my BS had nothing to do with. By the time I was applying I was recruited by many coaches who knew me from summers so I really don't give the school credit other than I had better coaching during the year than I would have back home. Also my sport isn't baseball and it's one that was incredibly popular in my home town so the coaches weren't bad.</p>

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<p>Would you mind telling us what sport?</p>

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<p>I knew the humility was too good to be true! For one post, you actually appeared grateful for your education. But now it is back to “I got screwed” and “the lousy school did not have anything to do with me getting into an Ivy”. (If you are even attending an Ivy. It's amusing you are continually asking people for information about financial aid—which is always quite personal, but won’t share any details of what boarding school you attended, the college you attend now, or even the sport you play. Are you even a college student?)</p>

<p>As I had said in an earlier post, I did read your prior posts. Here are a few of them – quite telling, considering your posts on this thread.</p>

<p>**“...I played 3 in high school and a divI college sport. I went to a very competitive HS and had to make a lot of choices.”</p>

<p>“Stef, while I do think my family was sucked into borrowing too much, I'm not bitter. All is working out well in terms of me helping them repay it and I'm glad I went and know it got me to where I am and want to be.”</p>

<p>“In my experience it's like merit scholarships for college, you need to be at the very top of a school's pool. I only got doable aid from schools where I was at the very top. Turned out fine for me though but I'll warn that after you see the top school's facilities, the stark differences become clear and it's hard to turn back.”</p>

<p>“I also want to make clear that I ended up loving my BS years and would do it over, money and all.”**</p>

<p>Please college*child*, rule number one in posting is being consistent.….</p>

<p>Okay, I have spent way too much time on this! I need to make dinner for 4 hungry kids.</p>

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<p>Erm, yeah, I think that you have. Remember that you're an adult with four kids, and his screen name is collegekid. That has to say something. Try to be nice and realize that no one is completely consistant with their feelings, which are by nature not consistant. This conversation has no doubt brought up some resentment that collegekid has harbored deeply and that are not his full perspective. Surely, as an adult, you can understand that. A person can love their spouse and appreciate what they do for them but still harbor major resentment with them, for example. It's the way people work.
Honestly, each side keeps saying the same thing. Both have truth in them. It is true that there are great second tier boarding schools that provide educations suited to lots of type of kids (including non-special needs kids). It is also true, however, that second and third tier boarding schools are more likely to have kids who came out of theraputic boarding school programs, or with "issues," because first tier schools are extremely demanding and competitive and are more cautious about taking those kids because they think that they couldn't handle that intense an enviornment. That does not mean that second-tier schools are full of problem children; it does mean that some, not all, do have substansial numbers of such children. It is also true that the first tier schools with the larger endownments are more likely to be able to give bigger FA grants.
You are letting this get too personal. You are both attacking each other (accusing each other of ignorance, false facts, feigning information and identities, et hoc genus omne) instead of your arguements, which is not only bad arguement skills and mean, it is completely unhelpful for those who actually want to know about the differences between second-tier and first-tier boarding schools, FA-related or otherwise. Consider the above. I just summarized this entire ten-page thread in a paragraph. The reason I was able to that is because I left out all the attacks and spite and hurt, which, if you haven't noticed, take up a lot of print. You might want to just let this be. It isn't helping anyone, least of all yourselves.</p>

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<p>Okay, I admit it, I left out two things in my summary: 1) Stef's orginal question, which has basically been disregarded anyway, and 2) Yes, driving 18 hours is insane, but goaliedad is just cool like that. :cool:</p>

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<p>prettyckitty:
FYI - yes we are adults. However, it is Collegekid - who if he is in college is actually an ADULT - who had started the name calling. He called me ignorant and accused me of trolling and signing up as multiple people. That post was edited by mods. He is attacking us and saying anything that I know first hand about a "second-tier" school is untrue because of his bad experience. </p>

<p>I applaud the young people on this board who are grounded and post well thought out intellegent posts. They are helpful to their peers and to parents. You are one of them, I look forward to reading your posts, Blarits, and many others as they offer insight that I, as a parent don't have. And at the same time they are not calling me ignorant and telling me that if my kids are at any school but the top 10 I'd better watch out because they'll have a roommate that does drugs, or is mentally ill. </p>

<p>Stef's original question had nothing to do with Financial Aid - but all of CollegeKids posts turn into that. </p>

<p>You are right, we are adults and need to let it go. Thank you for reminding us of that.</p>

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<p>and now he's vanished -- no surprise there...</p>

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<p>Collegekid wrote:</p>

<p>The point Jenny, is why would wealthy people want to send their kid to a second tier school? Most wealthy people have access to good private day schools and good public schools. </p>

<p>He went to a top school or stayed at Greenwich High or the private school he's gone to since birth.</p>

<hr>

<p>While we are not without resources, we are not "wealthy", and we don't live in Greenwich, but this was EXACTLY my reasoning for encouraging my daughter to apply only to "reach" schools (five total). If she didn't get in any of them, her private day school here (small, educated college town) would have been a good alternative, and would certainly provide as good an academic experience as she would get at a "second-tier" boarding school. The costs of all the boarding schools are about the same (that is, twice as much as her private day school). From a purely economic perspective, it would make sense that the school needed to be twice as good as her current school. But we really didn't use an economic analysis.</p>

<p>While SHE may have been additionally interested in aspects of boarding school life beyond the cultural and academic opportunities her dad and I cared about (aspects that might have been equally met at a "second tier" school, and by that I mean, social stuff, living away from home, etc. etc.), the sacrifice of giving her up from our home for the next four years, was, to me, significant enough a sacrifice that it had to be a FABULOUS school for me to let her go. That is, in order for us to let her go this young (13), when she is still at a charming age, it had to be for something way, way better than we could give her here. If if was not going to be "fabulous" in all of our books, she could just wait until college for the dorm experience. This is NOT to say that the "second tier" schools are not terrific, and maybe just downright fabulous in someone else's book. It just turned out that the ones I thought were fabulous were "reach schools." Like I said, they needed to be a lot better than her current school, and her current school was really pretty darn great. There's a reason I guess, that they are reaches - the opportunities and facilities and scholars and level of education are all just superb.</p>

<p>How did I determine "fabulous," you ask? By my own Tried and True Scientific Methods - by visiting them, studying people I knew who went to these schools, talking to people about them, succumbing to the lure of the DVDs and viewbooks, tuning up spidey senses, asking a lot of questions and nosing around at the schools, touring athletic, performing arts and other facilities, sitting in on a class or two, checking endowment sizes, and just generally making a pain in the ass of myself. </p>

<p>I will say this also - that in my daughter's case, it was never about Ivy league placement though - she wants to come back to our hometown and attend the university in this city. (How long will this idea last once she goes away? Who knows.) In any event, she would have a better chance at getting into an Ivy being in the top 3% of our local public high school than she would in the top 33% of one of the top boarding schools, I think. (Now that IS based on hard facts - source withhheld unless you PM me.)</p>

<p>(I mentioned this once before, however, that opening five rejection letters would have been emotionally difficult, and for that reason alone, we should have thought about her applying to some safety schools.)</p>

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<p>hsmomstef
What's the top 20 boarding schools' matriculation data?</p>