Came across a similar thread on WSO so thought I would do something similar for parents who are interested in where elite prep schools were sending their kids to college. Selected 13 well-known prep schools (incl. Andover, Exeter, Harvard-Westlake, Choate, St Paul’s etc.) across the US and analysed their most recent college matriculation lists and found some interesting patterns.
Obviously, all of the schools place well into the Ivy Leagues and Stanford, Duke, Chicago and MIT (38%), but the most popular college for prep schoolers was NYU. Columbia, Georgetown, Yale and Harvard rounded off the top five.
Excluding Ivy + SDCM matriculants, 25% went to other private colleges, 15% to public colleges and finally 22% to LACs. Other interesting finds included:
Georgetown was the biggest other private college target; USC, Boston College, Tufts and WUSTL were among the other most popular destinations.
As stated above, NYU was the biggest college target in general, other popular publics included UMich, UVA, Berkeley with St Andrews (Scotland) rounding off the rest of the top five.
Bowdoin and Middlebury were the most popular LACs.
CalTech did not appear in most matriculation lists, or if it did, many schools only sent a few kids (usually <5 over the 3/5 year period).
Certain schools have particular pipelines (based on the most popular destination of matriculants): Andover—Harvard; Cate—Stanford; Choate—Yale; Deerfield—Cornell; Exeter—Columbia; Groton—Harvard/Georgetown; Harvard-Westake—USC; Hotchkiss—Yale; Lakeside—Stanford; Lawrenceville—Princeton; Middlesex—Dartmouth; St Paul's—Georgetown/Brown; Taft—Georgetown.
If anyone wants to see the Google spreadsheet compiled, let me know and I’ll inbox you a link to it. Unable to post links on here.
As the WSO poster said: “Follow the smart money in investing; follow the smart money in college selection.”
NB: I had wanted to include some other schools (e.g. St Albans, TJHSST and Hockaday) but their matriculation lists do not detail their number of matriculants or only show college acceptances rather than college matriculation. Some college matriculation lists did not detail the exact number of matriculants if there were fewer than 5 matriculants so these colleges were excluded from the list and for some matriculation lists, the average was used instead of the exact number.
*Apologies, I mean to say that NYU was the biggest other private college target rather than Georgetown. And that UMich was the most popular public college.
Consequently the breakdown for destinations is: Ivy + SDCM (37%), other privates (31%), public colleges (10%) and LACs (22%).
Choate as a pipeline feeder to Yale is misleading. Lots of Yale prof kids at Choate who get an easier in. Also lots of recruited athletes for Yale warming up in the bull pen are held at Choate as gap year kids. Don’t go to Choate thinking your chances for getting into Yale are good. They’re not, hence the NYU phenomenon. Recruited athletes from Choate go to Yale. Good students go to NYU.
I don’t understand the title of this post. The reason most kids at top prep schools are going to NYU is because 1) that is the most selective college that they can get into and 2) the wealthy international students LOVE NYU because they want to be in New York City.
They are not choosing NYU and Georgetown over IVYs and other top 10 schools, they are choosing it because that’s the best school they could get into and money is not a factor. I don’t think that that’s “smart money” decisions.
And to add to Suzy’s fine post- the kids congregating at NYU and Georgetown are doing so because of “lifestyle”- and not because of any particular intellectual rigor or opportunities at these schools. (these opportunities exist- but that’s not why these particular kids choose these schools). Nobody is spending their evenings at clubs and fabulous parties if they end up in Storrs CT or Kingston RI.
LOL I wouldn’t put Georgetown & NYU in the same category @blossom, at least in terms of acceptance rate. I don’t fully understand NYU’s appeal either, but it could also have something to do with access to internships & jobs. Sort of like how Northeastern has shot up in popularity.
NYU has some outstanding depts. (Finance & philosophy, for example.)
NYU is attractive to many wealthy students–especially from abroad–for the lifestyle offered.
With respect to preferring full pay students, NYU & Georgetown are in the same category; additionally, both have paltry endowments relative to their rankings.
@GMC2918 No, unfortunately not, just the 13 schools which were mentioned. @suzyQ7 Yes, agree with you. The other interesting information was about where students were matriculating who couldn’t (or chose not to) matriculate into the Ivy Leagues + SDCM.
@suzyQ7 : While I do agree with your post above regarding NYU & Georgetown, I think that for the right student that Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service trumps many higher ranked National Universities including at least half of the Ivy League schools.
This list that you posted here, was that compiled based on number of students at each School attending each of these colleges or is it just from a college list where you don’t know how many students chose the school?
“The other interesting information was about where students were matriculating who couldn’t (or chose not to) matriculate into the Ivy Leagues + SDCM.”
Do you mean that you know how many students from each High School that were accepted to an IVY/Stanford, MIT, etc. but chose a college that was not IVY/Stanford etc. ? I would think that that information is not publicly available.
@CollegeRep18 got it. I suppose that this list wouldn’t be all that different if you added in the numbers for NYC schools, although NYU might not be as popular for that group. For example, from Brearley’s website:
2013-2017 (matriculation) 31 to Harvard and 2 to NYU.
@suzyQ7 from the former, I avoided TJHSST because it only reported college acceptances and not college matriculations.
Afraid I do not know whether students did so, just said so in case there were a few cases in which some students decided to do so. Georgetown’s SFS is renowned so I can see some students choosing it over some lower Ivies/or just because they want a different academically environment.
@GMC2918 Hopefully now that you’ve seen the spreadsheet, you have a better idea of how the data is made up! I’ll maybe add a few more schools (incl. Brearley) based on what people in this thread think and when I have some time.