My son went to an elite prep school. His top two, and three of his top 4, choices were not Ivies or Stanford or MIT even though over 33% of his class did matriculate to one of those 10 schools.
This appears to list TJHSST matriculations, thought I don’t know whether it is complete: http://thebullelephant.com/college-destinations-for-tjhsst-class-of-2017/
Caltech has an incoming freshman class size of ~235. Even high schools that Caltech views as sort of “feeder schools” likely send only 1-3 students per year. Caltech’s “feeder schools” if there are any, definitely include several large publics in California and magnet schools like TJ.
I’m sure Gunn sends a lot more to Stanford than tiny Cate or Lakeside.
I compiled a similar list a couple years ago,
based on almost 6K matriculations from the following 10 high schools:
Exeter, Trinity (NYC), Hotchkiss, Horace Mann, Dalton, Harvard Westlake, SFUS, College Preparatoy (Oakland), Lakeside (Seattle), Ransom Everglades. I selected these from a BusinessInsider list of America’s best high schools.
The top 15 matriculations I observed from these high schools were to:
Columbia University
Cornell University
New York University
University of Pennsylvania
Harvard University
University of Southern California
Yale University
Stanford University
University of Chicago
University of Michigan
Brown University
Georgetown University
Princeton University
Wesleyan University
Washington University
My set is almost identical to @CollegeRep18’s set.
Although the order is different, every school in my top 13 also appears in @CollegeRep18’s top 13.
Differences in the 2 sets:
Dartmouth and BC round out the bottom of the OP’s top 15 (but are not in my top 15);
Wesleyan and WashU round out the bottom of my top 15 (but are not in the OP’s T15).
The top LACS don’t have as many seats, so by volume they won’t be n the “top 15” but a significant number of top students from these schools choose ED to top LACS over ivy.
@tk21769 thanks for sharing!
I went on to include BB&N, Brearley and Collegeiate (based on some suggestions) and there’s been a slight shake-up of the ordering but the same top 15 universities appear:
New York University
Harvard University
Columbia University
Yale University
Brown University
Georgetown University
University of Chicago
Cornell University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Stanford University
University of Michigan
Dartmouth College
University of Southern California
Boston College
In the new list, Washington University is placed 21st and Wesleyan is placed 24th.
Hopefully CC lets me post the link this time, but it can be found on bit * ly/PSCollegeMatric (replace the * with a . and get rid of the spaces in between)
One small critique - Since the high schools chosen are weighted towards the east coast, the outputs will be weighted towards east coast schools as well. NYU, Boston College, Georgetown don’t seem to rank as highly for west coast high schools, understandably. Many college graduates, especially in the Northeast, end to focus their college search in their own backyard.
@doschicos definitely agree, do you have any prep schools you’d recommend to include on the list? My knowledge of prep schools is biased towards New England and I had wanted to include 20 schools in the list originally.
Yes, you’re likely to see a more or less different matriculation pattern from a different basket of high schools.I tried to represent various regions, but without straying too much from the BusinessInsider list of top private high schools.The challenge is not only to find more top high schools outside one or two regions, but also to find ones that post matriculation lists.
@CollegeRep18 I don’t. I think you captured the ones that meet your criteria. It’s just that many of the schools are centered in the northeast. No fault to your methodology just pointing out that the concentration creates a regional bias.
If we assume the rich is smarter in spending their money–in this case in college tuition as investment—we should at least think that they have choices, like picking a stock. But this is not the case here—quite often the prep school kids don’t have a choice between $70000 USC/NYU vs $30000 Cal/UCLA.
Also, unlike stock returns which are the same for all investors, the college investment return has a lot to do with family wealth. Every years there are donors who spend more than $10m for a spot at HYPSM. Clearly, if a name brand would help the kid succeed in a $500 family business just by extra 2% the return is well worth the investment. But for most folks here, there is no way a 2% return on a $10m investment is the smart choice.
If we want a guide for most average families, why not just follow WSJ’s own 2018 smart college list.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-colleges-whose-graduates-do-best-financially-1506466920
The rich spend money on a lot of things which have no ROI. A mink coat will depreciate by aprox. 50% as you walk out of the salon. Ditto most high end/luxury watches with a very few notable exceptions. Do you think a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps ($1k pair, give or take) are going to appreciate after you wear them for 20 minutes? No. They will net you $400 at a consignment store. And they don’t do more for you than a $65 pair of Bandolino heels.
JZ, I don’t think you have interpreted the data very well if your takeaway is that rich people make decisions based on ROI. Rich people do lots of dumb things with money (some of them). The only difference is that spending money stupidly has fewer consequences for them than it does for middle class people, because they still have money once they are done.
Well, by alumni accomplishments, Georgetown is an Ivy-equivalent (along with Northwestern, Rice, Caltech, and the other 4 schools named above).
BTW, nobody would send a ton of kids to Caltech considering how tiny it’s undergrad student body is.
To echo @blossom’s point, the Street doesn’t see most of the rich (which they consider “retail”) to be smart money. Now, the people the rich hire to manage their money may be smart money, though many of the best are institutional money managers, not even hedge funds/family offices.
One thing that interested me at the time, which the overall T15 lists don’t show, is the variation in preferences among these high schools. At Ransom-Everglades, the number 1 was UMiami; #2 was Vanderbilt. At Lakeside-Seattle, #1 was UWashington; #2 was Santa Clara (which did not even show up in the T99 for Trinity-NYC). At San Francisco University High, Stanford was #1; USC was #2.
College Preparatory (Oakland CA) was the only HS I observed where the highest number of matriculations (19) were to a small college in a distant state (Swarthmore).
^ A regional/distance bias really shouldn’t be all the surprising. . .
I would respectfully say the OP analysis is silly. You cannot account for legacies ( and there are many if you are talking about the “wealthy”, regional preferences, and all the rest. Not to even mention that HS kids whether in boarding school or not apply to the schools their friends apply to or those the guidance counselor recommends. And a feeder school to Caltech, what? Are you kidding me? Some of these schools do attract a particular demographic. Living in NYC is expensive so if you are very wealthy that might appeal to you and you will apply to NYU. The feeder school mentality is getting less and less each year. Even the prep schools say this directly. But it was fun to see people react. There are many paths to success and not all go thru an IVY gate.
Most of the smart institutional money mangers start at hedge funds/family offices/private equity or Quant funds as they have to prove themselves before becoming institutional money managers.
Lately prep school are trying to recruit these kids also as in past they use to recruit the future investment bankers .
@blossom very wise words.
The OP stated "NYU was the biggest college target in general …
- 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)." By comparing a school that has undergraduate student body 25 times larger than the other, it is like to compare an apple with an orange; therefore, make the analysis or what the original statement not much useful for anything.
WSO’s list is primarily for elite IB companies. Attending a specific college is one of the most important if not the most important factor for elite IB recruiting. In many cases, students sending resumes from non-target/core schools are not even seriously considered. This makes WSO’s list of colleges quite important.
However admission to an elite colleges is a completely different story. It’s debatable whether attending a selective test admission prep school even offers a notable advantage for admission, for the average prep school accepted student. For example, if you compare students with a comparable GPA and test scores, I’d expect the basic, public high school I attended in upstate NY to appear to be a better Cornell pipeline than the prep schools you listed. Along the sames lines, your pipeline list largely looks like a list of regional proximity. For example, Andover is in MA, so it gets a disproportionately large number of applications to Harvard, and has a disproportionately large number of donating Harvard legacies. It should come as no surprise that it also gets a disproportionately large number of Harvard matriculations. It’s the same idea for Cate and Stanford or Choate and Yale. You listed Deerfield as a feeder for Cornell, which doesn’t make sense since it is in MA. Looking up the actual matriculations, instead they get a lot to Harvard and not Cornell, as I’d expect.