How do you know that the majority of those people didn’t list Michigan, Duke as well as a host of other schools on their SAT exams and apply to all of these places? Michigan is a large state school in the Midwest with a strong reputation and has a smorgasboard of programs in every field (public policy, kinesiology, pharmacy, engineering, etc.) so naturally it will attract a larger cohort of applicants than a medium-sized private university like Duke which is essentially wholly focused on the liberal arts with a spattering of engineering offerings to complement as well on the side.</p>
<p>Your analysis works for an in-state dynamic to some extent but doesn’t apply to prospective students applying to a public school from out of the state. The more common reason why someone who applied to Michigan from Ohio and not Penn or Duke or whatever is that person didn’t think that he/she had a shot at admission at those schools so in an attempt to maximize the odds of admissions at the most reputable school, this individual applied to Michigan. It says nothing about Duke or X private school’s desirability vis-a-vis the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>There’s ample available to suggest that Brown or Duke compete with Michigan for the same caliber of applicants top to bottom. The greatest overlap private schools for Michigan OOS students from an admissions standpoint are places like Emory, Boston College, USC and NYU. These are all fine private schools which have a strong reputation but are not considered to be “tippy top”. I believe the supermoderator Alexandre on this site picked Michigan over Columbia, Penn, Duke, et al. but he is the only person I’ve heard of firsthand that’s done something like that and that may help explain his inferiority complex everytime the school isn’t mentioned alongside the Ivy Plus.</p>
<p>I suspect that you are underestimating how much high school seniors care about prestige and external validation. A lot of the valedictorians/salutatorians will just apply across the board among the top 15 USNWR schools and see where they get in; after that, they usually pick the school that’s perceived to be more prestigious or revert to fit if society deems all of their choices to be on the same level reputation wise.</p>
<p>Like I and others have mentioned before, there are private schools in New York where only 5-10 students have enrolled at U of M out of an accepted pool of about 100 which means the university gets a 10 percent or less yield from these high schools. For the Ivy Plus schools, that yield figure is closer to 50% at these places and HYP enjoy a 90%+ yield at these elite boarding schools i.e. basically only losing cross-admit battles with each other.</p>
<p>I think you’re exactly right ,goldenboy, about how many seniors care about " prestige and external validation." That seems to fuel at least some of the frenzy to get into top schools. One of my own kids was not immune. He applied ED to UVa but considered applying to a couple higher ranked schools because he was a top student with top scores and just felt that maybe he should. This was despite loving UVa and basically saying that’s where he could see himself. He had some brief athletic contact with Princeton with one of the 2 varsity sports he played. He didn’t pursue it and that was before the Ivies changed their financial aid polices anyway. He may not have gotten in and we couldn’t have afforded it even he had. My point to the story is that when I asked him why he thought he might want to apply to Princeton, the answer I got was “Because it’s Princeton.” Really no other reason he could articulate and as I said, UVa was a great fit for him. He stood on the Lawn of the University of Virginia when we toured and he looked over at the Pavillions(where the top students end up) and said,“That’s where I’m going to live some day.” I had to turn away so he didn’t see me tear up. He obviously saw himself there . Of course , he did not end up living in one of the rooms on the Lawn! But UVa was a great fit for him. A much better fit than most,if not all, of the higher ranked schools may have been for him.</p>
<p>(I think there’s a lot of similarity of gestalt between UVa and Princeton. A perfectly good answer to “Why Princeton” could be “Because I really like UVa.”)</p>
<p>goldenboy, I think you would be surprised how many valedictorian-types are NOT like you describe. Sure, some apply to all of what they perceive as the top schools to see who lets them in. But most, I think, make choices, even if prestige and external validation figure in those choices. I couldn’t get my own kid to apply to Harvard or Brown, although she was applying to Yale, Columbia, and BU. It made no sense, but she didn’t like either school enough to let them reject her.</p>
<p>Bclintonk’s analysis makes a lot of sense. (Kudos to him or her, by the way. I meant to post when he or she first proposed it a few days ago, to say how thoughtful and convincing I found it.) In my experience, at least, most kids don’t like getting rejected, and they don’t apply to 20 schools likely to reject them if they really plan to go to a school likely to accept them. Maybe one or two – Harvard! – but not 20. If they apply to a school that’s likely to reject them, it’s because they really like that school.</p>
<p>JHS, I agree about UVa and Princeton possibly having a similar vibe. The only other private school on his list was Duke so he obviously did like a preppy vibe(total opposite from younger son on that). And I should clarify that I am certainly not anti Ivy-BIL is HYP grad and his kid is there now. H accepted to one of the HYP schools but didn’t go. But there do seem to be alot of kids on CC applying all over the place and rank and prestige does seem to matter for lots of them. But of course CC is not representative of all kids. It just seems to be getting more and more competitive all the time and I think there is definitely a subset of kids that think that they are doomed if they don’t get into a top school. There really seems to be alot of pressure out there these days. Hopefully, I am wrong .</p>
<p>I think you’re vastly overestimating how narcissistic and prestige-obsessed the nation’s valedictorians and salutatorians are. Look, there are a little over 30,000 high schools in the U.S., which means roughly that many vals and roughly that many sals. That’s 60,000 people right there, which is roughly double the number of applicants any Ivy gets–and we know for sure that not everyone who applies to an Ivy is val or sal. </p>
<p>Brown, for example, tells us. Of the 33,707 applicants to Brown in 2011, 1,883 were vals and 880 were sals. (Odd there were so many more vals than sals; hmm, maybe the vals are more narcissistic). In any event, vals and sals made up just 8.2% of the applicants to Brown. That’s roughly 4.6% of the vals and sals in the nation—a non-trivial fraction, to be sure, but more than 95% of them didn’t apply to Brown.</p>
<p>Now I suspect the prestige-chasers make up more than 5% of the vals and sals. Some especially narcissistic ones think they’re too good for Brown. Others might prefer Duke to Brown and per my hypothesis not bother to apply to Brown; since the odds of getting into Brown appear to be even longer than the odds of getting into Duke, why have Brown on your back-up list if your top choice is Duke? So maybe 10% or even 15% of the vals and sals are in this prestige-chasing game. But the rest aren’t. Many will have their state flagship as their top choice. Others will prefer LACs. Some will prefer a school with a religious affiliation. Or look for the best engineering program they can get into, be it public or private (and many, many of the best engineering programs are at public universities, while many of the prestige-laden privates are actually pretty second-rate in engineering). Others will have geographic preferences or other “fit” factors that take precedence over prestige. But in any event, I’m quite certain it’s a minority, and probably a quite small majority, who place prestige above all else in their college search.</p>
<p>bclintonk, I agree that most hopefully seem to be looking at fit but CC seems to be overrepresented by top kids putting in applications to multiple top schools, sometimes ones they have never visited but apply because they are prestigious. There is a minority of people who chase prestige but it does exist. Prestige does tend to be relative. Even within a state system, there are clearly some schools that are higher profile than others and lots of teenagers do pay attention to these things. Lots of teenagers do care about what others think at some level. That is nothing new. And many kids do not have the luxury of looking at multiple schools. For some people, prestige may mean being able to be full pay at an LAC. Lots of potential different scenarios re: prestige, elitism (including intellectual elitism),etc.</p>
<p>I also think you vastly overestimate the degree to which college admissions is just a single national market in prestige. It is that for a few people; I mean something like a few thousand people, out of the hundreds of thousands who will enroll in college in the fall. But for most, other factors predominate. Geography, for example, plays a big role. Many Ohioans are satisfied with Ohio State, which is a pretty good school in many ways. If they want something better, there’s not much to choose from in-state: a few good LACs (Oberlin, Kenyon, and a few others). Case Western, but in some ways that’s not much of an improvement, if it is one at all, over Ohio State. So if they aim higher, many will look to better schools nearby. So what are some of the most popular options? Nearby Michigan (1,008 SAT score reports sent) is the #1 choice, followed by Northwestern (953, another Midwestern school), Harvard (772, popular everywhere), then Cornell (726, and just a few hours drive from the Cleveland area) and Notre Dame (653, just down the road in Indiana0. Notice a pattern here?</p>
<p>What about Illinoisans? They’ve got a very strong state flagship in UIUC, but if they want to aim a little higher they make Northwestern their top choice by far (1,789), followed by the ever-popular Harvard (1,133) and another hometown choice, Chicago (916). Stanford (902) and Princeton (897) are farther afield, but then air service is better from Chicago than from anywhere in Ohio. Then it’s back closer to home, with nearby WUSTL (895) and Michigan (788). Duke (423) is pretty far down their preference list, in pretty much a dead heat with UC Berkeley (419), Vanderbilt (419), Carnegie Mellon (413), and Georgetown (412). Makes you think there are maybe 400 or so prestige-obsessed kids in Illinois who are applying to all these schools. </p>
<p>I could give more examples, but the pattern is the same elsewhere: there’s a much stronger local and regional pattern to college applications, even at the very elite levels, than many people on CC seem to realize.</p>
<p>I definitely agree,bclintonk, with the local and regional aspect of things and the SAT and ACT data bear that out. It also seems to be the case that people in the Northeast ,DC area ,California and international students tend to be more competitive with the college process. That is of course a generalization but probably fairly valid.</p>
<p>Northeast - I’ve often opined that the Ivy angst is (almost) wholly driven by this group and that is solely due to the fact there are no highly ranked instate, public alternatives.</p>
<p>DC area - DC itself has no instate option. NoVa residents have UVa to look forward to, but they are likely capped due to UVa desiring geographic diversity across the state. The Maryland burbs have a good instate option in College Park, but obviously not of UVa’s prestige.</p>
<p>California - great instate publics, but getting pricier by the moment. California does send a lot of high schoolers east to college, but don’t forget, many Californians are first/second generation residents, with family ties back east. But nevertheless, kids attend a UC campus and turn down an Ivy every year. Sometimes due to cost. Other times, due to preferring to stay close to home.</p>
<p>Internationals are all about prestige, and they should be.</p>
<p>btw: Regardless of gb’s analysis, the simple fact is that even at the Ancient Eight, ~half of the students reside within an 8 hour drive. Just like every other college.</p>
<p>In pockets of the NE, I wonder if the more well off families in privates and boarding schools would be looking at instate publics, even if they were highly ranked?</p>
<p>bclintonk, you are on a roll with your posts and I couldn’t agree with you more. It seems that kids like goldenboy - who I suspect is from one of those “elite powerhouse boarding schools” that are oh-so-important in their own eyes and about whom the rest of the nation doesn’t give one minute’s thought to – “play” in their own backyard because the Ivies are in their own backyard, and extrapolate that therefore those are “national schools” and that the kids everywhere else are aspiring to those same choices. For the vast, vast majority of students, staying close to home is a huge factor. It just so happens that different schools are in different backyards. It’s the rare kid who <em>really</em> does a true national search, and such a kid is typically from an affluent family for whom money is no object.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, You and bclintonk are exactly right. Most kids even seem to stay within 2 or 3 hours of home. The few kids that seem to do more of a truly national search in my kids’s diverse public school have been kids that came from affluent backgrounds(a brother/sister pair come to mind that ended up at Columbia and Harvard had 2 physicians as parents-this was right before the newer financial initiatives). We’ve also had a couple of URM’s have success with schools like Chicago and Emory lately. And of course there is always the occasional legacy or recruited athlete that will go somewhere else (although even with that, UVa and Virginia Tech seem to have gotten the star athletes lately). Very few kids seem to be looking at pricey LAC’s. Most kids seem to like our public schools and of those that don’t or can’t get into the top publics,many seem to gravitate to publics in other fairly nearby states (South Carolina, College of Charleston, UNC Charlotte, ECU,etc.). So much really is local or regional for the vast majority of kids.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to look at a school like Thomas Jefferson (TJHSST) in northern Virginia, a fairly affluent part of the country. You are admitted by testing. In 2010, 46.38% of the students were Asian and that has gone up to over 50% since then. In 2010, 43.63% were white and only 3.84 were Hispanic and 2.42 AA(despite being over 25% of the population). There have been complaints in the newspapers about the underrepresentation of some groups. The kids in the school are going to be top scorers and probably predisposed to look at the best schools they can get into. So, in the class of 2010 (of about 450), 15 went to MIT, 17 to Cornell, 3 to Harvard,17 to Duke, 10 to Princeton,10 to Yale, 9 to Penn, 4 to Georgetown,3 to GWU,9 to CMU,etc. Still pretty regional. Not many going out of driving distance-1 to Rice, 2 to Northwestern, 4 to Washington U, 6 to USC-USC seems to have alot of merit aid for high stats kids so maybe that explains the 6 to USC). Few to LAC’s-2 to Colby,1 to Bard, 2 to Swarthmore, 5 to Oberlin. Lots of kids to the Virginia schools-UVa 91(in some years that number is over 100),William and Mary 60,Virginia Tech 30,George Mason 4, Mary Washington 4. It was interesting to look at the numbers for what is considered one of the best public schools in the country.</p>
<p>SE- It’s interesting to compare the yields at some of those schools. Accepted TJ kids go to UVA 39% of the time; W&M 32%; 42% Princeton; 67% Yale. They don’t show the # that were admitted to Harvard.</p>
<p>That’s interesting,TV4caster, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the yield for UVa and William and Mary would have been even lower , since lots of the kids at TJ are applying to higher ranked schools and also the Virginia schools could be competing among themselves. TJ does probably have more of a percentage of its’ students applying to elite schools than the average Virginia high school. Lots of the students will be among the highest scorers in Virginia as they have had to test in to the school to begin with. Of course, there will also be some higher scorers at some of the regular NOVA high schools. Many kids prefer to stay in their home school.</p>
<p>Yeah, I thought they were interesting. They aren’t exact though since I calculated my figures from your enrolled numbers (2010) divided by the accepted numbers that were posted on the TJ website (I think those were 2011). Also, I was looking at the TJ numbers from 2011 very recently while visiting friends who have a kid there, but I don’t remember the exact numbers. I just remember being astounded how many applied to UVA. Anyway, I found another post with purported 2010 figures which were slightly different from yours but still very close.</p>
<p>2010 enrolled colleges: TJ</p>
<p>Brown 3
Cal Tech 4
Carneige Mellon 14
William & Mary 56
Columbia 7
Cornell 13
Dartmouth 2
Duke 12
Georgetown 8
Harvard 6
MIT 13
Princeton 10
Rose Hulman 2
Stanford 7
West Point 2
Naval Academy 1
UC/Berkley 4
University of MD 5
University of PA 4
UVA 106
VA Tech 31
Washington Univ./St. Louis 5
Yale 7 </p>
<p>To really bring this back to the original point of the post (or closer to it). This kid had a 2370 or 2380 SAT and was deferred at Mich.</p>
<p>One person mentioned Asian students. UVa’s class of 2015 enrolled students were 17% Asian-Americans, plus a percent that did not check off any box, plus a high portion of the 7 percent of international students were from Asian countries. </p>
<p>I heard on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday that when a law went into effect in California limiting affirmative action in admissions, UC Berkeley’s Asian student population doubled.</p>
<p>goldenboy, the numbers I posted were from an earlier CC post by somebody that took numbers from the schools’s newspaper. I found the archived newspaper articles for TJ Senior Destinations for 2010 and 2011.</p>