Seems like a system of connections where the prep school steers students to matching (in the prep school’s view, which is probably closer to the colleges’ view than the student’s view) elite colleges and strongly supports their applications, and the elite colleges weigh the judgement (through recommendations and other contacts) very heavily. But the prep schools will not steer too many students to the same college.
The advantage to the student is that s/he gets a better idea of which reachy colleges are more likely to admit because s/he matches their wants and the prep school’s college counselors can tell him/her that. But it does not mean that those will be his/her top choices.
@minimickey Not always. Maybe they expect higher ACT or SAT scores from a student from a prep school or wealthy neighborhood but not necessarily GPA. I think that depends on the high school itself and what the GPA is to make the top decile. Not all high schools have grade inflation and top 10% kids from these types of schools could easily have received some Bs in high school.
@homerdog But I think that scenario is more like a kid is interested in school X, and the private school counselor gives him the heads up that there are 2 legacies, an athletic recruit and a kid with a building named after grandpa already applying ED, so your chances are probably better at school Y. That’s different than the counselor calling the college and saying theses are the 2 kids we want you to take. Now I’m sure there are some connections, ie; BC high school has a chit or 2 with BC, but most of that activity is long gone or part of CC folklore. And sure there are some colleges who rarely take kids from certain high schools or who only are interested in the top few kids from a high school. A connected guidance counselor will relay that info. But again that’s different than a counselor slotting kids into Top 20’s.
Once upon a time certain prep schools were ‘feeders’ for ivies. I want to say something like 80 or 90% of exeters class went to harvard (or yale?) at one point in time. Those days are long long gone.
Now ivies have quotas at these schools. In fact, colleges tend to evaluate applicants by high school and rarely want to have more than a few from a single school. As a result, guidance counselors will sometimes try to influence school selection to prevent too many kids in the same class from applying to the same school. But they have no ability to place students in a college of choice.
There are some hs where top colleges take a surprisingly large number of their kids. Including publics.
I think some of the BS GC talk here is meandering. Of course, a trusted GC can offer trusted thoughts. They’re educators talking to other educators and we aren’t speaking of overloaded GCs dealing with lots of troubles. It’s two-way, where the GC knows enough not to abuse the connections.
At the same time, a tippy top can feel obligated to follow up when a prized senior doesn’t get in.
Where a college is mega competitive for an admit, there’s no saying multi B grades are fine. Kids are expected to pull out their best.
We all have anecdotes and these colleges do sometimes forgive a B, esp if it’s not related to the major or the kid is a super match, despite. But I think CC always gets fuzzy when we pull in our kids’ stories as somehow definitive.
My estimate for Harvard is about 3 in 4 admitted students fall into one or more of the following categories: URMs, ALDCs, disadvantaged, international, or athletic rating of 2(so potentially a walk-on for a sport with some support from a coach but not recruited).
Schools like exeter andover stuyvestant and lexington hs in mass might get into (very) low double digit admits at individual ivies and similar. Lots of hooked students at these places though. Plus everyone applies. Not uncommon to see a hundredish applicants to individual schools from some of these places. I dont have the stats, but my guess is that the percentage for non hooked kids who get in from these schools is below average. And these are where the top stat kids come from
If your goal is a top college and you’re smart, talented, diligent but unhooked, find your way to a low-key public school, graduate near the top of your class and take some classes at a local community college. Going to a name prep school will hurt your chances - perhaps significantly
re #5:
“One additional large group that might be considered hooked/tipped for some of the larger Cornell schools is in state residents. 34% of enrolling students in the class of 2023 were in state, and in state students have an advantage at some of the largest Cornell schools”
I haven’t checked recently, but in the past at least, the preference for NYS residents were exhibited in its “Contract Division”- Ag, Hum Ec, ILR- where about 50% of their students were from NYS.
Whereas the colleges comprising the “Endowed Division” - Arts & Sciences, Engineering , Architecture, Hotel- exhibited no such preference and about 1/5 of their students were NYS residents.
Arts & Sciences is the largest college by a fair margin.
The Ag school would count as one of “the largest colleges”, it used to be #2, but IIRC this has swapped with Engineering, perhaps due to the changes in the status of the undergrad business school,not sure.
None of the others are really “large”, compared to the first three. Hum Ec may be a very distant “next”, and the others are (or at least were, when I was paying attention) all small.
https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics says that 60.7% of Princeton frosh came from public schools, 17% from non religious private day schools, 12.7% from religious schools, and 9.2% from non religious private boarding schools. Considering that about 10% overall are in private schools, private school graduates are vastly overrepresented at Princeton.
The top student at the typical public school will not have dedicated college counselors to help build, over the years, a college application resume that will be optimal for highly selective college admissions (assuming that the student does his/her part and achieves in academics and elsewhere). Some public school counselors may be overloaded with keeping students out of trouble, or may not know much about colleges beyond the local state schools. There is another current thread from a student at a school where the counselor did not advise the student that more selective colleges want to see foreign language courses.
If you define larger (the quote said “larger”, not “largest”), as being among the 4 of 8 schools with the largest undergraduate enrollment, then two of the contract schools meet that criteria. Two is “some.”
The CCs at BS and prep schools start working early to get students to set their sights on schools that will be good fits and where the odds are in their favor.
As @wisteria100 notes, if a student is in love with school A and several other equally qualified students are applying but are hooked and more likely to get in (and note that with many of these BS having acceptance rates in the teens and many of the same hooks applying to BS as apply to college, that happens lot), the CC will redirect that student to another school that will be excited about that student. Both the CC and the BS are considered to have done a good job when students get into their top choice schools and the way they do that is by helping students fall in love with the schools that will love them back and make them their first choice.
Ime, the CC relationship with the AO is more about the AO communicating to the CC what the school 's priorities are so that the CC can help make a good match. (I.e., we have invested money in xyz and want to be sure that we have students interested in that, we want more students from abc demographic who will also do …)
The schools are not picking up the phone and asking for admission for so-and-so.
This discussion comes up a lot. Certain individual HSs and types of HSs are tremendously overrepresented among students at HYPSM… selective private colleges. I believe the two primary reasons for this overrepresentation are students attending those types of high schools are tremendously more likely to apply than the general population; and those high schools are often selective in a criteria that correlates well with the criteria colleges in admission, leading to a high concentration of students with criteria that Ivies value (including hooks).
For example, Andover is one of the most overrepresented HSs among Harvard’s entering class, probably the most overrerpresented. Andover is highly selective, accepting only 13% of applicants . This results in Andover’s population having a high concentration of academically qualified students who excel in criteria Harvard values, including both hooks and academic qualifications. This is reflected by Andover’s mean SAT of ~1460. In addition to being highly qualified, Andover students have a high rate of applications to Harvard. Students attending highly selective private high schools in MA are tremendously more likely to apply to highly selective private colleges in MA than the general population. With an extremely high rate of applications among an extremely selective and highly qualified pool of applicants, a large number of acceptances are expected, regardless of whether the GC is making special calls or there are other special high school level connections.
There are often less direct, secondary advantages to attending a selective private high schools, such as more rigorous course offerings, better teaching, easier to pursue ECs, better guidance counseling, classmates and community more focused on academics, etc. However, there can also be downsides from a college admissions standpoint such as increased competition and more difficulty in standing out at a HS level with the stellar classmates, more challenging classes where fewer may receive high grades, college admissions having different expectations when more resources are available to the student, etc. Whether a particular student would have better or worse chance of college admission at a different HS depends on the particular student. I wouldn’t assume that attending a HS that sends a good number of students to HYPSM… means an individual applicant’s chance of being accepted shoots up, nor would I assume it means an individual applicant’s chance of admission shoots down.
If you are top 5-10% at andover you will make it anywhere. If you are middle of the pack and unhooked you are much better off staying at home and being a
bigger fish in a smaller pond. Of course you will need to do a little more work to navigate the process without the benefit of andovers culture and staff.
Top colleges simply cannot justify taking unhooked kids who are middle of the class from the old feeder schools (or any school). So if you aren’t hooked and slip toward the middle of the pack you are at a distinct disadvantage at these schools. No matter what your scores or ecs (unless they are hooked) if you land in the middle of the class at andover you can kiss most ivies goodbye. Very few exceptions to this rule.
Everyone knows this at these schools and it can make competition high and quality of life low - but this depends on the kid and the school. if the average sat Is pushing 1500 you can imagine the competition to get into top 10% or so -
Which is where unhooked kids who want to go to top ivies need to be
Some leaps here. First, it’s no advantage to go to some middling hs, just to rise easier to the top. Often those aren’t offering a strenuous education, at all. Nor the sort of vision and activation among peers, critical thinking, impact around you. You can see it in clubs, etc. The group think isn’t the same level. The bar to excel is lower. What makes an adcom think those kids are, so to say, battle tested?
That’s different than a top magnet, where better kids get some custom support, often a track. And low performing hs often have mentoring from great educators, benefit of some dedicated teachers or even the outside mentor programs.
If you’re mid pack at sandifer, so be it. Find your righ place
And you need a lot more than “wanting” an Ivy to qualify
“Early Decision is one of the best strategic choices an applicant can make.”
It is actually a poor choice since you’re locked in to the predatory pricing that colleges use. Because it’s not a national policy, the justice dept cannot deem it illegal, but state justice depts will deem it anti-competitive and eliminate ED for that state. California, which cares about its citizens being abused by colleges will be one of the first states to make it illegal in the state, according to many lawyers in the state.
Those middle of the pack students aren’t going to HYP, but they are going to NESCACs or other quality LACs. The same can’t be said for middle of the pack students at a public HS or regular private.