What's Wrong With My High School?

[silvervestersmom]

What towns are you comparing to Belmont? I lived in Cambridge and sent my kids to both public schools and privates. There is no way you could compare the student body of Cambridge High and Latin w/ Belmont even though there is a substantial population of Harvard professors in Cambridge. All their kids attend privates.

My own public H.S. in a village that had the "right" and the "wrong" sides of the tracks sent about 1/3 of my class of 185 to Ivies. Every one of those kids lived in the "right" side. It was just a fact of life. If you lived on the poorer side and were top 10% you didn't even entertain a thought of attending an elite college. You were probably first generation college at the local U.

[light10491]

Do you attend Belmont High School?

[light10491]

Belmont High School is the second Gold Medal Massachusetts School and is ranked in the top 100 in the nation. So obviously it is going to have good college placement.

However there are other public schools nearby that are better than Belmont High School and have even better college placement with lower grades.

[pierre0913]

But once again, just like college rankings, does the fact that US News & World Report thinks that Belmont High School is the 100th best high school in American = good college placement? The high school rankings are stupid by sorting schools by the number of AP exams taken. My school offers many AP classes but some schools don't even offer AP's

[midatlmom]

pierre0913

I don't mean to criticize you or your school, but to be honest, the list you posted was good, but not extraordinary. It is similar to many excellent public schools with a fairly wealthy student body. The top schools where your school exceeded expectations were Harvard, MIT and Brown, which are reasonably close in location to your school and where the counselors are probably extremely familiar with the school and its students. But, in places where Belmont had no such "hook", your school did very well, but nothing out of the ordinary for fine suburban schools--i.e., 1 at Penn, 3 at Cornell and none at Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Chicago.

[watchthepulse]

If you're confident in saying that the term wealthy describes parents in Belmont, then this largely is a money situation.

At many institutions, students who do not apply for financial aid are favored by the admissions department.

Here's a list of colleges with "need-blind" admissions departments.

Need-blind admission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Granted, there are a lot of students you listed who were accepted by "need-blind" colleges. I imagine that their wealthy upbringing offered them a lot of privileges (e.g. SAT prep courses) that other students may not have had.

Also, I imagine you have an comprehensive college counseling program. I went to a small, small, small public high school in central Massachusetts, and while the students' accepted colleges were good, they were not this diverse. I go to Hampshire College, which no one at my high school has ever heard of. There's three students of your class heading there, which is - really - strange to me, given that it's a pretty obscure school.

[vicariousparent]

USNWR is not the main judge of high schools. Regional college reps for top colleges make it their business to learn about the high schools in their area.

[Northstarmom]

What you describe seems very typical for high schools with students who come from highly educated families. The students are smarter than the students at most high schools. They were brought up with parents who spoke proper English, supplemented their school lessons, reviewed their homework, and read to them and got them into enrichment activities.

The students know what to do to get into college. They also have excellent guidance counselors and teachers. Their parents also put their kids on track for college from an early age. The parents are active in PTA/PTO and effectively complain when teachers and staff are mediocre.

88% of the students in my own public high school went to colleges, typically tier 1 or tier 2 ones -- for the same reasons that exist at your school.

[Savs]

Obviously, money plays a part.

Also... if a number of the students have parents who teach at local Universities... that's a hook to that school. I'm not sure how many children of Harvard professors are rejected from the school, but I'm guessing the acceptance rate is MUCH greater than 7%!

[Lergnom]

My kids go to a nearby town with a high school that is, according to stupid rankings, even better. The admissions stats you list are normal.

But what is the difference? Our town and high school have much more economic diversity than yours and more METCO students*. The same education is available at this school to all students but there are different aspiration levels. Minority and working class kids take fewer honors and AP courses, even when the kids have come up all the way through our schools - see below about METCO. And we have a number of special programs to provide academic and social assistance.

I'm focusing on aspiration because wealth is not as significant a determining factor in our district. We have a number of relatively poorer, highly aspirational immigrants whose children excel - and whose parents stretch financially to live in the district.

Aspiration matters a great deal generally. And milieu matters a great deal. If you go to Watertown High, a larger percentage of the kids are aiming at community college or work without college.

*METCO is a program in which Boston kids go to suburban schools. Kids are bused, which is not a bad word in this case, and it's important to realize the kids often start in grade school, even kindergarten, so they are entirely raised in the suburban district though they live in the city.

[McPucks1357]

There was an interesting article in the Boston Globe somewhat recently talking about the METCO program. It pointed to statistics that show that the METCO kids were much less likely to go to top tier schools and much more often went to community colleges or did not attend college after graduating. This points even more to wealth being a factor in attending top schools.

[arabrab]

Well, we have a top fifty ranked high school in our area, and the kids aren't admitted to the really reachy schools at anything like the rate your school seems to have.

I think that there are probably three influences you may not be considering:
1. Many elite private universities heavily subsidize the college tuition for children of employees -- sometimes up to the amount of tuition that would be charged at their own institution. Stanford did this when my b-i-l taught there. They would pay up to the cost of Stanford's tuition to any school a dependent attended. Why even consider a state U when you get a free ride at any private school? Schools know this too -- admit one of these kids and you don't hit your FA budget at all.
2. Faculty at elite private universities often themselves graduated from elite private universities, and often married spouses who did the same. In an affluent area, this may also apply to grandparents, and so a kid may be a legacy at a number of colleges, and we all know what a boost that can be.
3. Kids of heavy-hitter parents -- academics, politicos, or entertainers seem to get a more favorable nod than otherwise might be the case, though in some cases it may be because the kids had a lot of opportunities and used them wisely. On the other hand, I know of the child of a Nobel prize winner who had a lot more college flex than you might have expected given her academic prowess.

[Mezzo'sMama]

THREE to MIT? Now that sounds really odd...not to mention three off to Harvard. Something just doesn't sound right about this. Anyone else?

[farmgirl09]

ok, wow, i knew there were insane high schools out there. I just didn't realize the kids there deluded themselves into thinking their high school is somewhere in the "normal" range. And no, I don't go to some inner-city school. Like my user name implies, I go to a school in the country. The roof leaked before the construction project my sophomore year, and now it still leaks. We had Civics books that didn't include the last Constitutional amendment. I have about 160 in my graduating class, and that's after taking out the drop-outs, the kids who must work, the migrant kids, and the guys who stay home to work on the farm. I was the only person to even apply to an ivy league. Penn State main campus is an accomplishment to get in to; only the top students can get in. We take kids from six towns and the countryside in-between. We all get bussed to school. We run out of paper, tissues, and paper towels every year b/c there just isn't enough money in the budget for it. And through all of this, we still graduate 8/9 kids, most of them go to college or the military (though not crazy elite schools), we do well in athletics for our size, and keep up w/ the AYP for NCLB. Trust me, our ESL program is big. And not just the number of people in it, but the fact that it's one teacher for all of them. We're what I consider a typical high school. We are a normal high school in my area. Your high school is just insane. If we have 70% or more of my class even going to college it's really impressive.

[hmom5]

I would say that for an affluent town with many parent's who work at top colleges the list isn't overly impressive. A fair number have to be legacies, some are staff kids and if the school is top 100 in the US (not that those lists mean much as most of the most competitive schools in the Country are excluded) I would expect more going to the very top schools. No representation at Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and Penn is surprising for anything close to a top high school in MA. No Stanford at a top 100 high school? No Williams or Amherst? I'm not seeing how this list is surprising.

What is impressive is the geographic diversity, which again, speaks to affluence.