gobulldogs

Thanks a lot for answering my question CRH, but again your logic seems to be way off. Although you have had experience with St. Albans in middle school, the only knowledge that you have now is second-hand. What your post makes no mention of, and what you have no way of knowing, is how the student body at Choate stacks up to that at STA and the differences in grading and difficulties of the courses that you mentioned. I think that the generalizations that you make have little basis in reality, regardless of what you have heard from one or two people. The same can be said for the social scene that you have described. While some of the students do probably party and drink a lot, just like virtually any high school that you go to in this country, I have a hard time believing that all students partake in such activities. I am also sure that Sidwell is not much different from STA in that respect. What I really wanted to see were some hard facts, but the only one that I can seem to find is that St. Albans consistently sends a higher percentage of their students to top-tier schools than either Choate or Sidwell, so they must be doing something right.

bearcats

i will stand on CRH's side.
St Alban's acceptance rate, according to petersons, is 50%..
while choate is at 32% (that surprises me actually i thought it's supposed to be much lower around the hotchkiss level (20%), maybe petersons got it wrong)

Student teacher ratio is 7:1 for STA.
Choate is at 6:1

endownment: STA =35 M
Choate = 213M


you talk about college matriculation in terms of percentage

remember, STA's graduating class was 76 accroding to their website,
while choate's was 241....
it's easier for small schools to get a higher percentage simply becoz..
brown wouldnt mind 5 kids from STA, but to get the same percentage, choate has to send 18 kids, and yes, that would be an overrepresentation..and brown probably wont want that...it's economics, law of diminishing return...so it's totally unfair for a big school to be compared with a small schools in terms of percentages...

and where do you find the statistics? if you are talking about the wall street journal thing with ivies and 3 top colleges, that doesnt help arguing for your cause...remember, at least i know at hotchkiss, and probably more so at choate (since they are bigger), our college office constantly encourages us to look past the rankings for 2 reasons:
1) rankings really mean nothing
2) They gotta spread out the applicants...we got way too many kids applying to the obvious ones....imagine...35 kids applying to wharton ED this year...ridiculous... they constantly try to spread everyone out.....this is not as crucial as a small school like STA..simply becoz...you dont have as many applicants, and schools wont mind taking a few from STA, it's a decent school afterall....

so there you go

bearcats

oh and i dont mean to spark another which school's better debate... those are pointless..different schools for different people

soccerprep92

Bearcats the acceptance number Petersons gave is misleading becuase St Albans starts in 4th grade. The elementary school to NCS and St Albans is Beauvoir, and pretty much every child from Beauvoir gets in. However, to get into Beauvoir is very difficult and has admission acceptance rates equal to some of the best pre schools in NYC. Everyone knows that getting into 9th grade is much harder than getting into 4th. Therefore, the 95 percent admission rate for 4th graders and the sub 20 percent admission rate for 9-12 grades, make for a relatively high admission rate. If you want to compare Choate/Hotchkisses admission rates to St. Albans, you can only use 9-12 grade admission rates.

Also your explanation for why big schools have a less percentage of matriculation compared to small schools contradicts Wall Street Journal. National Cathedral School, 75 girls in a graduating class, has the same matriculation rate (30) as Andover with 300 people in a graduating class. Clearly, some of the ivies ARE willing to take 15 kids to a certain Ivy.

D'yer Maker

Be true to your school...

This thread is even more inane than the "What are my chances?" and "If you can choose" threads because everyone is so uptight and defensive and disproportionately serious about comparisons that, in this case, they think they're actually qualified to make...and in universal terms no less.

I'm holding out for the YouTube clips of the post-game rumble after Choate and St. Albans meet in the College Counselors' Cup, where students prove that their schools' matriculation reports are better than anyone else's. With tempers flaring from some message board smack-talking, security for this year's CCC will be particularly tight: "Whoa! You can't bring your slide-rule in here, Dexter! That's a demerit!"

bearcats

National Cathedral School, 75 girls in a graduating class, has the same matriculation rate (30) as Andover with 300 people in a graduating class. Clearly, some of the ivies ARE willing to take 15 kids to a certain Ivy.

then i will go on and say andover has a more amazing college admissions stats than NCS becoz of the bigger graduating class

soccerprep92

I don't get your logistics but okay. gobulldogs, are you applying to St Albans?

bearcats

um...that's basic logic.... assuming a top notch high school has 10000 kids, do you think it's as easy to have a 30% ivy matriculation (3000 kids) as a high school of 10 kids , 30% = 3 kids to ivies ?
this is an extreme case...but it's true. size matters.. colleges dont like overrepresentation from one school unless there's extra incentive for them to let that happen....

therefore it's easier for a small school to have a higher matriculation percentage than a big school...

crh08

thx for sticking w/ me bearcats...really appreciate it...ok so soccerprep is right, Beauvoir is a feeder to STA and the admit rate is very high from there, I came from Beauvoir too...BUT bearcats' other numbers are right...the ivy thing especially...it is a blessing at Choate/Hotchkiss, etc when 10 kids out of a pool of 46 applicants got into Brown last year at Choate...I highly doubt that 46 kids out of STA's graduating class are applying to brown, and if they did, the number admitted would be much lower than if 10 apply and 4 or 5 get in...also, STA has a TON of recruited athletes, esp. lacrosse, so you need to consider that when looking at college matriculation...a lot are going to Ivy X because that ivy happened to need a good lacrosse player...gobulldogs are you applying to STA? and soccerprep, are you in my grade? (08)

crh08

Oh, and to soccerprep's thing about STA's "lower" admit rate...they must let in about 18 new kids in 9th grade as most stay from lower school into upper...so that is why it is so low...and add to that that their pool is probably no more than 100 apps for 9th, whereas choate gets close to 2000 apps for ninth to fill a class of 200...

soccerprep92

Yes, they take about 18 new kids and this year they have over a hundred applying. If you say that Choate has a admit rate of 10% for 9th grade, then obviously something is either wrong with your numbers or with Beacats, since he said 32%..

D'yer Maker

Admission rate and acceptance rate. Not the same thing.

2000 applicants. 200 seats (admitted). 640 accepted.

10% admitted. 32% accepted.

I have no idea if these are accurate numbers, but they're not inconsistent.

You guys really need to get a room if you're going to carry on this "my school is better than yours" p!ssing contest.

bearcats

PETERSONS WRONG..THE acceptance rate according to choate website is 23%

crh08

yes, they do take 18, i didnt make that up,

crh08

and soccerprep, are you in the class of 08? you never answered me