Anecdote: hyper competitive public HS vs. merely above age & placement into CHYMPS

Applying to College
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<p>Here is an interesting contrast between two public schools in Southern California. One scores off the charts (977 out of 1000 – I believe the highest in the state) in California’s annual standardized testing, while the other scores 781 out of 1000, which I think is around 75th percentile.</p>

<p>The first, Oxford Academy, is a public Charter 7-12 school in Orange County. It appears to operate like an elite private school with rigorous curriculum standards and a high minimum GPA to remain enrolled. Median SATs are mid 600s. Virtually all go on to four year colleges. Graduating class of about 200. One college counselor for every 80 graduating seniors. <a href=“http://www.oxfordacademy.us%5B/url%5D”>www.oxfordacademy.us</a></p>

<p>The second, Palisades High School, is a public Charter High School the coastal LA area. Pali High is about half bussed and half local kids as part of LA Unified’s effort to balance over and under crowded schools. Median SATs are low-mid 500s. Half the students go on to four year colleges, 445% to two year. Graduating class of about 500. One college counselor for every 125 graduating seniors. <a href=“http://www.palihigh.org%5B/url%5D”>www.palihigh.org</a></p>

<p>I noticed Oxford in trying to answer the question: “How well do Palihigh students do on these standardized tests in comparison to other public High Schools students in CA?” This link allows one to get to the results for all schools in CA. When I noticed a higher scoring school, I simply clicked on the title “Peer Group” to find even higher scoring schools, and so on. They don’t actually make it easy! <a href=“http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/apireports.asp[/url]”>http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/apireports.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here’s what caught my eye and surprised me a little – with approx. equal number of graduates in 2007 going to four year colleges from each school, I had expected the Oxford Academy to hand their students off to a greater number to the CHYMPS (HYPSM + Caltech) type colleges than Palihigh does. I was wrong. Looking at both Palihigh and OA’s websites, I find that OA sent students to two of the CHYMPS (HY), and Palihi to four – CYMS. Expanding to the rest of the Ivies, OA adds Brown & Dartmouth, while Palihi adds Brown only, still leaving Palihi with placement into more CHYMPS + rest of Ivy, than OA does.</p>

<p>The moral of the story is, I believe/hope, in accordance with an idea I noted in the book Harvard Schmarvard, that a student attending an only above average public high school need not despair that they are not attending a private elite school, or a public school with extremely high testing students. They have just as much chance to attend a hyper selective school as does a student from a public high school whose students test on average #1 in the state.</p>

<p>Agree or disagree?</p>

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<p>Palisades is probably a split school with the high income (is that in Pacific Palisades which is darn rich) high achievers in one camp and the rest not in that league. It’s two schools in one like Garfield in Seattle and Evanston HS in Evanston IL.</p>

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<p>barrons, the Palihi testing on the CA website does break out Asian, White, Black, Hispanic, Native American and other subclasses. The local population is about 85% white, 10% Asian, and 5% other.</p>

<p>Assuming very few of the bussed kids are white or asian (a pretty good assumption), the Asian subscore is 846. and by cooincidence so is the white subscore 846.</p>

<p>Compare this with the Oxford Academy subscores of 984 for Asian and 974 for white.</p>

<p>P.S. I reread Oxford’s website and they accept the top 200 kids each year from about 700 applicants, based it appears mostly on testing prowess.</p>

<p>In other words, it is hard to break out any way in which the Oxford Academy kids don’t score about 100 points higher than the Palihigh kids on this state of CA scale, yet their placement into CHYMPS appears less successful.</p>

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<p>great. 10</p>

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<p>My answer is that both schools belong to a category “schools that do not send their students to CHYPMS”. Simple as that. SAT scores of mid-600s are pretty low for an elite school. And 1% students going to Iview is equally very low. To me it means that there are few exceptional kids in each school and only these kids go to CHYPMS. My prediction is that these schools will differ greatly in the % of kids they send to good schools BELOW CHYPMS.</p>

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<p>The thing with public schools is you will get a mixed batch of students. There is a diversity among all aspects, including intellectual interest. I attend a public school in California that may not score that high on standardized testing because of our OVERALL average. But with 3,000+ students, and a graduating student class of 700+, we do have a great number attending prestigious universities. In the early decision round this year, 3 into Yale, 2 into Stanford, 1 into Caltech, 3 into MIT, 2 into Penn, and the list continues. While an elite private school can definitely assist the college admissions process, it is ultimately up to the individual (or should be).</p>

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<p>citymom, that is correct. I think what surprised me is that the very high scoring school didn’t do any better than the only above average school, with about the same # of graduating seniors.</p>

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<p>I attend Palisades Charter High and it is pretty darn competitive. Yes you guys are right in that its a split school. There are many blacks and hispanics in our school and no offense to anyone, but they lower our mean SAT scores and API scores. However, our AP and honor classes are intense and many of them have 100% pass rate on AP exams. My honors math analysis class was crazy. Ten people dropped out after 1st semester and everyone who stayed for second semester got 800’s on SAT II math (even the ones with D’s). </p>

<p>Anyways, we have huge number of kids getting into ivy, stanford, mit, and other high caliber schools and over 50+ to UCLA/Berkeley each year. I am sure our AP program (we offer 20+ AP classes) are much better than that of other schools. In many of our AP classes, it is actually embarassing to get a score below 5 on the AP exam. However, only like 70 kids are actively involved in the AP program and so our school is very underrated. Our school won 2nd in the state in acadec (beat last year’s national champions) and won the state recently in envirothon. And you guys do know CA is a competitive state in terms of academic competitions.</p>

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<p>PCHS is by no means a merely above average school. The students in APs are overly competitive (I’ve seen kids not tell what the hw is to their friends because they want to have the higher grades). In all of our AP and honors classes, we are ranked by grades and sometimes we call each other by our ranks instead of our names. No kidding. </p>

<p>High school rankings do not mean anything. Many schools in US are split schools like our schools and so we are underrated. I am sure if the students taking AP classes are regarded as a separate group of students, our API scores will be nearly 1000 with 95% getting into top 25 schools in US.</p>

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<p>I assume you meant 44.5% :p</p>

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<p>Considering that 700+ is 97th percentile (roughly so for each subject), I hardly think so. 650*3 = 1950 is already around the 90th percentile, which qualifies as “elite” IMO.</p>

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<p>Is that your impression, or are you sure? No one bothers to take a full ride from a state school? </p>

<p>Because IMO if a school sends 95% of its AP students to <em>only</em> top 25 schools, that tells me something is possibly wrong with its culture, whose students are unable to appreciate great opportunities from other schools (which is not always “dumbing down” – many schools ranked lower have excellent programmes in certain areas that “top 25” are unable to match, and this applies especially for arts/music schools).</p>

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<p>I’m wondering if there is a legacy issue in play, with Pali having more students who are legacies at the top colleges than Oxford. Also, and this may be cynical, but does Oxford have many more Asian students than Pali among its academic upper echelon?; it has certainly been suggested that ORM’s have a harder time with elite private college admissions at first tier schools. Do you happen to have figures for # of Pali vs. Oxford students accepted to UCB or UCLA, where legacy and ORM seem to have less of an impact?</p>

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<p>galoisien, how can I be sure when I am talking hypothetically. Of course it is just my impression. But the students who are actively involved in AP programs generally do well in school and most of them do go on to top 25 schools in US.</p>

<p>Nester, legacy issue is not in play. Many of the kids who do well in our school are Asian and white kids who bus it from a relatively bad neighborhoods (compared to palisades). Frankly the kids from palisades are generally spoiled with rich cars who don’t care about school. I know last year we had about 60-70 kids to admitted to Berkeley/UCLA, but I don’t know the figures for Oxford.</p>

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<p>Are you drawing this statement based on your friends, or…?</p>

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<p>There are about 2800 students in our school. And there are about 700 juniors and 657 seniors. Our school posts where all the seniors are going by mid-April, so I know how many and who is going which schools. Like I said previously, only about 70 kids in each grade (excluding freshmen since no APs and honors offered 9th grade) are actively involved in the AP program. And of the 70 seniors this year, basically all of them got into UCLA/Cal and more than 30 to ivy and other ivy caliber schools. So I am not generalizing at all. My statement was based on facts.</p>