Can "Fit" Be Quantified?

Prep School Admissions
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<p>What is the meaning of superior results in these three areas:</p>

<p>Acceptance Rate
Yield
Attrition</p>

<p>Does excellence in these areas indicate the quality of an admission’s team? Does it indicate how well matched the students are to the School? Is there an argument to be made that these stats are more important, equally important, or less important than college matriculation stats?</p>

<p>Lately, I’ve begun to think that these stats are equally and maybe more important than the HYP/LAC/SSAT stats. Perhaps acceptance rate/yield/attrition are more likely to indicate a the health of a community.</p>

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<p>I absolutely agree. I have sat scratching my head many times over discussion on college matriculations, pondering their meaning. I fully realize that many, many people seem to think they should be the basis for determining a school’s worth. I just don’t understand why those figures seem to trump the ones you mentioned.</p>

<p>Yield and Attrition rate - The admissions team picks kids who want them the most and who have what it takes to succeed, along with proper advising.</p>

<p>Selectivity - They are in the position to hand pick from a large pool of qualified applicants. </p>

<p>SSAT - ties directly into SAT and thus to being “in the running” for HYP et al. It gives a rough (sometimes very rough) idea of the academic horsepower of the student body.</p>

<p>I would probably add % on FA in as well, as this tells me that a school is in the position to admit the kids that it wants, regardless of money. I’m sure there are plenty of schools that would have stronger numbers and college matric if they could take all the non-wealthy kids who would no doubt make them proud. Some schools just don’t have the funds to do that. However, if a school uses FA just to recruit ringers for their teams, that’s a different story entirely.</p>

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<p>No. That’s the short answer. I’m also not a fan of relying on college matriculation rates to judge the health of a community.</p>

<p>You forget the “Tufts Effect.” I have reason to believe that schools vary in the degree to which they value yield. If they value yield a great deal, they will offer admission to students they believe will be most likely to accept their offer. That’s an outright gaming of the statistics. If you accept the students most likely to attend, you don’t need to accept as many. That increases your selectivity and yield. It doesn’t mean that you’re a better school than a school which accepts the students it thinks are the best fit, whether or not they’ve written a first choice letter.</p>

<p>Attrition is a difficult factor to judge from the outside. If a school wants low attrition rates, then it won’t admit any middle-class kids. After all, their parents might decide they can’t afford BS after a year or two. Far better to stick with wealthy families. Oh, and grade inflation would be a perennial temptation. Wouldn’t want anyone to flunk out–that would increase attrition rates. </p>

<p>Lastly, if a school has a code of conduct, it’s a very bad thing if it’s neglected in practice. If a school is dealing with teenagers, however, some will make bad decisions. A school which never suspends or expels students might be populated by angels–or it might mean that a blind eye is turned to bad behavior.</p>

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<p>Very good points, Periwinkle. </p>

<p>It’s one of the reasons that I value this forum. There are always perspectives that I hadn’t considered.</p>

<p>There is indeed a lot to consider in this discussion. My thoughts have evolved since first starting this journey and no doubt they will continue to evolve over the years as I gain experience as long as I keep an open mind.</p>

<p>But I still agree that the stats that parlabane cited are better than college matric. But I tend to look at EVERYTHING before college stats! :)</p>

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<p>I think stats are useful. They can be misleading, though, because we don’t have all the information. The most prominent boarding schools are very strong institutions, and their strong stats reflect that strength. </p>

<p>I’m always wary of unintended consequences, though. For example, some schools have huge endowments, which allow them to charge tuitions which don’t cover their costs. They are also able to recruit strong students who wouldn’t be able to afford a private education. Those are wonderful and laudable aspects of those schools. It doesn’t, however, mean that a comparison between schools with large endowments and schools with small endowments would be valid if it didn’t take the effect of endowment into account. </p>

<p>I also think that an over reliance on stats leads to very bad practices. Look at the distorting effect the ranking of colleges has had on colleges, as a whole. Admissions becomes a numbers game, and one could argue that some colleges put a lot of money and effort into artificially inflating the number of applicants in order to turn them down. It boost the college’s ranking, you see. That’s not honest, it’s not ethical, and they should be ashamed of themselves.</p>

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<p>Manipulating data/stats is despicable, but no one can deny that attracting more students to apply to a school (hence the low admit rate) helps the school choose the best students they want, or the students that they think would best “fit” in the school community. The students in turn have a better chance to find the school their “fit” as the selection has become mutual. Admit rate, together with average SSAT scores, average class ranking etc. can be used help a student find the school they’d academically be challenged and socially feel at home. </p>

<p>Yield is tricker but in this economy it has a lot to do with the FA offered, which is why schools with larger endowment and generous FA budget almost always have an advantage. For full pay students or students receiving little FA, the school’s reputation plays a role and yes the few thousand dollar cheaper in tuition makes a difference too. So, I think yield works to the school’s advantage (they get their first picks) but not necessarily mean more students find their fit.</p>

<p>College matriculation is whole different animal. It’s much more complicated. I don’t think one can use that to find a fit. If anything, it shows the strength of the student body - unless the “feeder school” effect still exists in some fashion (L’ville and Priceton come to mind).</p>

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<p>I think stats are helpful to a point - but a lot of people who base their decisions on them have since skewed the data. The more “perceived” value the community sees, the more they want it. Hence in a bad economy, the applications actually go up not down making the yield seem more selective.</p>

<p>Schools are decidedly concerned with those stats because it attracts good students and wealthy parents (note that most schools - the majority of students are full-pay.). </p>

<p>But looked at another way - if the stats for a school are high - say a large percentage of student matriculate to Ivy League schools - they are still misleading without additional data. How many of those students came from public schools, inner city schools, middle class families, are first-generation college? If the majority matriculating to Harvard, for instance, are predisposed to go before being admitted to prep school (parents are highly educated, legacy, wealthy, etc.) then the stats mean absolutely nothing for a kid not coming from that environment.</p>

<p>Having said that (and before people are horrified) . . . I came from an urban area where Harvard and MIT weren’t on the radar. My middle school math teacher encouraged me to apply to prep school because he saw MIT in my future and wanted me prepped for that. Best advice I ever got even as the community was scandalized (see - in the midwest - sending a kid to a BS is usually seen as a punishment for bad behavior)</p>

<p>My daughter - who wants to be prepped for an IVY (whether she goes or not - I want it to be her choice, not that she can’t qualify) is choosing to go to BS because her urban school doesn’t have the resources that a BS does.</p>

<p>So it can work many ways - opens an opportunity for a kid who wouldn’t ordinarily get the chance - or a conduit for kids who would be going no matter WHERE they attended high school. And the stats don’t tell you that.</p>

<p>But caveat - yield doesn’t mean those kids who are accepted are “better.” Just means there were many qualified candidates and not enough space. But it also means the schools are very adept at creating a “panache” that drives enormous numbers of people to their door allowing them to “cherry pick” students predisposed to going to top colleges and ignoring those with potential who haven’t already passed an arbitrary threshhold (scores, ec’s sports, etc.).</p>

<p>Which is why I tell people to forget stats and look at fit. Because the best fit school might not be the one that only takes 1% of its admissions pool.</p>

<p>For instance, the Governors Academy video shows kids matriculating to MIT, Cornell, etc. It means you can get a great education there, meet academically capable kids there, - and yet it hardly gets talked about on the boards. Taft is the same way. So a part of me is glad that while everyone is chasing the same “stats” we were able to identify - with the help of my alum friends - schools with equally good programs that were flying under the radar. Even my colleagues at Exeter had good things to say about those two schools. </p>

<p>If my kid gets into a good college - it’s because she’s smart, had supportive parents helping her find the path there and a school that can provide the appropriate academic support.</p>

<p>Nothing else really matters, does it?</p>

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<p>Topic title - can “fit” be quantified? NO. Fit is different for every child. What is a good fit for my son is not for my daughter. </p>

<p>I do not believe that the “stats” make a good school. Lots of the reasons have already been stated.</p>

<p>Neato you said:

Actually…one of the school visits we took, our admissions professional told us that they actually might not. That they did a study, at their school, and took the seniors, where they were going to college, their SAT scores and then went back to their SSAT scores. And they were actually surprised to find that they did not see a statistically solid pattern of high SSAT scores getting high SAT and thus the “better” colleges. It was all over the place. To be fair, that is just one school, but I would be interested to see if others have done such a study and what the results were.</p>

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<p>I agree with there is not always correlation between SAT and SSAT. On the school review site there was at least one school we considered that stood out as having much higher SAT’s than SSAT’s. Cant remember which one it was, but I imagine they’re doing something right.</p>

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<p>Linda S, Would this mean the estimated score of what you are going to get on your SAT that they put on your SSAT is not accurate?</p>

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<p>It think when the correlation falls outside the expected, the SAT is higher than what the SSAT predicted. A good school will do that. ;)</p>

<p>I doubt (but have no proof) that the converse is true.</p>

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<p>I’ve come away from months and months of discussion on this site believing that the combination of acceptance rate, yield and attrition – taken together - are better indicators of a top school than SSAT/SAT and IVY LAC matriculation.</p>

<p>There are two central objectives of our boarding school decisions: the quality of our child’s entire educational experience inside and outside the classroom and the number and kind of post-secondary schools graduated students attend. Almost every adult on this site will say that both are important, but, when push comes to shove, it is the latter measure that most parents will say constitutes the “top” designation. In fact, most of the BS ranking on this site is based on IVY/LAC matriculations.</p>

<p>If you look at Lawrenceville’s postings (our resident stats-meister), he disclaims again and again that they alone do not tell the whole story. (“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”) If there were really other measures that we parents felt were better indicators of a top school, we would celebrate them instead. The idea of “fit” is given lip service by some, scoffed at by others as the refuge of the almost-rans, and generally valued only as a secondary filter. There does seem to be a tiny percentage who actually put that less definable measure at the top of their decision-making process. Interestingly, they tend to be the educators themselves or those involved someway in the admissions process.</p>

<p>In my view, a “top” school designation cannot be made in the absence of acceptance rate, yield and attrition stats. It is the mix of these stats, not the IVY-LAC results, that tell me how well the School knows itself and its students, what kind of job the admission’s team does to match the student to the community, and how well those matches survive four years of rigorous academic and boarding life. If “fit” could be quantified, it would have much more to do with these stats than any other.</p>

<p>Some claim that attrition and yield are manipulated by the top boarding schools. However, it’s hard to see how any school accepting, say, fewer than 20% of its applicants would/could “cook those books”. On the contrary, schools that competitive can proudly point to excellent yield and attrition results as indicators of the health of their community and the fit of their students to the school. If a highly selective school has great yield and attrition results, that’s a school I want to know more about.</p>

<p>Maybe someone can compile acceptance rate, yield and attrition stats on the top 20 or 30 schools.</p>

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<p>Of course some parts of fit can be quantified. This link shows you how the Ivys have a 20% cap on Asian Americans.
[Asianlife.com</a> - Magazine](<a href=“Asianlife.com - Magazine”>Asianlife.com - Magazine)</p>

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<p>There was a guy who sued Princeton because of its discrimination against Asian Americans in the application process.</p>

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<p>Interesting point on “fit.” Maybe we should be paying more attention to yield and attrition than we do. Mamalion, I get the complaint about prejudice. Are you claiming the same problem occurs at boarding schools as colleges? And are you talking about Asian applicants from their native countries or Asian Americans?</p>

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<p>There was a good-ending to the story. The kid ended up going to harvard instead.</p>

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<p>Yeah. The story is famous lol</p>

<p>I guess we’re taking about Asian Americans. On almost every list of national/international academic contests, we see mostly Indian/Chinese/Korean last names. But why they only represent 15% of the student body? They’re all American citizens who pay taxes!</p>

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<p>Well, what percentage do these nationalities represent in the U.S.? And how does this have to do with fit?</p>

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<p>I do think Asian Americans deserve more spots. </p>

<p>Sorry. I know…I didn’t make a point. </p>

<p>Can anyone post a link about the percentage of Asian American applications in the whole pool?
(but we all know that Asian parents are obsessed with prestige. So I bet there are LOTS of people applying to, let’s say, the HYP)</p>

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<p>Oh and…
It’s not about “fit”. (sorry for being off-topic)
I was taking about…see the last post on the 1st page. It’s a link about how colleges mean to admit fewer Asian Americans just like what they did to Jews in the 50s.</p>