<p>Back to topic… From the limited data we have access to, it seems the low admit rate/high yield is correlated with high ivy/top college matriculation. For example, last year, Andover, Deerfield and SPS were three schools with the lowest admit rate and highest yield, and it so happens that they are the ones with excellent matriculatin records as well. Not sure if that holds true for other schools. Attrition rate is hard to come by.</p>
<p>Thacher’s yield was 83%, admit rate 19% and attrition is <1%. I think that Andover, Deerfield and SPS may have lower admit rates, but I’m pretty sure that their yields aren’t as good. All schools know their attrition rates, although they may keep the results a secret if they don’t like the number. Obviously, I like Parlabane’s thesis since it generally matches my own and lends credibility to my constant (and annoying?) refrain that Thacher is every bit the equal of its New England brethren.</p>
<p>ThacherParent, stop kidding yourself. I don’t want to be mean but in the past 4 years they have sent 5 kids to Yale and fewer than 3 to Harvard and Princeton each (I choose these not for prestige but low acceptance rates). Their low attrition rate can be attributed to being one of very few boarding schools on the West Coast. 4 years would be their full enrollment so about 235 kids. At Groton, the closest “top” school on the East Coast in size, at 350, five years produced 27 to Harvard, 14 to Princeton, and 14 at Yale.</p>
<p>alelu…you make my point for me, although I’m quite sure you think you make it for yourself. Such a caricature too: unpleasant, snobby, and wholly self-satisfied.</p>
<p>and the pot calls the kettle…</p>
<p>If boarding schools with the lowest admit rate seem to have the highest matriculation to Harvard, Yale, etc. it isn’t always because they “make” Ivy competitive students - it’s because the are predisposed to select those students who are already on track to qualify. </p>
<p>So parents pushing to get into a competitive BS hoping the school will put their kids on track are fooling themselves. Because what gets ignored in the data is the converse - that the majority of kids at these schools do NOT go to Ivy’s.</p>
<p>Kind of like the speculation about qualifications for MIT. I was reading a college thread on this board about which high school sends the most students to MIT. It’s a public school in Virginia (22-24 admits each year).</p>
<p>So all this speculation on “which is better” doesn’t mean it will work for YOUR kid. Which is why the data is flawed. For instance, if 90% of the students matriculating to Ivy’s from a top BS are legacies, or full pay kids, or kids of corporate leaders and politicians - would it change your view of the value for your own child if you are not?</p>
<p>Just saying - - - you get the data the schools want you to have, but not necessarily the data you need to make the right decision for the family. And at $50 to $100 a pop for application fees - and $100+ a pop for an SSAT - parents have turned this whole thing into a growth industry fueled by dreams 80-90% of the BS applicants will never achieve.</p>
<p>i guess i have to disagree. although i think that college targeting is not the best (or even a good) reason to select a boarding school, there are matriculation stats which say that many more than 10-20% of the the top bs kids do quite well with college acceptances.</p>
<p>from PA and SPS, about 62% of the kids go on to top colleges (the top 1% of colleges)</p>
<p>about 80% go on to strong colleges (the top 2% of colleges)</p>
<p>note that i’m purposely not getting into the ivies game. there are lots of top bs kids and parents who’d much prefer colleges like middlebury, bowdoin, williams, etc.</p>
<p>I certainly hope not, JayPeeh; if so, truly sorry. I’ve always been positive about Thacher’s stats on yield and attrition (and acceptance rates too) because I think that they reflect well on the School and its mission. How can college matriculation stats be so important to an argument for a school’s excellence and attrition/yield dismissed so easily, (assuming the schools have low acceptance rates)? It sort of goes to Parlabane’s original point that for most people on this site the only true measure of a boarding school’s quality is Ivy/like matriculation and that “fit” or yield/attrition is really just a nice sound-bite.</p>
<p>Thacherparent, I understand where you are from, but after all you’ve been through on this forum, don’t you think it’s fair to say that Thacher as a great school located in the west coast has a somewhat different audience than the prep schools in the east that are often mentioned here?</p>
<p>Quantifying “fit” is similar to “predicting the stock market” as both involve psychology of the human mind. On a cold day I find hot coffee a fit and on a hot day I find iced tea a fit :)</p>
<p>This has been an interesting thread for me. It’s confirmed that the average prep school parent on this site depends primarily on college matriculation stats to determine excellence. I wonder whether there is a cultural/ethnic component that accounts for some of the intensity. Benley, you make an interesting point (although slightly confusing). Are you saying that yield and attrition are not as important as college matriculation stats when defining boarding school excellence or just that the West Coast schools are lower quality? Thacherparent, does that school publish its attrition rate? I’ve never seen any school do that. </p>
<p>Thanks for the interesting responses all. For those who celebrate Easter, Happy Easter!</p>
<p>My parents are actually against the whole bs -> better college thing. I guess I mentioned that if I went to bs I would have a greater chance at better colleges than I would at my public school and my parents were angry because they said that I would get as good of an education at my public school (not true). Now they think that the main reason I want to go to a bs is because of the college matriculation data and are for some reason are against that.</p>
<p>I think that admit rate, together with average SSAT tells a lot about a school’s student body, and is helpful to students in finding their fit. It also indicatess whether the school can hand pick the students that most fit to the school community.</p>
<p>I didn’t have a clear point on yield. It looks to me that a high yield has something to do with the perception of an excellent college matriculation records. Because of that “noise”, it’s hard to single out yield and analyze its effect. On college matriculation data itself, I agree with you - it has little to do with “fit”. </p>
<p>As for Thacher, I think that with so many boarding schools of all kinds in the east coast, not many families from the east would apply to a school in the west coast. Students from places closer to CA, or from somewhere that makes traveling to east coast and west west not much different are more likely to choose to apply to Thacher. Because of the different “audience”, a direct comparison is not totally appropriate.</p>
<p>things like matriculation stats, average ssat, average sat, etc. may not say anything directly about the school per se, but those data do speak loudly about the intellectual strength and academic discipline of a bs’s student body - and the strength of its student body is the most important strength of any bs - imho.</p>
<p>the fact that thatcher’s yield is 6% higher than andover’s is probably only re-affirming that thatcher is unique in being a horsey school that is also academically good - or possibly that thatcher is one of only 2 wc bs’s that are academically strong - or possibly both. overall, however, i am more impressed with andover’s 77% yield because it has many more peer schools than thatcher does.</p>
<p>a 1% attrition rate compared to a 10-15% attrition rate probably has some significant underlying causes. however, i don’t think the differences between 1%, 2%, and 3% attrition rates is necessarily significant at all. in fact, the 2% rate could be suggesting something positive, such as that the school is less tolerant of substance abuse violations, etc.</p>
<p>finally, to suggest that applicant and parental concerns about “fit” are just meaningless “sound bites” is arrogant, condescending, and just a plainly mean-spirited bleat from one who prefers to sweep counter-indicating quantitative metrics under the rug.</p>
<p>One thing to think about when looking at stats is “where” are the applicants come from. For instance, on the USA map at Exeter my daughter was the only “lowly” pin from our part of the midwest. Most of the pins were clustered in NE with the second highest group being California. Clustered is an understatement. There was no room for more pins in some areas.</p>
<p>So - when a parent looks at matriculation, for instance, wouldn’t a school with a large percentage of applicants coming from surrounding states be more inclined to see NE colleges as top options, whereas students coming from the East coast (or attending schools there) would also be looking at schools such as Stanford or Cal Tech?</p>
<p>So stats - without the raw data behind them - are often misleading.</p>
<p>One thing is true - schools with higher matriculation to top colleges may be cherry picking and steering. So it’s important to ask - how many students like MY child are in that category? And what does the school look for that includes or exclues your child during admissions decisions? </p>
<p>People look at high stats and see “better choice” but may not see that those stats won’t necessarily be inclusive.</p>
<p>Still - for me - the converse is true. Coming from the midwest, no one spoke of Harvard, MIT, Cornell, etc. It was considered scandalous to even consider moving away from home let alone go to what many people considered “uppity” schools (based only on what they saw in a movie, etc.) So my first exposure that I was “entitled” to apply to schools like that was a middle school teacher who brought them to my attention and who suggested going to a BS would help keep those schools on my radar because it was a foregone conclusion for my new peers. He was right.</p>
<p>So I guess I’m contradicting myself - but sometimes I think parents see BS as a miracle pathway to a HADES type college. When - in the end - the only thing that matters in a stat is whether that specific child can get into BS and - once in - can then fit the profile of a matriculating student for those colleges.</p>
<p>I know OP is trying to evaluate the usefulness of admit rate, yield and attrition rate vs. college matriculation data as an indicator of “fit”. There may be a conclusion but I doubt it would be useful practically. First of all, attrition rate is almost never something that’s been accurately calculated and disclosed. Secondly, yield has so much to do with options available to admitted students, FA, and college matriculation record (when everything else is “equal”, wouldn’t you want a school with better college matriculation history anyway?). Thirdly, even if admit/yield is a better indicator of “fit” than college data, it hardly makes any difference when you rely on one or the other as a guidance, because if you “rank” the schools by admit rate/yield, and by college matriculation records using the most widely known metrics (i.e. ivies or US News ranking), you’d probably get two similar lists of schools - not exactly the same but similar (Thacher may be an exception). It seems that schools, like the students they are looking for, have to be well-roundedly brilliant to make their ways to the top. :)</p>
<p>First of all, “fit” is not the stats. It is not how many kids go to Ivy’s, SAT scores or anything else. It is how you “feel.” And the “things” that make the school the best choice for your child. i don’t happen to care if 25% of a graduating class goes to IVY’s+MIT. If the school does not have the right environment for my child it is not the right “fit.” I can’t measure that. Seems like that is not what this topic is about.<br>
But it is, first, how you feel when you walk on campus. Then you factor in things like - do you want block schedules or not? Dress code or no? Family style meals important? Study hall or “suggested” study time? Strong athletics or stronger arts? Rural or not…</p>
<p>
Yes, according to the person I spoke to, these are not accurate. MAny with scores on the SSAT of 99+ were lower on the SAT than those who score in the 60’s and 70’s on the SSAT. And, the SSAT was therefore, not a correlation to the type of college you got in to.
Note, this was one school. I would be very interested in this study at others. But I’d bet it is similar, this school has pretty high achieving students.</p>
<p>Also - remember, that an Adcom told me that SSAT’s are heavily influenced by the large number of kids being drilled and prepped for the tests and prepped for the application process. It’s becoming a major industry. So the “high” test scores sometimes have underlying reason having nothing to do with the academic skill of the applicant.</p>
<p>Exie- What you just said is something the HADES school should realize because scoring well on the SSAT is the ability to memorize stuff you read in a book and reading it over and over again. Each school should make their own entrance exam that you cannot study for in my opinion.</p>
<p>You know - that might not be a bad thing. My daughter’s public school has its own entrance exam because we discovered that many parents were having their kids tested with outside consultants and the numbers didn’t match their performance as students once admitted.</p>
<p>Also, when my daughter’s band competed at the state competition - I didn’t realize there were two components. The first - the students played pieces they had practiced all year under the direction of the band leader. Then, they went to a separate room where they had to “sight read” a brand new piece of music written especially for that year’s competition. The music changed keys often and the band had to play as a group to get a score.</p>
<p>So it would be intriguing to see how that changed the landscape. It might also cut down on the number of applicants that apply to multiple schools.</p>
<p>But ya know - there are huge dollars in the test prep industry. I wouldn’t put it past prep companies to plant students to mine the data so they could “break the code.”</p>