If a student has to choose between Cate and Peddie, which one would be a better choice? Your advice and information is appreciated and will really help my DS make a decision. Thank you.
hi behappy10-your question is a bit tough to answer without knowing how much you and your DS already know about the two schools, what factors are important to your DS and your family etc etc. Short answer in the abstract is they are both excellent schools and your DS will not go wrong either way. Long answer is i dont know that much about Peddie but do know alot about Cate as my DS goes there. It is a terrific school. DS also got into Peddie and some of the other schools in the East. But Cate made sense for a variety of reasons eg very small (about half the size i think of Peddie)-which of course may be a positive or negative for others, high percentage of boarders, location and climate etc. and a number of other factors. So, you and your DS have to focus on the factors that are important to you all that distinguish the schools. i am sure they exist as the schools are no doubt quite different in many ways once you investigate.
Thank you for your reply Carp88. We are looking a school that will help and prepare the kids better to get into Ivy League Universities. More serious preppy atmosphere. Basically would one of the schools be a better choice in that respect? Is there difference between attending a prep school on the East vs West coast for the top Ivy League college admissions ?
There is plenty of information available re matriculation for different schools. You can get it from school websites and also other rankings put out by third parties. Based on Cate’s website and data from last year, it sends about 15% of kids to ivy/mit/stanford, probably about 40% to “top schools” ie top 25 nationally ranked plus top 15 liberal arts and 65% or more to “strong schools” ie top 50 and top 30. These top and strong designations are not mine or Cate’s. They come from rankings of colleges and universities…and are to a certain extent of course nonsense. Cate is in California and and a higher proportion of the kids are less obsessed with the ivies than kids on the east coast. University of Chicago, USC, Stanford of course, Claremont Colleges inc Pomona, which few in the East know, Wash U, the LACs, Berkley etc etc are popular.
I would guess Cate is a bit stronger than Peddie re matriculation but dont know. And frankly dont think the distinctions matter much.
Anyway, for us it was enough to confirm generally that kids have the opportunity to go to excellent schools (the rest is just details). Other factors were more important to us.
And is the boarding school “getting these kids into” good schools? not really. kids with an avg of 85 on the SSAT and 2025 plus on SATs-Cates stats-are generally going to do ok most anywhere.
And these days -if one removes hooks like legacy etc-does a kid have a better chance getting into the ivies from a good boarding school as compared to a decent public or catholic school or (outside US) intl school? good argument chances are better from the local school or int’l school. Among other things, it is not easy do well in a good boarding school…someone has to finish in the bottom half of the class. And colleges want diversity etc etc and actually probably favour public and catholic schools in a sense.
So, I think it is a big mistake to look at boarding school as primarily a means to get into the ivy league. But that is just my view.
Ivy admit is not something you should place your bet on BS for. Even the BS with best Ivy admission record such as Andover, Exeter, Deerfield etc. is only sending up to 1/3 to Ivies+MS. The majority will still go on to non Ivy colleges. Will any of these schools help YOUR kid to get into an Ivy? So - don’t count on it! As for Cate and Peddie, while neither is among the prep schools that send most kids to Ivies, personally I think Peddie has some advatage due to its location, which is closer to Princeton, Penn and Columbia. The “problem” with Cate’s location is that that CA is just not an underrepresented area in Ivies, which negates the “georgraphic diversity” factor itnotherwis would have…
I agree with the general gist of panpacific’s post.
four points i would note.
First, if you want your kid to go to an ivy league school and that is your main motivating factor, does boarding school make sense? honestly it is probably easier to finish in the top 4 students in your average catholic or public high school than in the top 25 percent of andover exeter deerfield. And, I digress but if you can throw a football and are in the top 4 students in your rural high school in Iowa…you may do ok. So, boarding school is about the education and experience. This is actually quite different from the situation 60 years ago or perhaps even 40 years ago where going o x boarding school enhanced ones chances significantly of going to an ivy or y ivy league school ie these were feeder schools.
Second, one has to factor in the dirty little secret of college admissions…and…ah life…ie legacy (not to mention “development” status). what percentage of kids at exeter, andover st pauls (wont even mention lesser schools like deerfield or, oh my, Lawrenceville) are benefitting from this status?? answer: alot. how many? lets say 30-40 % of the kids who get in to ivies from these schools. A school like Cate has alot of ivy legacies but is it comparable to st pauls? no. And to be clear these days these legacy/development kids are actually quite talented (not like 60 years ago) but you know it is still a “some are more equal than others” situation.
So, anyway is your kid a legacy kid ie did you go to an ivy? are you a development ie really rich possibility? if not,adjust the admit rate accordingly.
Third, as I said, these school dont get your kid into an ivy. The kid does that. That said, i think these schools are good, probably better than public schools, in getting kids into good ie top 25-40 schools because of the quality of counseling etc.
finally, i do think it is true that regional affiliations/ feeder school relationships between boarding schools and colleges
live on,in a greatly diminished way… and a school like Peddie probably has some historical ties to the geographically close ivies that are better than Cate’s. On the flip side i would say that 5-6% of Cates graduating class this year is going to Stanford. How many schools in the world could say that? Anyway, this sort of regional/ feeder school stuff will go the way of the dinasaur.
so there you go.I m a typical parent who says they dont care about matriculation stuff then goes on about it.
I do think top boarding schools help in college admission and their matriculation records are excellent across the board, but I do not believe one should take Ivy admission as a primary goal of 3/4 years down the road when clearly only a minority of graduates from even the best BS go on to Ivy League colleges. It’s not so much of a “value judgement” than simple expectation management based on common sense of probability…
College admission aside, if you’re traveling far to either school, you cannot beat Cate’s location.
Totally agree with everyone that you should NOT be selecting your school because you think it’ll position your child for the most selective institutions. And as noted, it’s also virtually impossible to look at a school’s matriculation list and draw conclusions about what that will mean for your child because no school is going to tell you that the kids they sent to XYZ school were the children of the donor who just paid for the new library or that they were being recruited for their sport even before they showed up at BS. The director of admissions for one of the most highly selective LACs did say that in general, they like kids from BS because they are already are good at living and studying on their own and because they know that if they did well at a rigorous BS, they are well prepared for whatever college may throw at them.
With that said, the school that will best prepare your child for college is the one in which he/she can best figure out who he/she is – what makes him tick, how he learns best, what truly interests and excites him – and allow him/her to be the best possible version of that person. A college freshman who knows these things about himself (and how to keep figuring them out) is far less likely to make academic and social mistakes as a result of peer pressure and is more likely to be able to form bonds with professors and peers around things that are of genuine interest. In other words, that student can hit the ground running in college and extract as much from the experience as possible. The high school senior who can articulate that in his application has a huge edge in the college admissions process.
Pick the school in which your child will thrive. For some kids, this may mean picking a school where he can do what he already knows he loves (sport, theater, debate, etc.) For others, it may be important that the students be “forced” to do a lot of sampling, not just academically, but in terms of sports, arts, classes, etc. Will your child do better where it is more competitive or more collaborative? The four years of high school are pretty dramatic ones in terms of growth – physical, emotional, social. One of the greatest gifts you can give your child is the right environment in which to become the best version of him/herself – whoever that may be!