College Placement At Top Local Prep Schools--Lakeside School in Seattle

Parents Forum
1

Listed below is a list of college matriculations over a 5 year period (2015-2019) for the Lakeside School in Seattle, Washington.

https://www.lakesideschool.org/academics/college-counseling.

I have rearranged the list in descending order of number of matriculations per college or university. Only schools with 3 or more matriculations over the past 5 years are listed.

Typically, Lakeside reports 100% college matriculation for each graduating class of about 136 students.

About 29% matriculated at one of the 8 Ivy League schools or at Stanford or MIT.

The Lakeside School has 6 college advisors–one of whom specializes in “college essays”.

The head of college counseling graduated from Haverford College (2 students matriculated at Haverford over the past 5 years), while another is an alum of the University of Pennsylvania (14 matriculations), and another counselor earned his undergraduate degree at Stanford (26 recent matriculations).

39 Univ. of Washington

26 Stanford
23 USC
21 MIT
20 Columbia
20 NYU

18 Brown
17 Yale
16 Santa Clara
15 U Chicago
14 U Penn

13 Northwestern
13 Claremont McKenna College (CMC)
12 WashUStL
12 Harvard
12 Dartmouth

11 Georgetown
11 Scripps
10 Bowdoin
10 Pitzer

9 Pomona
9 Cornell
9 Harvey Mudd
9 Middlebury College

8 Princeton
8 UCal-Berkeley
8 Williams College
8 Whitman College
8 Tulane

7 Amherst College
7 Boston College
7 Colorado College
7 Duke
7 Wellesley
7 Western Washington

6 Barnard
6 Carnegie Mellon Univ. (CMU)
6 Case Western Reserve
6 Notre Dame

5 Carleton College
5 Chapman
5 Colby College
5 Emory
5 Gonzaga
5 Swarthmore
5 U San Diego
5 Loyola Marymount
5 Northeastern

4 GWU (George Washington)
4 Davidson College
4 Vanderbilt
4 Vassar College
4 UCLA
4 Smith College
4 SMU (Southern Methodist)
4 Univ. of St. Andrews (Scotland)

3 Michigan
3 Georgia Tech
3 Seattle University
3 Boston University
3 Colgate
3 Wesleyan
3 Univ. of Vermont
3 Johns Hopkins Univ. (JHU)
3 Univ. of Colorado-Boulder
3 Univ. of Rochester

I find it interesting to see college matriculations from an elite private prep school’s Pacific Northwest perspective.

Tuition at the Lakeside School is $36,340 per academic year. 33% receive financial aid.

64% are “students of color” including 30% Asian, 8% black, 18% multi-racial & 4% Hispanic.

52% of the most recent graduating class received recognition by the National Merit Corporation.

ACT scores: 35 = 75th%, 34 = 50th%, 33 = 25th%

SAT scores were equally impressive (770, 750, & 710 for Reading; 790, 770, & 700 for Math).

@Camasite first posted this link in another thread titled: “College Choices of Portland’s elite”.

2

It would be interesting to compare the college matriculation list of the Lakeside School with other elite prep schools both boarding & day–especially elite prep day schools located in New York City.

It would be interesting to compare the college matriculation list for the Westminster Schools in Atlanta as there are some similarities between the two schools (wealthy student body & great state flagship schools–Univ. of Georgia as well as Georgia Tech).

3

Forget to note that one of Lakeside’s college counselors graduated from Colby College at which 5 students matriculated at over the past 5 years.

4

It definitely makes a difference when counselors can speak to schools in a particular area. DS attended BS and his CC had gone to college in the Midwest. Not surprisingly, she gave him some great options in that geography. So 15 to Colby and Bowdoin is no surprise (with a lot more to other NESCAC schools. )

5

Lakeside’s most famous alum is probably Bill Gates. Who, as brilliant as he is, also came from an “old money” Seattle family. His father was a founding partner at Preston, Ellis & Gates, one of Seattle’s most elite white shoe law firms in its time in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

I’m guessing that the Lakeside of today is more of a meritocracy than many of the elite east coast prep schools. Seattle has so many brilliant tech engineers from all over the planet working at places like Microsoft, Amazon, and the many other tech firms who put their super-bright kids into Lakeside. I expect that is why it looks different from the typical east coast prep school that is likely to be more WASPy and dominated by kids who’s parents are in finance, not tech.

Of course I expect all of this is because the top Ivies and other equivalent privates like it that way. These sorts of schools operate like minor league farm teams for them, producing a steady stream of top recruits. It would be harder for Harvard and Stanford if they had to only pick through public school applications, mostly prepared by the kids themselves.

6

Perhaps some may find a comparison of college destinations between a private prep school and a nearby public school in a mostly high SES area to be of interest:

Menlo School (private prep school): https://www.menloschool.org/live/files/3102-menlo-school-profile-2019-2020
Menlo-Atherton High School (public school): https://www.mabears.org/documents/Where%20Our%20Grads%20Go/Graduate%20Destinations%2015-18.pdf

7

@camasite Interesting that you think the East Coast BS aren’t filled with the same technocrat kids. At the schools we visited and based on kids we know at top East Coast BS’s, most are the sons and daughters of technologists ( and bioengineers etc). This even extends to URM or ORM’s. Many parents are also first generation college grads. The world has changed ( not just on the West Coast). Even the doctors and lawyers are often first generation. And competition is fierce esp among East Coast kids so the meritocracy is very much at play even if the parents can pay the bill.
It’s very expensive to pay for BS and not many careers can pay for this luxury. The kids of High tech workers/owners and entrepreneurs (often in cutting edge industries) fill the ranks of BS’s.
IMO, international students also have many parents who work in technology-related industries or finance ( esp if you include manufacturing)

8

I’m not remotely close to that world. I’m just judging by the east coast prep school types that I knew in college who were mostly from old-money families with trust funds. But then that was a generation ago.

9

@Camasite Yes, things have changed a lot. I went to an Ivy league college many decades ago, that world was already fading. Even in the 80’s and 90’s.
The world is very competitive and though some BS kids are from old money they are still working hard to stay at those schools and get where they are going. And many more are from parents who are entrepreneurs. Few grandparents are footing the bill.