Our Scoir has some intended majors listed. But I agree the data is not so helpful. One of the defining things about CC is how everyone understands (and advises newcomers) the mantra: fancy-schmancy colleges are not admitting based on stats alone. Plenty of rejected kids have 4.0 and close to 1600.
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My assumption is highly selective colleges are watching feeder and feederish high schools as closely as those high schools are watching those colleges.
And that includes for the purposes of a yield model. Like, if I were running an Admissions office, I would like to know if the kids from a given repeat player HS have actually been enrolling when given an offer or not. If more than usual, I might want to consider directing more offers that way. If less than usual, maybe not so much. And if there were identifiable yield patterns based on qualifications, then OK.
Just my two cents, but I do think sometimes kids and parents are perfectly happy being extremely strategic in how they approach college applications, but then think it is somehow unfair for colleges to behave in essentially similar ways. To me that is all just expected.
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Wasn’t there an article somewhere wherein 10% of Harvard’s incoming class came from 20 schools? So obviously, Harvard’s acceptance rate does not apply to them. LOL
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I had not heard that. But based on my own experiences at Harvard in grad school…some of the kids I knew went to high school together. I remember A LOT of Exeter and Andover kids.
And there they are in your article. Numbers 2 and 4.
This is so true! Our rural high school only has one ED acceptance - Northeastern.
Yes. My son goes to one of the schools considered highly selective around here (not Harvard) but a lot of his friends go to the same schools mentioned in the article.
Frankly, I am not one to be resentful of that as I think these high schools do a phenomenal job of getting kids ready for university. My son who comes from a regular public school is light years behind in readiness (math/science base, study skills, etc). My only comfort is that my son has a pretty brilliant brain so I think as soon as he gets his feet under him, he will be ok and up to speed.
But if I were an admissions officer (and thankfully I am not), I would be more comfortable hedging my bets on a prep school kid than, say, a kid from my son’s high school (him included, probably).
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Also, though, the prep school kids are already screened. Every one of them is “above average” and most are way above average. They are all already in the top 5% of all high school students in the country. So it makes sense that these schools’ college matriculations look very different from public schools’.
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I agree. These kids sound pretty brilliant. Some would like to devalue this by pointing out their socio economic advantage. But I refuse to buy into that. These kids worked for their placements too.
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Other factors:
- Most of the students also have been effectively screened for high SES behavior and expectations, and the small number of low SES students on scholarship have been assimilated into such through several years of immersion into it. Hence, they will fit right into the high-SES-skewed Harvard (or other highly selective private college) social environment.
- Those schools’ dedicated college counselors will encourage only those realistic for Harvard to apply. The same applies for other highly selective colleges (for whom the sets of students realistic for them are likely to differ). So less likely to see shotgunning or bunching at specific highly selective colleges while others go unapplied-to.
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In that list, several of the schools will be graduating the children of Harvard employees, a preferred group. And some of those schools have “lottery” levels of acceptances, so they have prepped and polished kids who have already been through a pretty extreme culling.
It’s funny because on the prep school boards, everyone always counsels applicants that those schools won’t improve their odds of admission to highly selective schools. But because they have such a high concentration of excellent students, it can appear from the outside that it’s an advantage.
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Yeah, I think there are some serious questions about how much of selective prep school admissions is actually about value added, versus how much is just correlation, or how much is just more opportunities for smart and ambitious kids to distinguish themselves in various interesting ways, and so on.
That said, I think on a basic level, high schools which offer advanced classes that most closely resemble the classes at highly selective colleges do in fact tend to do a good job preparing kids for those college classes. This includes some privates, but also some publics. But it definitely does not include every high school.
And that is one of the things those colleges are naturally going to be inclined to take into consideration.
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I used to joke around with one Exeter guy in particular. He started off very embarrassed of his “Exeter priviledge.” I was the complete opposite–very crappy public high school. My high school job was working as a janitor. He worked for the UN one summer. Because his dad knew the UN Secretary General-Kofi Annan.
It became a running joke between us. We had a lot of fun with it.
But from talking to him, his high school experience was AMAZING. Just leaps and bounds better than what I had. Way more work and way more challenge. He seemed to have read everything under the sun. He had way better classmates and teacher than I did. And he got way more reward…
So yes, these things are complicated. I don’t begrudge him anything. Except maybe the UN internship. That was some BS. But he worked his butt off.
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I also completely agree with this. High quality, highly individualized, highly savvy college counseling will not ensure everyone gets into Harvard. But it will help make sure that almost every kid does relatively well in some way appropriate for them. And then that adds up to overall results that look good relative at least to simple controls like standardized test scores (not so easy to control for things like hooks, of course).
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The value added is likely in the dedicated college counseling. For example, a top-end student may have characteristics that the college counselors know that Brown will see them as a fit, but Harvard will not and hence will be advised to apply ED to Brown rather than try for Harvard. And then advise a different top-end student to apply to Cornell on the same basis. Etc.
But at a typical school with only a general counselor serving hundreds of students (not just on college applications), all of those students may end up focusing on Harvard and then get rejected.
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I pre-agreed with you, but it is worth agreeing again!
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Yeah, I think my son begrudges me more for not attempting to send him to any of these boarding schools (“but there were scholarships!”).
But on the other hand, his entire 4 years of high school was more relaxed too. Definitely lots of trade-offs. Although, I am certain he wasn’t appreciative of his relaxed high school experience during finals week at the college. LOL
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Kinda obvious observation, but these more college-like high schools can be great for some kids, terrible for others. And it is not like the latter will never be ready for college. Just maybe not at 14.
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Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but this scattergram might be self-reported (since a similar tool is also self-reported at my school), so take it with a grain of salt.
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