It depends. 5 of my son’s close friends attended Phillips Andover. They were very strong students (top 3rd), involved in the school etc. None were hooked and none are attending an Ivy League school - or any T20, for that matter. They are going to very good schools that are a notch down (USNWR 30-50) or SLACs.
Sounds like the product of the balanced list building/curating that the college counseling office pushes for all PA students… gone are the days when ivy school was a near automatic.
if you have a list of ivy-only schools, you won’t be very happy come decision time is the message- regardless of how/where you stand in terms of gpa/quartile rankings.
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Of course any “help” with admissions to those colleges is no small thing!
Just because it was recently posted . . . apparently 43% of Wesleyan’s enrollees this year went to privates. As I recall, around 10% of US high school students attend privates. And I suspect if you broke out secular/independent privates, the difference would be even higher.
I think there is definitely a lot of self-selection going on there. Indeed, it would make sense that families that chose secular privates for high school would be more likely to choose secular privates for college.
Still, if nothing else I do think many secular privates do a relatively good job helping their students identify great fits among colleges like Wesleyan. And probably at least often provide a lot of opportunities for students to show why they would be good fits for those colleges.
OOS publics might not be quite as strong an effect, but I suspect it still exists.
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Well, yes, but when I look at a list like that, the first thing I notice is that it’s all men. Such a different universe!
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I’m not sure why it was necessary to bump a 5-month-old dormant thread to regale us with stories from the Ice Age
But 65 years ago, the Hotchkiss student body was male, predominantly white, protestant, and from wealthy families whose male ancestors also attended Hotchkiss. And the director is college counseling would call up Yale and say, “Thus is the list of men you’ll be admitting.” Those days are long gone.
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Not sure if this post was in your capacity as a moderator or as a commentor. Seems kind of like both.
I for one found SportyPrep’s post interesting if not surprising. Nor would it be terribly antiquated (Ice Age) nor incorrect to say that Hotchikiss is still (and traditionally) a bit of a Yale feeder. Though subject to shifting university and institutional priorities, some Prep - College relationships may be less pronounced now but certainly they are not nonexistent (“long gone”).
Thank you for your opinion.
I thought it was of some historical “interest”, and given the thread title and it not being too old, considered it a place where it could be posted. Aren’t we supposed to keep this Forum somewhat interesting? At the very least, it provides a small glimpse on how much things have changed.
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I think this type of document helps explain why people assume that certain schools are feeders for certain colleges. Historically, they were designed to be specifically that for a certain privileged group.
And seeing this helps explain, at least in part, why that is no longer so.
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Absolutely. Prep schools do a fantastic job in term of getting kids into great schools and making sure they have a balanced list. Whether they give a bump to unhooked students in terms of Ivy admissions isn’t clear. In any case, kids should choose a high school because it is going to provide a fantastic HS experience, not because it promises a particular college outcome.
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I think prep schools–at least the good ones–offer a tremendous advantage, though not necessarily because they “help with college admissions”, although they might. The main benefit in our family’s experience was the rigorous curriculum and the college prep environment. My D arrived at college with a strong academic foundation which enabled her to do well on placement tests for the classes she wanted (or wanted to pass out of). Most importantly, I think it really boosted her confidence to know she was coming to college with solid study and time management skills. She got the attention of professors who singled her out for opportunities and this gave her confidence a further boost. She graduated at the top of her class with a job in her field. Aside from her own hard work and motivation, I certainly give the college a lot of credit for this, but I think her prep school was the unsung hero.
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