<p>@halfemptypockets
Unless you’re in the business of college admissions, what you’re seeing in real life is a small sample set. Stanford, Duke, Michigan and UVermont are much larger schools than Haverford. Vermont gets over 20K applications; Haverford gets less than 4K. So of course you are likely to personally observe more applicants to big research universities than to small LACs. </p>
<p>But have a look at college matriculation lists at a few high-end boarding schools, like Andover (many of whose alumni presumably become full-pay college students):
<a href=“http://www.andover.edu/ACADEMICS/COLLEGECOUNSELING/Pages/SchoolProfileCollegeMatriculations.aspx”>http://www.andover.edu/ACADEMICS/COLLEGECOUNSELING/Pages/SchoolProfileCollegeMatriculations.aspx</a>
In the last 3 years, by my own count, 54 colleges enrolled 5 or more Andover alumni. 16 of them were LACs (enrolling 136 Andover alumni, again by my count); only 8 of them were state universities (enrolling 64 Andover alumni). The rest were private US research universities (and a couple of foreign schools).</p>
<p>Some of this discussion reminds me of that old Yogi Berra saying: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”</p>