How does the high school you attend impact admission?

Data10
Tue, 24 May 2022 18:38:17 +0000

AlwaysMoving:

It’s definitely not every college town, but I do think college towns often have strong high schools, access to excellent ECs, and a more “worldly” student body, and that helps an unhooked student stand out.

I agree about schools appearing to be feeders are often full of students with strong hooks. We toured a small boarding school that had a long history of being a top feeder to Yale, and often sent 20-25% of their graduates to Yale. The college guidance counselor was quick to tell us those admits were almost all the children of Yale professors.

Twoin18:

There’s a limited number of spots at most top east coast schools for ORMs from CA. And my take is that those private schools prefer to fill their spots from schools they know so then the less well known schools get squeezed out.

It’s difficult to separate out effects from the influence of children of faculty/staff, legacies, wealthy area, a large portion of students apply to the nearby school; which often makes it difficult to draw conclusions. Using some real numbers, the following HSs had the largest number of matriculations to Princeton in 2015-20. I listed average number of matriculations and % of class.

High Schools with Most Matriculations to Princeton
1 . Princeton High (<1 miles from Princeton) – 16 students, 4% of class
2. Lawrenceville (5 miles from Princeton) – 14 students, 6% of class
3. Bergen County (50 miles from Princeton – 9 students, 3% of class
4. Thomas Jefferson (200 miles from Princeton) – 8.5 students, 2% of class
5. Stuyvesant (50 miles from Princeton) – 8 students, ,1% of class
…
8. West Windsor:P South High (3 miles from Princeton) – 5.5 students, 1% of class
…
14. West Windsor:P North High (4 miles from Princeton) – 4 students, 1% of class
…
23. The Hun School of Princeton (2 miles from Princeton) – 3 students, 2% of class
…
26. Stuart County Day School (3 miles from Princeton) – 3 students, 9% of class
…
26. Princeton Day School (2 miles from Princeton) – 3 students, 3% of class

The high schools in the local Princeton area a few miles from the college all do have a significant number of matriculations. However, at most of these the average is low enough that the matriculants could all be hooked students. For example the West Windosor-Plainsboro publics averaged 4-5 students per year, which was 1% of the class. Given that the HSs are located 4-5 miles from Princeton, it’s likely that they have a good number of children of faculty/staff and legacies attending the high school. It’s possible that all the 4-5 who were admitted had this type of hook. I don’t see reliable evidence that the high school attended had any positive influence at all for unhooked kids.

There were 2 local high schools that far more matriculations than the others – Princeton High School and the Lawrenceville School, both averaging ~15 students per year, which was more than any all high schools in the United States. Lawrenceville is a highly selective high school whose admission is based on transcript, scores, LORs, and other factors. Kids who are admitted to Lawrenceville are pre-selected as the type of kids who are also likely to be competitive for admission to Princeton. There is also a self-selection effect. The type of kids/parents who apply to a highly selective private HS like Lawrenceville are also the type of kids/parents who are likely to apply to a highly selective private college like Princeton. When you combine this with a high rate of children of faculty/staff, legacy, and other hooks; I also don’t find the large matriculations as convincing evidence of Princeton favoring unhooked kids from Lawrenceville over other high schools.

This leaves Princeton High. Princeton high is a non-selective public, yet still averaged 16 matriculations per year, which was more than any other high school in the United States. Looking at the high school profile, it lists an average SAT score of 1293 (85th percentile). This is extraordinarily high for an open enrollment public, likely among the highest of all open enrollment, non-selective publics in the United States. The extremely high SAT for a non-selective public likely reflects a wealthy and well resourced community. A high concentration of children of high achieving parents connected to Princeton also contributes. The higher concentration of top students likely contributes to the matriculations, but by no means fully explains it. The school profile lists the following matriculations. It’s clearly not all Ivy+ type colleges that have a large number of matriculations. Princeton is an outlier with far more matriculations than other HYPSM… type colleges.

Princeton High School College Matriculations
Rutgers – 31 per year
Princeton – 19.5 per year (different sample years than earlier sample above)
NYU – 9.5 per year
…
Yale, MIT – “Sampling of Fewer” = >0 to <4 per year
…
Harvard, Stanford – Not Listed = No matriculations over 4 year period?

Princeton High school no doubt has a lot of kids applying to the nearby Princeton college, a lot of hooked kids with special connections to Princeton, and a high concentration of well academically qualified kids; which contributes to the matriculations However, it is also possible that Princeton High has a special relationship with Princeton University that could give certain students an advantage. The high school seems to want to emphasize their connection to Princeton University… For example, the about section of the high school’s website talks about Princeton University before it talks about the high school. I don’t know enough about the local area to accurately speculate. It certainly wouldn’t be the first college to have a special relationship with a local high school, but it’s difficult to draw such conclusions due to the many other contributing factors. It’s even more difficult to generalize that high schools in college towns are “the best feeders.”

Perhaps also noteworthy is Thomas Jefferson School of Science and Technology. It was the only school listed above as having the most matriculations to Princeton that was not <= 50 miles from Princeton. A more detailed breakdown for Thomas Jefferson is below. While TJ did have a lot of matriculations to Princeton, they only had a 8% admit rate. 8% was lower than average admit rate across the full applicant pool for students with typical TJ stats during the sample years (pre-COVID), so it could be argued that TJ is hurting chances for Princeton on average. This highlights how having a large portion of the class apply to Princeton (25% of TJ students applied to Princeton) can be influential on number of matriculations. Again, it is not good evidence of attending TJ typically helping students be admitted to Princeton. It likely depends on the particular student and what happens when placed in the highly competitive class full of amazing TJ kids + many opportunities and resources.

Thomas Jefferson Feeder to Princeton – 25% applied, 8% admit rate, 67% yield, 2% attended