How to choose boarding school to maximize Top 15 College Acceptance as Non Legacy/Non Donor

Prep School Admissions
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Would love your help with this: Which boarding schools are best for college exmissions/admissions on an adjusted basis? (adjusted for donors/legacies/and underrepresented minorities). E.g. if you are just a smart white/Asian student and your family can about afford prep school, but definitely not a big enough donor to matter to schools.

Everyone can read lists about which prep schools send the most kids to Ivies+Stanford/MIT/Duke etc , but those schools typically have a lot of legacies and ultra high net worth (donors that matter), and “underrepresented minority” candidates.

If you are 50th percentile and unconnected at Exeter, Andover, St Paul’s, etc I assume you aren’t getting into a top 15 school. Which schools are the best choice for someone to apply to from that situation? I assume the game theory would suggest that it is better to try and be top 5-10% at a lower rung school to have higher chances of admission to the top 15 school? Especially if Asian or partially Asian?

Am open to moving my kids anywhere in the country. Presently at a top tier school in Manhattan (where it is the same situation – 40% of the class gets into an amazing school, but 2/3rds of those are legacy, big donor, underrepresented minority (not Asian/white), so in reality its only about 12% of the class. (and that is a very smart class, so tough to achieve).

Thank you for your thoughts.

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Those elite high schools have dedicated college counselors who will advise you on which colleges that may be reach by stats are more likely to look favorably on applicants with your profile (based on everything that goes into a college applications, not just stats). Two students with similar stats but different ECs, academic focus, etc. may be looked at favorably by different colleges.

Of course, the students then have to decide which of those colleges that are likely to look favorably on them are good from the students’ point of view.

But that is a lot different from a typical high school, where the high achieving students tend to focus on a small number of highly selective colleges without knowing which is more likely to see each of them individually as a fit.

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How to choose boarding school to maximize Top 15 College Acceptance as Non Legacy/Non Donor

You don’t. Choosing a boarding school to maximize admissions odds at a T15 is just folly. There are no guarantees.

One chooses a boarding school to get a top-notch secondary school education with access to a wide array of extracurricular activities and a access to a college counseling office that is adept in helping students target colleges.

Of course, the same can be true for a “top tier school in Manhattan” assuming that school is private. If that kid doesn’t get into a T15 college from the Manhattan HS, they’re likely not going to get into a T15 from Andover

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Definitely an incorrect assumption.

The overwhelming majority of families whom I know do have high expectations for their children who attend elite boarding schools and they tend to get satisfactory results.

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You will pick the school that will allow you to be your best possible self because colleges admit students, not schools.

That’s not as trite as it sounds. If you’re an athlete and you have a shot at recruitment, you need to be at school that either excels at your sport and can ensure playing time and/or one that gives you the freedom and has the schedule to participate at an elite level outside school. Ditto for any other EC. You want to be where you thrive academically, can have rigor abd excel, will be noticed by your yeachers, and can engage.

If you’re unhappy socially, that’s all going to be harder. Otoh, any place that is a good fit can set you up to succeed in college admissions.

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This may occur in some cases, but most counselors seem concerned with matching students and colleges in an idealistic (should have written: overly cautious) fashion. The counselors’ goal is to achieve 100% acceptance and matriculation at 4 year colleges and universities.

Many families and students at elite prep boarding schools comply with the college advising process, but do much of the work with respect to elite colleges acceptances. Of course, teacher recommendations are important as are the traditional metrics and considerations, but I know many families who achieved elite acceptances due, in large part, to their own drive and initiative. The elite prep boarding school pedigree does help in the Northeast US more than in other areas of the country.

OP: If your kids are in a top tier school in Manhattan from which 40% of each class gets into “an amazing school”, then you and your kids are well situated.

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I think I see two questions in your post: One, which boarding schools would be best for an unhooked midlevel student to gain admittance to a so-called Top 15 college?; and two, assuming no chance for, say, the Ivy League, which other of the most prestigious universities would such a student have a good chance?

Just my personal opinion, but I think college outcomes for unhooked, midlevel students at Andover, Choate, Deerfield, Exeter, Groton, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Milton and St. Paul’s are very similar. (And maybe I’ve left out a few others.) The key, as other folks note above, is to find a school that’s a great fit for your kid’s interests and other factors besides college matriculations.

To your other question, it would be very rare for an unhooked midlevel student at any of these schools to get into a “top 15” university. However, there are many excellent colleges of various sizes and locales that would surely love to have these kids, especially if full-pay (even if not donor).

However, here’s something else to consider: Academic success is not based just on ability. Effort and study skills matter almost as much. A kid with midlevel ability at a boarding school has a good chance (in my opinion) of getting into the top 25% or so of the class if he works harder and smarter than the average kid there. If your kid is very well-liked, takes challenging classes, and devotes himself to being the best student he can be such that he gets into the top 25% or so of the class, he still probably won’t get into an Ivy, but he may have a reasonable chance for a Georgetown, or a Bowdoin, or a University of Florida, maybe even a Wash U. or University of Chicago, or any number of universities some people would place in the nation’s top 15 these days, depending on preference.

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Identifying any sort of value-added effect merely from the school name would take a lot of data and careful controls, and to my knowledge has never really been done. Frankly, I am skeptical that these days there really is any effect quite like that.

What I do think is highly-resourced high schools make it easier for students to find ways to distinguish themselves to colleges. For some it is through doing extremely well academically in harder-than-AP sorts of advanced courses. For others it is making use of the wide variety of well-supported activities, including ultimately leadership positions. For others it is close teacher relationships aided by low student to teacher ratios. For others it is using college counseling to help find carefully-chosen colleges that they can persuade to see them as great fits. And so on.

And of course for many kids it is some combination. And for the most selective colleges, at least at our feederish HS, it is kids who have a strong combination, including top academics but not ONLY top academics, who are mostly likely to be admitted unhooked.

OK, so if you send your kid to such a HS, and they don’t do as well academically as you would have liked, and they don’t get into one of the most selective colleges, hypothetically would they have been able to get into one of those colleges if they had gone to a less highly resourced high school?

I mean, anything is possible, but again I am pretty skeptical. Just the assumption your kid would have done a lot better academically is suspect, and then what about all the other stuff?

And although some parents don’t want to hear this, to me the real value of all this is not in fact getting a few more kids into the most selective colleges. It is getting every kid possible into a college that is in fact a really good fit for them, and preparing them to really thrive at that college. Which is in part about academics, but also about so many other things–healthy habits, social skills, time management skills including a reasonable work-fun balance, self-advocacy skills, and so on.

Which to me is actually way, way more important. Indeed, I will “bet” every time on the kid who is well prepared for success at their not-quite-“T15” college over the otherwise similar kid who does scrape into a “T15” but is not as well prepared. Particularly if preparation is defined broadly and the former kid has developed in a more well-rounded way, the kind of personal development that sets kids up to thrive generally as independent adults.

So personally, I would choose the high school that I think will do the best job at all those things. And it probably will be just as good for “T15” admissions and such anyway, but that is not why I would choose it.

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You might also want to take a step back and remind yourself that high school is not just a step on the way to college but also a destination of its own, one in which your child will make the most significant developmental leaps in their lifetime.

Ask yourself: as my child grows from prepubescent into a young adult, what influences do I want around them? What kind of moral education do I want for my child? At boarding school, your child’s moral education will come primarily from other students. If you send a child to BS with the sole intention of bumping their chances to get into a T20, what kind of morality will they be internalizing about the experience? Or to put it another way: if I was hypothetically sending my child to BS, I would absolutely not want them to be surrounded by kids who are there primarily as a boost for their college chances. That would seriously put me off.

I say all this because it makes me sad to see 13/14 year olds entering into high school as a transactional process. Going to a top BS can be an incredible opportunity for students who are ready to take advantage of the incredible resources and discover their own true authentic selves. But also, imagine being surrounded by 400 other straight-A, high-performing athlete, violin virtuoso students - and your voice hasn’t even cracked yet. It’s daunting, and it can be soul crushing for some while others are able to grow wings and fly.

Please just take the time to focus on what your child needs and wants. They may excel at BS, they may excel closer to home. They may not be ready to excel yet at all - because they may still just need to be around their parents.

Signed, an unhooked, slightly-above-average, got-into-multiple-ivies, BS alumna who would never in a million years send my kids to BS

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What I wrote above, increases the likelihood of 100% admission. Advising the pre-med to apply to CMU and the CS major to apply to JHU (instead of the usual other way around) increases both students’ likelihood of admission, for example.

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While I think your desire for a top 15 school for your child is misguided, let’s play the game for a moment.

If that was really your sole end goal, it may be more beneficial to move to a rural area where few kids attend Ivies, have your child be the star in their small rural high school, preferably in North Dakota, and hire an outstanding outside college counselor. Throw in some really unusual and outstanding ECs and a part time job and I think you would have as good a shot as being one of many at BS.

Joking aside though, don’t do this to your kid. If they are interested in BS that’s great (I went, loved it) but pick one that fits them.

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Agree to the extent that the college advising staff’s goal is to get all students into a four year college or university. I should have written “overly cautious manner” rather than “idealistic fashion”.

My impression is that many elite prep school counselors are too accustomed to dealing with highly motivated, intelligent, talented, and accomplished students to see the forest for the trees. The result is that many very talented students are directed toward somewhat mediocre schools. This does not, in my very limited experience with NYC schools, seem to happen in the elite NYC prep schools as the parents tend to be much more involved in the college selection & application process than are boarding school parents.

Over 15 years ago, I called out a very prominent, large boarding school on its relatively poor record regarding college placement. This billion dollar plus endowment school responded resulting in much more impressive & appropriate college placements for its highly capable, hard-working students.

Andover, Groton, & St. Paul’s have always done well in the area of college placement, but the top NYC prep schools lead the pack with respect to placing students at the most elite colleges and universities due, in large part, to the close involvement of the parents in the college planning/targeting/application process.

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In all seriousness, if I could offer one piece of advice as a BS alum, now parent to 1 college kid and 1 in high school: use these next four years to dismantle your own expectations about your kids’ college acceptances. Do the work to separate your projections for your kid from who your kid actually is and who they are becoming. Try to create your own standards for success and try to forget about the proverbial Joneses.

It is difficult work, and involves quite a bit of soul searching as a parent. It can bring up some ugly or unflattering truths (it did for me). But if you can do it, you will be a far better support to your child when they are finally ready to apply to college.

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I’ve seen this transactional view of boarding schools, parents assuming the boarding school tuition is like buying a ticket to Ivy+ admission. In my student’s graduating class, 30+ kids applied to a specific Ivy League school. A handful got in. Most of those kids were not credible applicants to that school, as the college advising office made plain in a subsequent presentation to rising seniors and their parents.

Now, I do think strong boarding schools do help students punch above their weight class. But the family that expects their unhooked kid with an unweighted 3.5 or 3.6 to get into Dartmouth or Duke is not being realistic about how much the high school can do to boost admissions chances. It doesn’t always stop them from complaining, though.

Have I seen kids with decent profiles get into places they wouldn’t have gotten into without the backing and advice of their boarding school? Yes, absolutely.

I have seen kids getting into BU, Hamilton or CWRU on the strength of a well-advised application strategy. In GPA terms, it was like getting a couple tenths of a point worth of boost because the school does prepare kids for college and provide lots of opportunities for leadership, and those colleges know those kids have the habits to succeed.

But the decision to go to an independent school is really about a kid’s intellectual and social development, as others have noted.

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Unhooked students - even those with stellar academic accomplishments at their top BS - have somewhat of an uphill climb to T15/20 schools. A good friend’s unhooked daughter just graduated from a tippy, top BS - she was an excellent student (well above the 50%), active at the school and the recipient of a significant school prize at the end of the year. She had a SAT score in the upper 1500s. She was rejected from the handful of T20s she applied to and will be attending Tufts instead (which is a great school). I know several other similar stories from very close friends whose kids attended “elite” private schools - their kids all ended up at great schools, but they were a notch down from T20s. If you think your kiddo will benefit from BS that’s great but don’t make it about getting into a T15. Frankly, the schools don’t like that attitude - they want kids to attend because of the great HS experience not because it is some guarantee of Ivy League acceptances.

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I think that this is exactly correct.

We are not all the same. Some students will do best at one high school. Some students will do best at a different high school. Same for colleges and universities.

Sometimes highly ranked schools (whether high school or university) are stressful. Some students respond well to stress. Some do not. Some handle stress badly as a high school student or undergraduate student, but handle it well when they are in graduate school. We each need to find what is right for us personally.

I think that you should read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it, it recommends that we each do what is right for us, and whatever we do, do it very well. This is the approach that our family has taken, but what we each did was different and it has led us to 8 different universities (one each for a bachelor’s degree, and a different one each for graduate school). Of those 8, only one was MIT. However, we all got into graduate programs that were a very good fit for us (more important), and that also happened to be highly ranked (less important).

I will also note that as an undergraduate student at MIT, the many students that I met had attended a very wide range of high schools. I only recall meeting one (or maybe two) who had attended a famous or highly ranked high school. At least my freshman year roommate and I had both attended rather mediocre high schools. We still graduated from MIT in 4 years. Also, the various people I know who have attended and graduated from highly ranked graduate programs have similarly reported that the various students in the same program came from a very wide range of undergraduate universities. A lot of them had attended their in-state public university for undergrad.

If you look at the students at a highly ranked university (whether undergrad or graduate school), you will find that they come from all over the place. What they have in common is that wherever they come from, they did very well there. Attending a school that is a good fit for you will make it easier to do very well, wherever you are.

And I will admit that finding a good fit can be quite a bit more difficult than comparing rankings.

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Yeah, we didn’t use one of the super famous high schools, but it is well-known in our area. It does put information about college matriculations on its website, so in that sense is marketing itself with that information. But otherwise, it continually tries to communicate to parents that the point of the school is the quality of the education and the overall experience. And while good college acceptances tend to flow from that, obviously there is no guarantee of any particular results for any particular student.

And then some parents apparently get mad anyway when their kid does not get accepted wherever they were hoping. I understand we may get that a little less than some similar schools, but it definitely still happens.

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Yes, I think some kids and families understandably wish this was all a lot simpler. Choose this K-8, do these things, go to this HS, do these things, go to this college, do these things, and voila–happy and successful life will follow.

But while that wish for simplicity is understandable, it just doesn’t work that way, not in the US. At each of those stages, there is no one right answer about the best school for a given kid, and no one right answer about what they should be doing in that school. And in fact kids who try to follow a formula that doesn’t work for them are likely to find it much harder, not easier, to end up at the final goal.

And so the bad news is navigating the US system of education requires a lot more information processing by parents, and eventually kids, and that can be time-consuming and stressful.

But the good news is it is increasingly easy to find other parents and such willing to help, not least here.

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