S24‘s independent school has very strong college placement historically, maybe with a slightly declining trend over the last few years. This year actually looks particularly strong so far. Lots of kids got into top ten schools in the ED round, and the ED success rate at SLACs outside of WASP was almost 100 percent. Many of these kids have hooks (mostly of the legacy and/or donor variety) but I don‘t think that‘s different at most other highly ranked private high schools.
This is just the ED round. Just because someone didn’t get in ED doesn’t mean anything since it’s only 1 school.
And even then, the ones deferred will get another look.
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The overall acceptance rates I have seen (from colleges doing press releases) seem mostly consistent with just a continued downward trend, and a few were higher. But I don’t know about our school specifically, we are not making that information available.
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So I wonder if the T20ss and such have moved towards acceptances at suburban highly ranked public schools. Our class of 300 kids had at least 12 accepted to ivys’s, little ivys or other T20. There are certainly more since i am not in on the gossip and SCOIR is not reflecting this year.
D’s public school faring very well. Class of 300, I know of about 10 ivy/top20/little ivy so far. Only significant denials have been from Duke (0/5). We aren’t in a diverse or URM community.
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ED looks good based on IGs for NYC private schools and specialized and screened public schools—hardly scientific, but interesting. Appears to be a lot of hooked students whether legacy, athletes, or URM, plus Posse and QB (mostly public school applicants). For public schools in Fairfield and Westchester, lots of athlete acceptances at HYPS, NESCACs, and similar SLACs. It looks like Emory, WUSTL, Wake Forest, Lehigh are among the most popular for unhooked students at these schools.
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We are at a large public suburban where almost everyone goes on to college. I think our early numbers are fairly similar to last year at Ivies and LACs. As usual many of these EDs are athletes.
The new trend I’m seeing this year is large numbers of ED admissions at schools where we normally might only see one or two EDs. Schools like Boston University, Northeastern, Tulane, Wake Forest. I can’t tell if these are kids that normally wouldn’t have EDed anywhere, or if these are kids that formerly would’ve tried for a T20 but this year are being realistic. We’ll see how it shakes out when RD comes out.
In the pre-Covid days we had roughly 2x as many kids going T20. Michigan used to be the safety for the high flyers. And tons of kids went to Cornell. I don’t think those days are coming back … at least based on what I’ve seen so far. We do seem to be holding steady at all the SLACs.
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Of the kids D24 has talked to, ED results were 1 acceptance (in-state for Duke), 3 rejections, and 2 deferrals. These were students at public or private schools in our area.
My S24 goes to the only private college prep school in our rural county. Not many apply ED (except athletes, most of whom stay pretty close to home) and most aim for state flagships (including my son). One of his classmates got into Duke EA and two were accepted to Norte Dame. The college counselor was pleasantly surprised! I can’t remember a kid from our school ever getting into ND and our last Duke acceptance was 6 years ago, so not statistically significant results. One of our ND accepted kids is a really special kid with a unique, impressive, heartwarming backstory.
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We’re in a middling public high school in NJ that generally seems to send 2 to 3 kids to “elite” schools each year. Following the unofficial instagram, it looks like there were 3 ED acceptances to T20’s (UPenn, JH, and Northwestern) this go around. So, it seems like a typical year for us.
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I’m so curious – how do y’all get all of this info? The only info I have is what I can pry out of C24 (almost none; apparently their friends are emphatically not talking about college) or from random conversations with other parents at holiday concerts, etc. Our school (large public suburban) provides absolutely no information about anything, let alone intel about college acceptances.
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Kids post to their instagram.
The top students all take same classes so they know each other.
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there’s an instagram run by…IDK, one of the kids, I assume.
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search on instagram for name of school calss of 2024 and you may see their list. you can also ask your kid if there is one
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Instagram post plus what I hear from S24. While I only know of two T20 acceptances (both Cornell) we seem to still be sending a lot of kids ED to Northeastern, BC and BU.
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I feel the same way. Our HS isn’t a feeder, per se, but in the past (pre-covid and prior) we’d send about 8-10 kids to an Ivy (plus MIT) in a given year. That has dropped to 4-6 and I don’t see it reverting back anytime soon.
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For most high schools in our area, each grad class has an unofficial Instagram account. And people post when they have committed. It has their photo, college name, major and sport, if they were recruited.
I actually looked at old class Insta when trying to find safety and match business programs for S24. I made a little Excel spreadsheet of where kids were going for business generally and for his major specifically. Over a 4 year span it was about 90 different colleges that kids went to for business (I did not count Econ majors, this was business majors only), with about 30 colleges specifically for his major.
I could see schools that got hot and not. And I could see, for example that, while his school sends a number of kids to Michigan, nobody’s going to Ross, but there are some that are majoring in econ or finance of mathematics in LSA.
We’re in the Midwest, so of course lots of kids go Big 10. The new “hot” schools where no one used to go but (as of last year) we now send solid numbers in business are Northeastern, Colorado, TCU and Michigan State. (I think the MSU pop is because of the new direct admit business process. Previously you had to petition into business at the end of freshman year. For the other schools, I think it is because those schools got “hot” overall. )
And when you drill down by major you can get some pretty interesting data. For example, the kids going to SMU and Florida State tend to major in finance. But the kids going to Boston University and Miami of Ohio are more likely to major in marketing.
I love the data. And for us it helped us see which colleges know our school context because they see kids from our school every year.
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We’re in the same boat here. D24 insists that the seniors “don’t talk about college all the time” and because of 1 particularly eager beaver student who humble brags a lot about her test scores and how she’s “not going to get in anywhere because of 1 B+,” she (D24) purposely ignores all of the talk of who’s applied to where.
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So, our public high school (suburban to east coast city) is quite strong but not considered one of the best in the state/truly amazing. Graduating class of around 300. So far, kids have announced 5 admissions to local/regional colleges/universities; 5 NESCAC; 7 T50 universities; 2 T25 SLAC; 2 Ivy; 1 Stanford.
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Individual college admissions are not posted to either our Class of 2024 Instagram account, nor the dedicated College Counseling Instagram account.
I might be missing something else, but I think there is more or less a policy of not doing anything like that until the big actual-enrollment event in the spring (which then gets posted all over social media). Of course friends and parents talk individually, but that is definitely not a comprehensive source of information (at least not for us).