This weekend I’ve been analyzing college matriculations among students at 10 elite private high schools, including 5 in the NE (Phillips Exeter, Trinity, Hotchkiss, Horace Mann, Dalton) and 5 elsewhere (Harvard Westlake in LA, San Francisco University HS, Lakeside-Seattle, and Ransom Everglades ). For this cohort, it’s true to some extent what Pizzagirl often says about prestige being regional … although it’s more true for some colleges than for others.
For the 5 elite prep schools in the NE, the 10 colleges that capture the most matriculations are:
Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, NYU, Princeton, UChicago, UPenn, Yale. Yale is #1, Stanford is #13. The top 30 matriculations also include 9 Northeastern LACs (Amherst, Barnard, Bowdoin, Colby, Colgate, Hamilton, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Williams) and one state university (Michigan.) UCLA gets the 74th highest number of matriculations. Oberlin (#41) is the only LAC outside the NE/Mid-Atlantic to be among the top 50 for matriculations from NE elite preppies.
For the 5 elite prep schools outside the NE, the 10 colleges that capture the most matriculations are:
Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, UChicago, USC, WUSTL. Stanford is #1, Yale is #12. The top 30 matriculations also include 3 Northeastern LACs (Barnard, Wesleyan, Williams), but more matriculations go to Claremont McKenna, Kenyon, and Whitman than to any East Coast LAC. 3 state universities are in the top 30 (Michigan, Berkeley, and UCLA). UCLA gets the 16th highest number of matriculations. Berkeley gets the 14th highest number (compared to the 54th highest from the NE preppies).
USC gets the 26th-highest number of matriculations from the Northeastern preppies, but the 2nd highest number of matriculations from preppies outside the NE. WUSTL gets the 26th-highest number of matriculations from the Northeastern preppies, but the 3rd highest number of matriculations from preppies outside the NE. Vanderbilt gets the 2nd highest number of matriculations from Ransom Everglades (FL) but ranges from the 18th to 63rd most matriculations from elite prep schools outside the south. Trinity College (CT) gets 6 matriculations from Phillips Exeter (NH) but zero from the 5 elite prep schools outside the NE.
Colleges that seem to be about equally popular among both the NE and non-NE preppies, by average matriculation ranks:
Boston-area Colleges
Harvard (#4 for the non-NE, #2 for the NE)
Tufts (#13 for the non-NE, #15 for the NE)
MIT (#29 for the non-NE, #30 for the NE)
BU (#35 for the non-NE, #31 for the NE)
BC (#30 for the non-NE, #34 for the NE)
NYC Colleges
Columbia (#5 for the non-NE, #4 for the NE)
NYU (#6 for the non-NE, #6 for the NE)
Barnard (#25 for the non-NE, #25 for the NE)
Chicago-area Colleges
UChicago (#9 for the non-NE, #7 for the NE)
Northwestern (#15 for the non-NE, #17 for the NE)
For all 10 elite prep schools, by total number of matriculations the 8 Ivies rank between #1 (Columbia, with 271 matriculations) and #20 (Dartmouth, with 97 matriculations.) NYU appears to be the hottest non-Ivy private RU (#3 overall with 241 matriculations); Michigan is the hottest state university (#10 overall with 188 matriculations); Wesleyan is the hottest LAC (#14 overall with 120 matriculations.) Among the top 100 colleges by total matriculations, I count 40 national universities, 39 LACs, and 13 state universities (the remaining 8 are international/other).
One elite college that appears to be universally unloved by elite preppies (unless it’s the other way around … with tons of rejections):
Caltech, #10 ranked by US News, gets zero matriculations from elite NE prep schools and only 2 elsewhere (both from Harvard Westlake in LA).
A couple other technical institutes also do poorly relative to their US News ranks:
MIT at #26 and Harvey Mudd at #126 by total matriculations.
As stock and real estate brokers like to say, the above information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.