<p>I’ll go out on a limb here, Cue.</p>
<p>The Philadelphia private school market is incredibly segmented. You can tell a lot about a family’s values from the school they pick, and if you know their values you know what school(s) the kids will go to. There are occasional outliers of course – kids who grow up surprising, younger siblings, faculty brats – but for the most part biology is destiny is school choice. For that reason, Chicago is ALWAYS going to do better at Germantown Friends (where it does great) than at Episcopal.</p>
<p>You’re wrong about Penn Charter (also a Quaker school). Chicago is definitely on the radar there; probably a couple kids a year go. CHA may be improving, but for the past n decades it has not produced potential Chicago students in any meaningful volume. (My daughter described a friend of hers at CHA as follows: “He’s the only evidence anyone has that ‘smart CHA boy’ isn’t an oxymoron.”) It’s a really non-intellectual place. That’s somewhat true (less so) at Episcopal, too. The places where Chicago should be looking for more students are Haverford, Shipley, and Baldwin, and St. Joe’s Prep. Also, Chicago does pretty well at Masterman and Lower Marion, but it could do a lot better at Central and the less-established competitive suburban publics. It’s a little hard to improve your recruiting dramatically, though, when most of the eligible students basically have Penn as an admissions and financial safety. That may be changing, and as it does I bet Chicago does very well.</p>
<p>I don’t think you are wrong about the prominence thing, but the fact of the matter is that Northwestern is in the lead locally, and is not a half-bad university. (Completely at random, in her current training program my daughter finds herself teamed with a man who is like her twin: Same major, same interests within the major, public high schools about 6 miles apart, same selective summer program before 12th grade, 6-7 friends in common although they never met before, he went to Northwestern and she to Chicago, and of course they are doing the same thing post-graduation. He liked Northwestern a lot.) My favorite rising 12th grader has been visiting colleges. She would be a great Chicago candidate – intellectual, good student, nerdy behind a social facade, etc. – and she even has an idea that she should go to college in the midwest. She loved Chicago when she visited it, but . . . she loved Northwestern maybe a little bit more. I think because it seemed more familiar.</p>