<p>This uber good public school (Newton South) in the Boston area has the following college matriculation profile. I’m wondering how UW got so popular there??</p>
<p><a href=“http://www2.newton.mec.edu/~lenny_libenzon/top_40.htm[/url]”>http://www2.newton.mec.edu/~lenny_libenzon/top_40.htm</a></p>
<p>My guess would be a popular teacher or the college counselor went there. Unfortunately, while their web site lists faculty, it doesn’t list their colleges.</p>
<p>It’s called the universal college: two people talking across the backyard fence exchanging and gathering information. Kind of like what goes on here. Could be teachers, former students, a counselor, emails or a combo. From what I have heard from New Yorker parents whose daughter formerly of Columbia is a graduate student there, she thinks she has died and gone to heaven…and they were so worried.</p>
<p>Newton MA and UW, Madison line up really well politically and culturally, as Newton is a quite liberal and interesting/creative place.</p>
<p>Mom55:</p>
<p>That’s what I thought, too. In MA liberal circles, Wisconsin, and esp. Madison, enjoys a good press. For a student who would like a Big Ten experience, it could well be the place of choice.</p>
<p>NY Parent here. I am really not surprised. Alot of our Northeast students are being closed out of the usual list of schools (Ivys-AWS-etc.etc) due to the density of well qualified kids from the metro NY, Boston & NJ area. Our really smart kids look outside our NE geographic area and look at places like U Wisc.- U Mich-Grinnell-Tulane & Rice. I can tell you that many top students from my district apply to U Mich or U Wisc. as a “safety”. Michigan and Wisconsin really seem to like Long Island kids. As Newton may encourage the same thing, these kids may have decided that they like the security of knowing other kids at a school as they are far away from home, so it may have seemed a practical and fun idea that a bunch of them decided to go to the same school. It propably has as much to do with going away to college with kids you know than deciding the college based on its political environment. U. Wisconsin sounds good to me.</p>
<p>Fourty percent or so of Madison undergrads are from out of state. UW has a very, very long tradition of welcoming Jewish students. It was doing so when other colleges were not so welcoming. That may explain why so many Northeastern students come here. </p>
<p>Plus lots of people think it’s a fun place to get a great education.</p>
<p>Mom5 and Marny are both on the mark.</p>
<p>Until we moved last spring, we lived right next to the Newton South attendance area, and knew quite a few folks there. Like many of the inner Boston suburbs, it’s a fairly liberal community. (the republican/conservative communities all lie in the further western suburbs like Wellesly, Lincoln, Sudbury etc. Not that they’re very conservative by national norms, just MA norms.) For communities like Newton, more southern schools like Duke, Chapel Hill, Tulane, Emory etc. just seem to be culturally another planet (but note that Tulane made the list!).</p>
<p>At my D’s HS (Brookline, right next door), both U Mich and Wisconsin were quite popular too. And a lot of it is based on experience and word of mouth. The adcoms know, from experience, that kids from Newton (or Brookline) are well prepped and will excel. The kids know older sibs and friends had a good time.</p>
<p>Given the somewhat easier admissions to U. Wisc, and the lower price (U. Mich is approaching private school costs for out of state), I’m not surprised at the stat.</p>
<p>EDIT:</p>
<p>It’s interesting to look at the 3 year stats:</p>
<p>2002, 4 2003, 5 2004, 14</p>
<p>Newton South has had relatively poor luck with Ivy admissions, so I suspect a lot of these kids are ending up at their safety.</p>
<p>See here for matriculation stats.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www2.newton.mec.edu/~lenny_libenzon/S0282352B.-1/college_matr.htm?WasRead=1[/url]”>http://www2.newton.mec.edu/~lenny_libenzon/S0282352B.-1/college_matr.htm?WasRead=1</a></p>
<p>Agreed. A lot of smart New England kids go to Michigan and Wisconsin if they’re looking for a really good, really big, school (besides cornell). For some, the Big-10 schools are the epitome of a college experience.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks, NMD. Our high school seems to have fared better than Newton South in the top schools admissions over the last three years, despite our much lower stats. I wonder why Newton South has not done better.</p>
<p>marite, I was wondering the same thing. </p>
<p>Brookline HS sent 13 kids to Harvard, 3 Stanford, 1 Princeton, 2 Columbia my D’s year, 2004. And that was with a smaller class of 450. </p>
<p>There must be an interesting backstory here.</p>
<p>I went to Newton South. We couldn’t really figure it out either although I do know that there was decline in applications to Harvard my year.</p>