“Or, the top colleges become familiar with those schools and the success of its applicants and the HS surpasses the numbers you would expect from the law of averages.”
This.
I believe Adcoms are very well aware of these high school and the capabilities of the students who graduate from those schools.
In particular, kids in the Northeast do not have access to state schools of this quality at in-state tuition rates. None of the top state schools are in their region. So the process of picking colleges is different for them than it is for families in, say, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Virginia.
A North Carolina student who gets turned down by whatever elite private schools he applied to but gets into UNC-Chapel Hill doesn’t feel much of a sting. He’s still going to go to an extraordinarily good university. A Massachusetts student who gets turned down by the same elite private schools but gets into UMass may not feel the same way.
The competition coming from an elite prep school is intense because these kids have already been vetted once. The admit rates to some of these schools is in the teens! The application process is very similar to the college process with standardized tests, transcripts, recs, interviews, and multiple essays. It shouldn’t be a surprise that schools like Andover, Exeter, et al send over half their seniors to top 20 schools. These kids were impressive at 13.
“In particular, kids in the Northeast do not have access to state schools of this quality at in-state tuition rates. None of the top state schools are in their region. So the process of picking colleges is different for them than it is for families in, say, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Virginia.”
Yes, we know. It’s a shame for you guys. Seriously.
@pskzorm my advice: Good luck!
Stanford looks for one over-riding thing. They are looking for the person who’s going to be starting the new Instagram, the person who has something of possible revolutionary value. Plus, legacy. Those aren’t the only two, but that first one really is a major consideration. 4.0s (unweighted) with stellar ECs, are rejected right and left. It’s massively hard.
Here are the acceptances at our high school over the past four years to the top 23 private research universities. It is a suburban Chicago non-magnet school with about 700 graduates per year. The figures below represent 9 percent of the class.
Private Research Accepted Went Yield Rate
Northwestern University 104 47 45%
University of Notre Dame 45 27 60%
Vanderbilt University 55 20 36%
University of Chicago 34 19 56%
Washington U St. Louis 58 18 31%
Cornell University 28 13 46%
Southern California 39 11 28%
Stanford University 8 8 100%
University of Pennsylvania 16 7 44%
Princeton University 7 7 100%
Harvard University 9 6 67%
Brown University 9 5 56%
Duke University 15 5 33%
Emory University 17 5 29%
MIT 7 5 71%
Carnegie Mellon University 19 4 21%
Dartmouth College 15 4 27%
Yale University 10 4 40%
Johns Hopkins University 9 2 22%
Georgetown University 18 3 17%
Columbia University 6 3 50%
Rice University 13 2 15%
California Tech 4 0 0%
Total for Four Years 545 225 41%
Total Per Year 136 56 41%
Psk, Just being frank: lots of kids say some college has been their dream since they were knee high to a grasshopper. If you want Stanford, really dig into what Stanford wants, since it’s their call. And try to grasp what it’s like for them to review thousands and thousands of apps with straight A and top rigor, from kids with a clear idea of their intentions and experiences to back that up. Lots of kids say, “I program apps!” “I’m president of this club!” It’s beyond that.
Pizzagirl, it’s simply not so that the Ivies are a mania peculiar to the Northeast. I work for one and the volume of qualified apps from CA, TX, IL and FL is astounding. Of course, then there’s Stuy and TJ and Boston Latin, Exeter and the rest of the BS and super-preps. But you simply don’t get 40,000 apps primarily from NE kids. And not all NE kids are as qualified as their competition. We’ve got an s-load of smart folks here…but that doesn’t mean everyone is.
I don’t find the info startling at all. About 25%of the kids at my one son’s prep school went to ivies. The focus was on HPY and about 10% of the kids got in there, I would say more than half of them had very strong legacy, development, celebrity factors, sometimes all three. URMs who went to the school had excellent chances of getting into top colleges since the preparation, course difficulty were there, and I also suspect to markedly balance the effect that family and other such factors had on acceptance to those schools. Without being the top of the top, the average, unhooked applicant could well have a smaller chance of acceptance to the top schools.
But then when it came to smaller selective schools, the top LACs, there was defintiely an advantage in gaining acceptance coming from such a school.
When I lived in a huge public school district in the midwest which was considered pretty danged upscale, but not in the category of Scarsdale or New Trier, if more than one kid got into HPY, it was a surprise. no more than 5 to all of the ivies and top schools, LACs and whatever included. But then how many applied to them? The big time goal was to get into Flagship U and that’s where about half the kids ended up going with the other half going to other state schools, public or private and some to neighboring publics. Not that many going to private schools more than a few hours away. Just didn’t happen and I watched the trends year in and year out. About 95% went to 4 year colleges with 85-90% going to 4 year schools, so this was a college prep area with full menu of AP courses offered.
When you look at the average SAT of some of these special schools, you’ll find that they are similar to the top colleges, so where does one expect those kids will give it a go? That’s where the difference is among those “elite” schools, public or private, and the others. Private alone doesn’t do it I’m familiar with the college destinations of a number of Catholic high schools., and again the ones that send a larger percentage of kids to the more selective school, are predictive by their SAT1 range. Two similar such schools in my area–and the differential in the mid 50% test score numbers will tell you which school send more kids to the more selective schools. Then You go look at schools like Stuyvessant, Regis, Trinity, where the kids are prescreened primarily by test scores, and you know that these are kids that will be applying and getting into the top schools.
So really, one should be looking at the test score spreads. When I look at those at the great public school, the ranges are unremarkable and do point to most kids going State U. The question then becomes how many or what percent of the top kids there are also getting top SAT scores. Are the ones nailing the 2300 scores, not getting into the top school at the same rate as those from Private Prep down the road where a full quarter of their kids are getting into Ivys and the like.
I can also tell you that the mindset is different at different schools in terms of where to apply. Around here, the % of kids at the private school and higher rated public districts tend to eschew the state schools. It’s changed, with the climbing prices and the economy, but it’s still not considered a great accomplishment in some circles to go to a SUNY whereas going to Big State U was like the ultimate hurrah at where I used to live.
I can speak to geographic perception, having grown up in Southeastern MA and now with two kids in the metro Atlanta school system. I went to a well regarded, public middle class high school in MA, and our valedictorian went to Harvard, our salutatorian went to Dartmouth, #3 went to Cornell (you get the picture). Those schools were familiar to us and comfortable.
Down here, the top kids want to go to Duke and Vanderbilt, and the international business kids want to go to the Univ. of SC. Nobody talks about Harvard, Stanford, etc. It’s like those schools are on another planet. And it’s not because it’s a bunch of country bumpkins who don’t know any better-the public school my kids attend is consistently nationally ranked and most of the parents are not from Georgia (I think it’s 3% native). Since we have GA Tech, the robotics kids (we have a really good robotics program) all have that option available to them, making MIT or CalTech a school that’s hard to justify paying for if you have the Miller scholarship in-state.
I keep seeing LAC. What does it mean?
My son, who works for a Silicon Valley startup, says that Stanford computer science students and graduates seem to have a particularly entrepreneurial bent. Either Stanford is selecting for that subgroup or that subgroup is choosing Stanford.
I’ll admit to not reading every post on this thread. I already think someone else made the point (about which I agree) that elite prep schools and magnet type schools send a higher percentage of their students to highly selective colleges than no-name public high schools, but the concentration of top students is higher in those high schools where students already had to make a very selective cut to attend. So, it only makes sense that they send more of their seniors to elite colleges. However, I truly believe you can attend a top college coming from any high school. It is far more important WHO you are and what you have accomplished than what high school you attended.
Personal experience: my two kids attended a rural public high school where 66% of students go onto 4 year colleges. While not a huge number of students apply to elite colleges (and some even choose our state U), a couple get in most years. My older kid got into a couple of Ivies (though was the only kid that year from our school who attended an Ivy), but I have known graduates in subsequent years who went onto Ivies, MIT, and other top colleges. While slightly different, my other kid applied to highly selective BFA in musical theater programs (all have acceptance rates in the single digits) and got into many and attended a highly regarded one with a 6% acceptance rate, and this was coming from a school with no drama program and in a rural area (some applicants have attended performing arts high schools and we had none in our state). So, it can be done and my kids are not unique in this regard! They both faired very well in college and one also got into many Ivies (plus MIT and Stanford) for grad school, and won various scholarships. There is no one path to a selective college. Be a standout…you can come from any high school and succeed.
Exactly @marian this is what I always here.
"Pizzagirl, it’s simply not so that the Ivies are a mania peculiar to the Northeast. I work for one and the volume of qualified apps from CA, TX, IL and FL is astounding. "
Absolutely. But I think zinhead’s post is notable - note where the students wound up - NU, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, U Chicago, WashU. A lot of people - even ones who are well-to-do (I’m assuming such is the case where zinhead lives) and who have no problem hopping on a plane to go to wherever - want to stay close to home.
Zinhead, are you on the North Shore? I can’t imagine any school in Chicago that is sending 47 kids to Northwestern unless you’re in NU’s relative backyard.
Liberal Arts Colleges. Think Wellesley, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, or the Claremont Colleges.
PS There is a thread stickied in the PF that contains many acronyms.
It’s just a by-product of the times. A lot of bright dynamic students are trying to follow in the footsteps of Brin and The Zuck. It’s the thing now. They don’t always tell you that expressly, so what are you going to do, reject all the smart ones who are good leaders had anything to do with actually doing something in HS?
" a particularly entrepreneurial bent" Yup. But not all about founding the next Instagram. You can be entrepreneurial in many respects that have nothing to do with start-ups. It’s a mindset of taking on challenges, not standing still, being visionary and making things add up. And you can’t just claim it, you have to show it in the ways adult adcoms value.
The volume of qualified applications from out-of-area students to top Midwestern schools may also be astounding.
I’m from Maryland, and Northwestern, UChicago, and WashU are among the top choices of many students here. Notre Dame and Vanderbilt, I’m not so sure about.
I happen to think that such definition is a tad narrow. What Stanford has repeated over and over is its affinity for what they call intellectual vitality. The problem is that they also claim that they know how to identify it when they see it but cannot describe in words the common mortal understands easily.
Perhaps a different “definition” might include that Stanford looks for students who are showing the ability and desire to make the world a better place, and especially one that recognizes the value of altruism.