UChicago is Tops at Top Prep Schools

Okay, I’ll have one reply to that final thought.

Actually table 2 does address the “tippy-top point”, better so than the AI index information you listed. AI is calculated based on stats alone, with 2/3 based on scores. Academic rating encompasses more than just having near perfect scores… Only 1-2% of applicants receive the maximum possible academic rating of 1, which is associated with being one of the best academic scholars in the class and often involves having academic work reviewed by Harvard faculty. Among the admits in table 2, only 4% had this rare perfect academic rating, indicating the tippy top point . The % of each group with this rare “tippy top point” in academics is below.

Percent of Admits with Rare 1 Academic Rating
5% of non-ALDC admits
3% of LDC admits
<0.1% of Athlete admits

It’s debatable how significant this 5% of non-ALDC vs 3% LDC difference is. I don’t doubt that it’s significant in a statistical standard error sense, but it’s not what I would consider a very large difference… or large enough to draw conclusions about whether academic stars from top prep schools are attending Harvard vs Chicago. Again the more stark difference occurs with recruited athletes. In all but 1 of the sample years, none of the recruited athletes received this rating.

The specific numbers from table 10 are below. % ALDC admits using table 10 comes out to 29% (of domestic admits)… not 43%, just as % ALDC admits comes out to 29% when using the numbers from table 2. . I suspect the discrepancy occurs because you only looked at one race column, rather than summing all 4.

Total Athletes Admits = 817+124+54+101 = 1096
Total LDC Admits =1362+81+122+270 = 1835
Total Admits = 4993+1392+1283+2443 = 10111
% ALDC = (1096+1835)/10111 = 29%

There isn’t enough information to conclude which colleges the “academic superstars” from prep schools are attending by just looking at the matriculation totals + stats from the Harvard lawsuit. If you are really interested, I imagine some persons in the prep school forum have stats for their high school.