<p>my guidance counselor shared this with me. living in nyc has many advantages i see:</p>
<p>[How</a> to Get Into Harvard - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119638146482608732.html?mod=hpp_us_personal_journal]How”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119638146482608732.html?mod=hpp_us_personal_journal)</p>
<p>From the above article…</p>
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<p>I think this particular quote speaks volumes about the college admissions politics at many of the elites. I would interpret this to mean that the (high) school selects your college as opposed to the student. Heaven forbid that you step outside of your position and take advantage of the education you get at a school and compete with your peers.</p>
<p>i read this and realized that the crush to get into the top colleges is so intense. the pressure has dropped down to high school. no wonder the top preps are so tough to get into.</p>
<p>stick with the football, nhfootballer. still far and away the best means of getting in.</p>
<p>True what poster above said that football is one of the biggest hooks around. They need so many guys for a football team—at schools like Williams or Amherst, roughly 1 out of 6 or 1 out of 7 of the male students has to be on the football team, so they pay very close attention to admitting students who can play. Schools like Swathmore who cut football, also saw a cut in applications, alumni donations, school spirit etc. So football is here to stay. I know my sons will be playing it if they have even a speck of interest in it—it can open to many doors.</p>
<p>“parents want to know if their children’s schools are delivering the goods – consistently getting students into top universities”</p>
<p>I know I am like a broken record on this forum but this is such a narrow definition of “delivering the goods.” The chaplain at my school did an excellent talk on this one day. He asked a student to come up and punch his hand. He then asked the student to punch through his hand to the space just behind his hand. As you might expect, the second punch was much more powerful and effective. He then explained that if you are going to high school to get into the right college, you will not be nearly as effective as you would be if your goals go well beyond college to a career, to life, to a life philosophy. Even asking about college admissions is irrelevant when we all know that a BA is no longer enough. </p>
<p>If I asked college seniors, “Did your high school prepare you academically, socially, and spiritually for college?” which school would fare the best. What if we asked this question when the former student was 30, 50, or 70?</p>
<p>To read these articles you would think that life is over if you don’t attend a top boarding school or an Ivy. Wyh do we even bother funding public schools and universities if these people are so clearly consigned to a life of poverty and misery? ;)</p>
<p>If you go beyond the WSJ article you will see a poll asking “How important to career success if the college you attend?” This is not a scientific poll but only 1/3 of the respondents said “Very Important.” One of the respondents quoted the October 11 issue of the NY Review of Books:</p>
<p>"…of the country’s five hundred largest corporations. It turns out that only thirteen of (the CEOs) didn’t attend or finish college, which means a degree is expected even at the trainee level. Another eight are heirs in family enterprises (e.g., William Wrigley, Blake Nordstrom, John Marriott Jr.), leaving 479 who had completed college and more or less ascended on their own. Altogether, sixty-eight of the 47914 percentwere graduates of twelve highly competitive colleges.</p>
<p>“Since this group confers less than 1 percent of all undergraduate degrees, it seems that having gone to one of them offers some kind of edge. But there’s another way to parse the percentages. Most of the other 411 chief executives went to less prestigious schools, like Worcester Polytechnic, Marymount College, and Idaho State. Yet as they made their climb, it seems likely that they passed colleagues who had gone to Dartmouth or Duke. So while an Ivy League degree may help in the early years of a career, its cachet tends to fade when more stringent tests are set.”</p>
<p>Personally I was amused by the WSJ selection of colleges. They could have used the Prepreview.com list which is for the 8 Ivy’s plus Stanford and MIT. Maybe they did not want to pay for it. If they had used THOSE 10 schools the 2008 ranking would have been as follows for the boarding schools (I have not paid for the foreign or the day schools). Oh and note that the comparison is just for last year’s admissions to those 10 colleges and that not all schools report SAT’s on the new format:</p>
<p>1 St. Paul’s School 34% 2049
2 Deerfield Academy 32% 2040
2 Milton Academy 32% 1360
4 Groton School 31% 2100
5 Middlesex School 30% 2010
6 Phillips Andover Academy 29% 2008
6 Phillips Exeter Academy 29% 2073
8 Noble and Greenough School 28% 1355
9 St. Albans School DC 25%<br>
10 Lawrenceville School 22% 2020
11 Hotchkiss School 20% 2015
12 Choate Rosemary Hall 19% 1332
13 Hockaday School 18% 1990
14 Peddie School 17%<br>
15 St. Andrew’s School 16% 1305
15 Belmont Hill School 16% 1340
17 Blair Academy 12% 1230
17 Taft School 12% 1293
19 St. George’s School 11% 1291
19 Indian Springs School 11% 1305
21 Cate School 10% 1310
21 Concord Academy 10% 2023
23 Cranbrook Schools 8-10% 1921
23 Georgetown Preparatory School 8-10%
23 Loomis Chaffee School 8-10%
23 Northfield Mount Hermon School 8-10% 1202
23 Miss Porter’s School 8-10% 1865
23 Emma Willard School 8-10% 1910
23 Episcopal High School 8-10%
30 Kent School 5-8%<br>
30 Webb Schools 5-8% 1300
30 Woodberry Forest School 5-8% 1310
30 Culver Academies 5-8%</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure Stanford and Columbia wouldn’t agree to participate…</p>
<p>The rankings table is here:</p>
<p>[How</a> the Schools Stack Up - WSJ.com](<a href=“WSJ.com”>http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-COLLEGE0711-sort.html#)</p>
<p>Click on the “Success Rate” column.</p>
<p>Delbarton beat Exeter…which is also true for the Bunkel Rankings (that is, for those of you who have the Day School Add-On Package (just $68.95 for people with Proof of Purchase of the Bunkel Bundle Software Suite).</p>
<p>newyorker, i think that and lacrosse are definitely the way to go (again, assuming you’re interested). basically all elite schools have one (most have both), the competition in terms of raw athleticism is not that great (ime) and it can be a huge boost (really, pretty ridiculous at times).</p>
<p>if your goal is to be a recruited athlete at the ivy/patriot/nescac level, then i think you may actually really benefit from going to boarding school (at least for a couple years).</p>
<p>does anybody have that prepreview site’s lists for top 50 us day schools and top 50 high schools overall? i think their method is much better.</p>
<p>d’yer maker, the delbarton thing is surprising. they’re mostly lax players/wrestlors who are pretty arrogant, I’ve actually never met a nice boy who goes there</p>
<p>but I suppose colleges don’t really know whether you’re an ok person or not from the essay and sat</p>
<p>My school made the top three! We were pretty excited, needless to say. </p>
<p>But I’d just like to offer my feelings about this:</p>
<p>“I think this particular quote speaks volumes about the college admissions politics at many of the elites. I would interpret this to mean that the (high) school selects your college as opposed to the student. Heaven forbid that you step outside of your position and take advantage of the education you get at a school and compete with your peers.”</p>
<p>I don’t really get your point about the high school selecting the student’s college. It’s just plain a fact that at small, competitive schools, students applying for spots at top colleges are essentially in direct competition with each other. If three or four qualified students from one school all apply EA to Georgetown, the University is unlikely to take all four. It would be unlikely four more than one or two to get in. By making a promise that she apparantly didn’t intend to keep (she really should have pulled her other apps) the student may well have been stealing a position from one of her classmates.
Additionally, things like that always sour the relationship between the high school and the college. I know my guidance counselors would be livid if I did that.</p>
<p>@ roses&clovers: Call me arrogant, but I think I was a nice boy who went there…</p>
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<p>Let me get this straight…</p>
<p>In the early fall, a student decides that G’town is her favorite and applies (with school support) EA (not ED). Along the way, she falls in love with Yale and manages to get in RD, turning down G’town. Counselor is bent out of shape with student who changes her mind because one of her other G’town EA candidates probably lost an EA acceptance.</p>
<p>Let’s get real here…</p>
<p>The girl applies Early ACCEPTANCE not Early DECISION. There is a reason for that difference. Everyone involved knows that EA is about showing interest not committment.</p>
<p>Counselor should know that girl is applying to Yale (it is her job). Counselor should know that 9 out of 10 kids will choose the Ivy unless there is a financial aid thing (full-ride at G’town). Should NOT be a surprise.</p>
<p>If the alleged candidate who “lost” a G’town acceptance was truly denied because of this girl, they probably got waitlisted (if they were truly qualified). And once said girl accepts Yale and turns down G’town, if the great counselor at this great school has any true pull and truly has X number of slots at G’town, she should be able to call G’town and get the “lost” candidate in off the waitlist into that reserved spot.</p>
<p>More likely, though is that this counselor is looking for excuses for a process that she doesn’t really have as much control over as she thinks. Counselor needs to get over the fact that kids change their minds and yes, sometimes college admissions are not orderly.</p>
<p>The very mindset that we can program our Stepford children into all the right places with perfect results is exactly the mentality that bothers me.</p>
<p>yeah, but I haven’t met you, so not included</p>
<p>you can probably guess where I go, don’t post it though</p>