<p>Granted, there are a lot of students you listed who were accepted by “need-blind” colleges. I imagine that their wealthy upbringing offered them a lot of privileges (e.g. SAT prep courses) that other students may not have had.</p>
<p>Also, I imagine you have an comprehensive college counseling program. I went to a small, small, small public high school in central Massachusetts, and while the students’ accepted colleges were good, they were not this diverse. I go to Hampshire College, which no one at my high school has ever heard of. There’s three students of your class heading there, which is - really - strange to me, given that it’s a pretty obscure school.</p>
<p>USNWR is not the main judge of high schools. Regional college reps for top colleges make it their business to learn about the high schools in their area.</p>
<p>What you describe seems very typical for high schools with students who come from highly educated families. The students are smarter than the students at most high schools. They were brought up with parents who spoke proper English, supplemented their school lessons, reviewed their homework, and read to them and got them into enrichment activities.</p>
<p>The students know what to do to get into college. They also have excellent guidance counselors and teachers. Their parents also put their kids on track for college from an early age. The parents are active in PTA/PTO and effectively complain when teachers and staff are mediocre. </p>
<p>88% of the students in my own public high school went to colleges, typically tier 1 or tier 2 ones – for the same reasons that exist at your school.</p>
<p>Also… if a number of the students have parents who teach at local Universities… that’s a hook to that school. I’m not sure how many children of Harvard professors are rejected from the school, but I’m guessing the acceptance rate is MUCH greater than 7%!</p>
<p>My kids go to a nearby town with a high school that is, according to stupid rankings, even better. The admissions stats you list are normal. </p>
<p>But what is the difference? Our town and high school have much more economic diversity than yours and more METCO students*. The same education is available at this school to all students but there are different aspiration levels. Minority and working class kids take fewer honors and AP courses, even when the kids have come up all the way through our schools - see below about METCO. And we have a number of special programs to provide academic and social assistance. </p>
<p>I’m focusing on aspiration because wealth is not as significant a determining factor in our district. We have a number of relatively poorer, highly aspirational immigrants whose children excel - and whose parents stretch financially to live in the district. </p>
<p>Aspiration matters a great deal generally. And milieu matters a great deal. If you go to Watertown High, a larger percentage of the kids are aiming at community college or work without college. </p>
<p>*METCO is a program in which Boston kids go to suburban schools. Kids are bused, which is not a bad word in this case, and it’s important to realize the kids often start in grade school, even kindergarten, so they are entirely raised in the suburban district though they live in the city.</p>
<p>There was an interesting article in the Boston Globe somewhat recently talking about the METCO program. It pointed to statistics that show that the METCO kids were much less likely to go to top tier schools and much more often went to community colleges or did not attend college after graduating. This points even more to wealth being a factor in attending top schools.</p>
<p>Well, we have a top fifty ranked high school in our area, and the kids aren’t admitted to the really reachy schools at anything like the rate your school seems to have.</p>
<p>I think that there are probably three influences you may not be considering:
Many elite private universities heavily subsidize the college tuition for children of employees – sometimes up to the amount of tuition that would be charged at their own institution. Stanford did this when my b-i-l taught there. They would pay up to the cost of Stanford’s tuition to any school a dependent attended. Why even consider a state U when you get a free ride at any private school? Schools know this too – admit one of these kids and you don’t hit your FA budget at all.
Faculty at elite private universities often themselves graduated from elite private universities, and often married spouses who did the same. In an affluent area, this may also apply to grandparents, and so a kid may be a legacy at a number of colleges, and we all know what a boost that can be.
Kids of heavy-hitter parents – academics, politicos, or entertainers seem to get a more favorable nod than otherwise might be the case, though in some cases it may be because the kids had a lot of opportunities and used them wisely. On the other hand, I know of the child of a Nobel prize winner who had a lot more college flex than you might have expected given her academic prowess.</p>
<p>ok, wow, i knew there were insane high schools out there. I just didn’t realize the kids there deluded themselves into thinking their high school is somewhere in the “normal” range. And no, I don’t go to some inner-city school. Like my user name implies, I go to a school in the country. The roof leaked before the construction project my sophomore year, and now it still leaks. We had Civics books that didn’t include the last Constitutional amendment. I have about 160 in my graduating class, and that’s after taking out the drop-outs, the kids who must work, the migrant kids, and the guys who stay home to work on the farm. I was the only person to even apply to an ivy league. Penn State main campus is an accomplishment to get in to; only the top students can get in. We take kids from six towns and the countryside in-between. We all get bussed to school. We run out of paper, tissues, and paper towels every year b/c there just isn’t enough money in the budget for it. And through all of this, we still graduate 8/9 kids, most of them go to college or the military (though not crazy elite schools), we do well in athletics for our size, and keep up w/ the AYP for NCLB. Trust me, our ESL program is big. And not just the number of people in it, but the fact that it’s one teacher for all of them. We’re what I consider a typical high school. We are a normal high school in my area. Your high school is just insane. If we have 70% or more of my class even going to college it’s really impressive.</p>
<p>I would say that for an affluent town with many parent’s who work at top colleges the list isn’t overly impressive. A fair number have to be legacies, some are staff kids and if the school is top 100 in the US (not that those lists mean much as most of the most competitive schools in the Country are excluded) I would expect more going to the very top schools. No representation at Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and Penn is surprising for anything close to a top high school in MA. No Stanford at a top 100 high school? No Williams or Amherst? I’m not seeing how this list is surprising.</p>
<p>What is impressive is the geographic diversity, which again, speaks to affluence.</p>
<p>Are you serious? Why are many of you bashing the amazing college options that these students have? Do you not know how many students DO NOT have the opportunity to attend some of these schools? </p>
<p>THREE to MIT? Now that sounds really odd…not to mention three off to Harvard. Something just doesn’t sound right about this. Anyone else"</p>
<p>Doesn’t sound odd. There are public schools like that – particularly in the Boston area, where there are schools filled with kids from highly educated backgrounds where parents also are local college professors, including at Harvard and MIT, which also gives the kids a boost intellectually and with admissions.</p>
<p>There are public schools in the Boston area that send 20 kids to Harvard. One of the Newton highs is like that.</p>
<p>3 students from my own public school class – that wasn’t in the Boston area – went to Harvard.</p>
<p>My s goes to the top ranked public high school in our state (highest average SATs, etc) yet very, very few students will go OOS for college. His guidance couselor freaked when she found out he was applying to Tulane and we live in the south! Part of the reason the OP’s class will be attending so many fine schools, located all around the country, is that his school has a “culture” of sending students elsewhere for college. Their parents when to colleges in other states. Of the students in my s’s class (about 450), most are very good/excellent students, very good athletes, children of college educated parents, living in a relatively affluent area. I bet fewer than 10% will venture out of state. In fact, I only know 3 for sure (my s being one of them).</p>
<p>I’m actually pretty happy that I wasn’t in the top 50% of my school. If I was in the top 5% and I told everybody that I wanted to go to Clemson or UNC-Asheville, people might have told me I was crazy and would be looked down upon for that. However, at other schools, many valedictorians go to Clemson or UNC-Asheville, that’s the problem with going to a top high school.</p>
<p>McPucks, it also points to cultural factors and family histories. Many if not most METCO kids are the first in their family to go to college so they set their sights lower, even though the high school encourages them and though need-blind admissions and financial aid is highlighted. Remember that they go to school here but go home to situations where peer pressure is usually negative, even violently so. Peers have a tremendous influence. And for many African-American or Latino city kids, they must move from the pressured, hyper-achievement world (and a very safe place) to one which is in many unfortunate ways the opposite. Money in this case is as much a marker of fitting in to a culture of success.</p>
<p>Our high school in Connecticut has a graduating class of 200 kids this year, with four accepted to Yale and three that are planning to go there. So I don’t think 3 to Harvard for a Massachusetts public school is odd. (Hmm…I wonder if Ivy acceptance is ever skewed by state…) Interestingly, we only have 1 acceptance to Harvard and none to MIT (2 applied).</p>
<p>I agree with axp2004, it is very unfortunate that people tend to focus on the top 50 or so schools in the country, when there are so many others to consider!</p>
<p>I did not read the whole thread.
Belmont High is one of the top performing schools in MA, together with Newton, Lexington, Brookline. It has a high concentration of Harvard, MIT, BU, Tufts profs as well as other professionals, many of whom graduated from top schools in the country and whose children are thus facbrats and legacies on top of being graduates of a well-known school. It also has a gigantic Mormon temple. As Pierre says, Mitt Romney has a house in Belmont.</p>
<p>Pierre may think his GCs are clueless but he has no idea of what cluelessness means when it comes to GCs at other schools.</p>
<p>haha I went to Belmont High too. We ranked 100th in the US you know
top ten in MA I’m pretty sure…</p>
<p>But I totally know what you mean! I’m sure you noticed that so many of our peers got into BU…well, I know of a valedictorian from a high school only an hour and a half from Belmont that got rejected from there…and I felt bad because I remember saying to her “Don’t worry! I know sooo many idiots that got into that school!”</p>
<p>And what I really don’t understand is how kids do so well at BHS considering the amount of drinking we do on the weekends! Alcohol is a Marauder’s best friend.</p>
<p>And yes, a lot of the kid’s parents work or know people who work at the surrounding elite colleges and universities. I lived on Belmont Hill. My dad…MIT Engineering school (haha, I know…I’m one of them too!). And yes, I also have good old Mitt Romney down the street too…</p>
<p>If I had a dime for every time I saw one of my classmates get into a college that seemed way too good for them… agh it is just unbelievable.
I find myself saying a lot… “***!? HE/SHE got in THERE!?!”</p>
