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in the Wall Street Journal personal section yesterday? It was very interresting as it ranked the schools success in gaing admits to competetive colleges and whether they thought you got the "bang for your buck".

By Traci87 (Traci87) on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 12:07 pm: Edit

Yes, I saw that. WSJ likes to talk about admissions.

By Albertc (Albertc) on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 06:32 pm: Edit

Yes, I did.


Sorry, I can't give you the link, since you need a paid subscription for on-line access.

Anyway, Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, NY, was ranked #1 for high schools having a graduating class of 50 or more in 2003 in sending the highest percentage of its graduating class to 10 highly selective colleges, 7 Ivy League schools and 3 elite colleges. Only high schools with more than 50 grads last year were ranked. The WSJ ranked the high schools, including public, public magnet, private day prep and boarding schools, according to the percentage of each class matriculating at 10 highly selective colleges for the last year, Sept. '03 entering classes. These colleges are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, U.of Penn, Brown, U.of Chicago, Pomona, and Duke. Columbia and Stanford were not included because the researchers were unable to obtain the face books to verify the data. This definitely skewed the results, because traditional feeders to Columbia such as the preps, Andover, Exeter, Milton and Horace Mann and the public magnets, such as Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science, which send double digit numbers to Columbia, did not have their grads who matriculated at Columbia last year counted in this survey.

Saint Ann's School ranked #1, with 30 out 74 grads matriculating at the 10 colleges or 41% of its grads last year. Collegiate School, in NYC with over 50% matriculation of its grads in the selective 10 colleges last year was not ranked, because it had less than 50 grads. If it were ranked, it would be #1. Roxbury Latin, in West Roxbury, Mass. was not ranked due to its small size. Anyway, the ranking with #of matrulants/#of grads for each school in 2003 is #2 Winsor School, Boston 22/57, 39%, #3 Trinity School, NYC, 44/120 37%, #4 Horace Mann School, NY, 61/175 35%, #5 Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., 91/300 30%, #6 Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Mass., 60/199 30%, #7 Nat'l Cathedral School, Washington, DC, 22/73 30%, #8 Dalton School, NYC, 31/103 30%, #9 Hunter College High School, 53/186 28%, #10 St. Paul's School, Concord, NH, 41/144 28%, #11 St. Alban's School, Washington DC, 22/81 27%, #12 Germantown Friend's School, Philadelphia, 23/88 26%, #13 Episcopal Academy, Merion and Devon, Pa., 27/104 26%, #14 Lakeside School, Seattle 28/11 25%, #15 Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH, 79/322 25%, #16 Pingry School, Martinsville, NJ, 32/132 24%, #17 Milton Academy, Milton, Mass., 41/170 24%, #18 Choate-Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, Conn., 53/224 24%, #19 Hopkins School, 29/123 24%, #20 U.of Chicago Lab Schools, Chicago, 26/112 23% #21 Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Conn., 34/148 23%, #22 Noble and Greenough School, Dedham, Mass., 23/102 23% #23 Harvard-Westlake School, N.Hollywood, Calif., 60/268 22%, #24 Delbarton School, Morristown, NJ, 26/118 22%, #25 Durham Academy, Durham, NC, 21/97 22%. The list continues in the article. T.Jefferson HS, Alexandria, Va., had 74/401 at 18% and Stuyvesant HS, NYC, had 119/719 or 17%.

To more accurately evaluate admissions from these high schools into the selective 10 colleges, one must consider the admissions criteria and the preferential treatment given to preferred categories of students in admissions to the Ivies and elite colleges. These preferred students already have the "hooks" before they enter the elite and prestigious day preps in NYC or the Roxbury Latin School (45 grads per year), in West Roxbury, Mass., where the Dean of Harvard College is on its Board of Trustees. These are the only schools in America of such a small size that have a matriculation rate of over 50% into the 8 Ivies. In fact, Roxbury Latin School sends from 6 to 8 to Harvard alone from 45 grads during some years. Many of these schools cater to the rich, powerful, and famous elite of NYC and Boston, whose kids already have "hooks" to the Ivies (legacies, money, famous parents, athletic recruits), in addition to self-selected recruited inner-city URMs (underrepresented minorities) with even bigger "hooks" to the Ivies because of Ivy recruitment. So it is not only academics, but "hooks", that matter in Ivy admissions. It is not all about "academics". Academics alone will not do it for admission to the Ivies. You need "hooks". These students arrive in these high schools with "hooks" and more than likely, they would have been admitted to these highly selective ten colleges in the survey, no matter which prep school or high school they attended. Many of these students were pre-ordained or pre-destined.


30% of the graduating class is made up of National Merit Semifinalists at the Collegiate School in NYC. However, the number one school in America with the highest number, as well as the highest percentage, of its graduating class who are National Merit Semifinalists, is the academically elite public magnet school in Fairfax, Va., Thomas Jefferson H.S. for Science and Technology. TJHS consistently has over 150 NM Semifinalists out of 400 graduates each year. They do not send 30% to the Ivies, despite being more academically accomplished. Close to 40% of its class is Asian. This is also true of Stuyvesant H.S., the school with the second highest number of National Merits, with 50% of its class Asian American, many of whom are immigrants or offsprings of immigrants . The public magnet Hunter College H.S. in NYC also has a higher percentage of NM Semifinalists than the elite NYC day preps, but sends a smaller percentage of its grads to the 8 Ivies. These students do not have the aforementioned "hooks" that the students in the private preps have.

The small NYC elite and prestigious day prep schools include Collegiate, Trinity, Brearley, Spence, Nigthingale-Bamford, Dalton, Horace Mann, and even St. Ann's in Broolyn, which sent 40% of its 74 grads to the 8 Ivies last year. They also include the Winsor School in Mass..

A major flaw of this survey was that it only studied one year of matriculations for each high school of its grads, which means little, if a 4 or 5 year period was not surveyed to gain an overview of a trend. The Worth Magazine rankings surveyed each high school in matriculation of its grads at HYP over a 4 year period to establish its rankings of high schools as feeders into HYP.

By Albertc (Albertc) on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 07:36 pm: Edit

BTW, here are the initial excerpts of the WSJ article referred to by the OP.


COLLEGE PLANNING

The Price of Admission

By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

April 2, 2004; Page W1

"When Martin Quiñones was starting high school, he and his parents looked at several Boston-area private schools before settling on Phillips Academy. It was one of the most expensive schools they considered, with annual tuition of $23,400, not including room, board and other fees. But with Martin's sights on getting into a top college, his family figured it was worth it."

"They're about to find out if they were right. This weekend, the coveted fat envelopes -- and the dreaded thin ones -- for Ivy-League and other top universities are in the mail. Thousands of families across America are anxiously waiting to learn whether their huge investments in private education -- or moves to expensive neighborhoods with good public schools -- have paid off with acceptances to elite colleges. Martin Quiñones hopes for a nod from Harvard and other big names, and his family has made sacrifices to pay for his high-school education, such as driving older cars and taking fewer vacations, with that goal in mind. "If you go cheap, you're not going to get what you're hoping for -- an Ivy-class school," says Martin's father, Ricardo Quiñones, a computer consultant in Gloucester, Mass."

"For families dreaming of sending their children to a prestigious university, the stakes have never been higher. Competition has intensified as the kids of baby boomers reach college age, and tuition at private schools -- believed by many parents to be the best insurance for college admission -- is soaring to record levels. Now, tuition of $20,000 a year is routine, with several of the best-known private schools topping $25,000. But do the most expensive schools really offer more bang for the buck than cheaper competitors? And just how do these pricey schools compare with highly successful public high schools?"

"Curious about the link between money and admissions success, Weekend Journal studied this year's freshman classes at 10 of the nation's most exclusive colleges -- including Harvard and other Ivies, and places like the University of Chicago and Pomona. We tracked down the alma maters of each entering student -- some 11,000 kids in all -- and came up with a list of high schools that had graduating classes of at least 50 students and sent at least 20 of them to our chosen colleges. For each high school, we then calculated what percentage of its graduates went on to those colleges. Finally, we compared tuition costs."

"Though all the high schools in our survey have outstanding reputations, the success rates at some were astonishing. The best-performing high school on our list sent a staggering 41% of its senior class to our 10 colleges -- 30 kids out of a class of 74. (Hint: It's the private school where Academy Award-winner Jennifer Connelly went.) And that high school wasn't nearly the most expensive on our list."

By Aab123 (Aab123) on Sunday, April 11, 2004 - 11:49 am: Edit

Yea number 4!