Most Prestigious Private HS In US Suffers Elite College Matriculation Decline, Parents/Admins Reeling
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Anonymous
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Phillips Academy Andover, the most elite prep school in America only got 4 kids into Harvard in 2025. In the class of 2023 12 kids got into Harvard. Similar trends are at other top schools with only 6 getting into Yale in 2025 and 12 getting in 2023. Only 4 matriculated to Penn in 2025 compared to 7 in 2023. Only 13 got into UChicago, compared to 21 getting into UChicago in 2023. The trend holds across most elite schools such as Northwestern, Duke, etc.
There seems to be serious anti-elite trends in college admissions. They clearly see these kids as "privileged" and are holding it against them. In this new era, you might just be better off sending your kid to public school. https://d2e3a5v56wj8r4.cloudfront.net/files/CCO_Profile_2024-2025.pdf https://d2e3a5v56wj8r4.cloudfront.net/files/SchoolProfile2023-2024.pdf |
Anonymous
| I send my kid to private because it’s the best fit for DC now, not for any supposed boost into elite colleges. Those admissions are always a crapshoot even for the tippy top students from any school. |
Anonymous
| While it makes a great narrative and college outcomes are often part of the decision, I don't think that most parents are sending their kids to privates for the primary purpose of getting into ivies. Personally, I don't care if my kid goes to a "top whatever" college and I have been thrilled with his private school experience regardless of where he ends up. |
Anonymous
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So based on the applications experience from Andover we extrapolate that all these top universities suddenly (between 2023 and 2025, which is not enough time for a complete turnover in admissions offices at all these places or anything) leapt to an anti-elite attitude and that this applies to all elite private high schools in the US?
Couldn't have anything to do with a weak class of 2025 or anything like that.. |
Anonymous
| Most kids who are at Andover aren't there because they are specifically targeting Harvard or its peer schools. |
Anonymous
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A lot of kids at schools like Andover are on significant financial aid.
Who would want to be full pay at Andover with college placement so bad anyway. Perhaps Andover will no longer be viewed as elite. |
Anonymous
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The goal isn't to get your kid into a top college, rube.
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Anonymous
| There are going to be natural fluctuations in how many kids are accepted by Harvard, whether kids apply to Harvard, etc. when you are looking at a class size of only 200-300 kids each year. Same with every other elite boarding school, many of which have even smaller classes than Andover. |
Anonymous
Of course, but would you knowingly disadvantage your kid in college admissions? |
Anonymous
| New England boarding schools have always been gatekeepers to the Ivies and other prestigious schools. The point of attending is to get a great education, which should theoretically get you into an elite university, and to make connections that will be fruitful later in life. My husband and I went to elite universities and as parents are now paying a ton of money for our kids to attend private school. Do my children necessarily need to go to Harvard or Dartmouth? No, but I’ll be disappointed if they go to a university that is vastly different from the type of schools where we went if they have a good academic record. I won’t think private was waste, but it would make me question if the cost of worth it. |
Anonymous
| There are more than 26,000 high schools in the US. The talent base is very, very broad in America. It has always been absurd that highly selective universities were reserving so many seats for privileged students from a handful of expensive private schools. It's not 1925 anymore. Those kind of admissions were a Gilded Age anachronism. Today, talent is elsewhere, and moving beyond the old feeder schools has long been overdue. But looking at the chart, the Andover students are still doing fine at schools like BU, NYU, and Tufts, which are all very good schools. College placement shouldn't be the goal of private school anyway. |
Anonymous
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"College placement shouldn't be the goal of private school anyway."
Well, that's going to come as a surprise to many of the posters on this forum. That appears to be their principal reason. And they are entitled to have that opinion. These are people whose world is all about credentials. And Washington has a lot of them in Law, lobbying and Government. And suggesting to them that going to an Ivy isn't all that important will strike them as ridiculous. The rest of us, and what seems like the rest of the country, is perfectly happy with their kids attending a good college. They understand through experience and observation that where you went to college says little about you important. |
Anonymous
| No longer getting the enormous advantage they used to get is not the same thing as being at a disadvantage. Private school graduates are still disproportionately represented in elite colleges. |
Anonymous
It’s not serious anti-elites if colleges are holding these students to the same criteria as the rest of the applicant pool. Just because these students are no longer getting advantages or hook that they used to, don’t mean that elite colleges are seriously anti-private boarding schools. Now if acceptances to elite colleges fall consistently below the percentages of population of the target population for multiple years, then maybe you can claim there may be anti-elite bias. |
Anonymous
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Not sure you realize this, but getting admitted to Andover is already like getting admitted to an elite college. The student body looks nothing like the population at large or even a public school.
Due to the admissions process, this is already a population of kids that look like the Harvard study body. So yes, their admissions to college is at a real disadvantage. |