Best High Schools in America for Top Universities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They only confuse Harvard Princeton and MIT??? This is so dumb. (It’s also a huge east coat bias by not using Stanford and/or caltech.) The problem is that by having such a small number there are a of weird swings and lack of differentiation. I pulled up my whole state and basically all the good schools had 2-3 admits to those 3 schools, so the difference between first in the state and 15th in the state was one kid.

Also it would be nice to know how many of the Harvard and Princeton were athletic recruits.

From TJ, I don’t think any since 2015. They only have 5-6 a year. And recently a kid was an MIT recruit. But I haven’t seen any Harvard or Princeton.

And for people griping, realize almost all of the TJ admits are completely unhooked. 95% of TJ is white or Asian, it’s 1% FARMS and it’s mostly first. Gen. Americans. Very few legacies. Stuy kids do have demographics working for them. Exeter and the other boarding schools have legacies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t say TJ isn’t strong but it’s not better than a top private and it’s light years away from a good boarding.

It depends on what you want. If you want your kid to make connections and get soft skills, definitely. If it’s about the education, you don’t know what you are talking about.

[Anonymous]

In a global economy where white male privilege is on the way out, I like TJ kids’ and Stuy kids chances. They got where they are on 100% merit, no connections.

And I have a friend who is in her mid 40s and was in one of the first couple of TJ classes. It has not yet had any crop of kids get past mid career. Let alone since Tj became TJ!!!!!!! And yet the alumni fund is actively partnering with the school to get kids internships and jobs at Google and the like and has poured millions of dollars into the renovation and is Justin’s starting to reach the point where they can effectively advocate for TJ kids at colleges.

30 years ago, TJ was a new economic development experiment where the nerds started to find their own. Now look at it. And imagine where it will be when there are twice as many alums.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They only confuse Harvard Princeton and MIT??? This is so dumb. (It’s also a huge east coat bias by not using Stanford and/or caltech.) The problem is that by having such a small number there are a of weird swings and lack of differentiation. I pulled up my whole state and basically all the good schools had 2-3 admits to those 3 schools, so the difference between first in the state and 15th in the state was one kid.

Also it would be nice to know how many of the Harvard and Princeton were athletic recruits.

From TJ, I don’t think any since 2015. They only have 5-6 a year. And recently a kid was an MIT recruit. But I haven’t seen any Harvard or Princeton.

And for people griping, realize almost all of the TJ admits are completely unhooked. 95% of TJ is white or Asian, it’s 1% FARMS and it’s mostly first. Gen. Americans. Very few legacies. Stuy kids do have demographics working for them. Exeter and the other boarding schools have legacies.

I was asking re recruits from the boarding schools, not tj. I went to a private school not listed that send a handful to H and Y and P every year for some sports we excel at but very few for academics lok

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am surprised there are boarding schools on this list, but they are more academic than people give them credit for. A lot of Harvard professors who live in Lexington same with Princeton high.

That used to be the case (and not just Harvard- many Universities in the area), but most profs are priced of out Lexington now.

The average full professor at Harvard makes 200,000 and often has additional income from consulting gigs. Also many have spouses that are lawyers and doctors.

https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-has-highest-paid-professors-2012-4

But that is the average FULL professor and there are more of the others. The others do not make that much.

Most of the college professors I know have family $$ or are supported by a spouse. Not that many poor kids can afford to get a PhD from the kind of top colleges you'd need to get a teaching gig at Harvard, Princeton or MIT (yes, I know many PhD programs are "fully funded," but not many students can afford to be out of the workforce that long and risk a really tough job market for a potential job that isn't all that lucrative to begin with).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Rank 1
THOMAS JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL ALEXANDRIA, VA
Class Size:423Free/Reduced Lunch:2%Student/Teacher Ratio:17/1 Asian:60%White:29%American Indian:2%Hispanic:2%Black:1%Hawaiian:1%
Harvard 11 Princeton 33 MIT 35
Total 79

Rank 2
STUYVESANT HIGH SCHOOL NEW YORK, NY
Class Size:805Free/Reduced Lunch:45%Student/Teacher Ratio:21/1 Asian:73%White:20%Hispanic:3%Black:1%American Indian:<1%
Harvard26 Princeton 23 MIT 22
Total 71

Rank 3
PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY EXETER, NH
Class Size:320Student/Teacher Ratio:7/1Boarding Tuition:$49,880Day Tuition:$38,740Financial Aid:Yes hite:56%Asian:23%Black:11%Hispanic:9%American Indian:1%
Harvard 23 Princeton 25 MIT 22
Total 70

Rank 4
THE LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ
Class Size:221Student/Teacher Ratio:7/1Boarding Tuition:$62,190Day Tuition:$51,440Financial Aid:Yes White:55%Asian:21%Black:10%Hispanic:6%
Harvard 8 Princeton 47 MIT 8
Total 63

Rank 5
PHILLIPS ACADEMY ANDOVER, MA
Class Size:319Student/Teacher Ratio:5/1Boarding Tuition:$53,900Day Tuition:$41,900Financial Aid:Yes White:54%Asian:26%Hispanic:6%Black:6%
Harvard 33 Princeton 17 MIT 12
Total 62

Rank 6
BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL BOSTON, MA
Class Size:363Free/Reduced Lunch:26%Student/Teacher Ratio:21/1 White:47%Asian:28%Hispanic:12%Black:9%Hawaiian:<1%
Harvard 53 Princeton 2 MIT 5
Total 60

Rank 7
PRINCETON HIGH SCHOOL PRINCETON, NJ
Class Size:359Free/Reduced Lunch:9%Student/Teacher Ratio:12/1 White:60%Asian:21%Hispanic:8%Black:5%American Indian:<1%
Harvard 5 Princeton 46 MIT 6
Total 57

Rank 8
BERGEN COUNTY ACADEMIES HACKENSACK, NJ
Class Size:271Free/Reduced Lunch:5%Student/Teacher Ratio:11/1 Asian:50%White:38%Hispanic:6%Black:1%Hawaiian:<1%
Harvard 5 Princeton 30 MIT 13
Total 48

Rank 9
DEERFIELD ACADEMY DEERFIELD, MA
Boarding Tuition:$58,050Day Tuition:$41,610Financial Aid:Yes
Harvard 19 Princeton 20 MIT 4
Total 43

Rank 10
LEXINGTON HIGH SCHOOL LEXINGTON, MA
Class Size:489Free/Reduced Lunch:8%Student/Teacher Ratio:13/1 White:56%Asian:31%Black:5%Hispanic:4%American Indian:<1%
Harvard 18 Princeton 3 MIT 17
Total 38

Rank 11
HARVARD-WESTLAKE SCHOOL STUDIO CITY, CA
Class Size:286Student/Teacher Ratio:8/1Day Tuition:$37,100Financial Aid:Yes White:56%Asian:21%Hispanic:8%Black:8%American Indian:1%
Harvard 16 Princeton 15 MIT 6
Total 37

https://www.polarislist.com/

How many times do TJ boosters have to post this? Every year?
It's only for 2015-2017 and only 3 schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJHS is totally better than elite New England boarding schools!

Said nobody, ever. TJ tiger parents are so desperate and intense. Striver city.

For STEM it probably is better.

Yeah, connections and soft skills are totally overrated! Hope your kids enjoy being back office grinds.

Maybe you haven't heard, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan etc. for example are cutting thousand of Investment Banking division jobs (soft skills) while increasingly hiring more and more "Strats", "Quants" and "Quant Traders" for their front office divisions. Guess what these strats, quants and quant traders studied? That's right-math, CS, stat and physics!

You would be surprised how well poised and well-rounded these strats/quants are at these large IBs are these days. You should get out more.

Oh, same goes for big consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting etc. Guess which majors they hire more than history grad from Harvard or English major from Yale? Engineering majors, CS majors etc. from top 20 universities with high gpas. Just getting a degree in"easy" major from the Ivies are not cutting it anymore. Automation/AI is hitting these places big time. as well.

+100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJHS is totally better than elite New England boarding schools!

Said nobody, ever. TJ tiger parents are so desperate and intense. Striver city.

For STEM it probably is better.

Yeah, connections and soft skills are totally overrated! Hope your kids enjoy being back office grinds.

Maybe you haven't heard, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan etc. for example are cutting thousand of Investment Banking division jobs (soft skills) while increasingly hiring more and more "Strats", "Quants" and "Quant Traders" for their front office divisions. Guess what these strats, quants and quant traders studied? That's right-math, CS, stat and physics!

You would be surprised how well poised and well-rounded these strats/quants are at these large IBs are these days. You should get out more.

Oh, same goes for big consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting etc. Guess which majors they hire more than history grad from Harvard or English major from Yale? Engineering majors, CS majors etc. from top 20 universities with high gpas. Just getting a degree in"easy" major from the Ivies are not cutting it anymore. Automation/AI is hitting these places big time. as well.

+100.

I also noticed that more and more attorneys with "technical" undergraduate degrees with top 20 law school degrees find it easier to go into the top 200 global firms than law school graduates with humanities undergraduate degrees. This is not just for patent prosecution or patent litigation but for litigation in general and for other areas as well. World is becoming more specialized/technologically advanced/global etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
From TJ, I don’t think any since 2015. They only have 5-6 a year. And recently a kid was an MIT recruit. But I haven’t seen any Harvard or Princeton.

And for people griping, realize almost all of the TJ admits are completely unhooked. 95% of TJ is white or Asian, it’s 1% FARMS and it’s mostly first. Gen. Americans. Very few legacies. Stuy kids do have demographics working for them. Exeter and the other boarding schools have legacies.

Yep, a handful of TJ kids are athletic ‘recruits’ mainly to D3 schools, so doesn’t really count. If I remember correctly though, at least one of the 2019 TJ recruited athletes was also a legacy. The point remains, TJ kids for the most part aren’t getting legacy, URM, first gen or athletic bumps in admission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dumb list OP. Obviously using only H P and MIT to juke the outcome. Include Yale and Stanford or this is worthless.

Stanford-yes but Yale has seen better days.

Yale made a mistake not investing in STEM.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who is surprised by Andover and Exeter being on here is just ignorant.

Look beyond those 3 schools and you’ll see the matriculation at Andover and Exeter is likely better than TJ.

[Anonymous]

This is over 3 years, right?

So for TJ that’s roughly 5.8% of the seniors over 3 years.
For Andover it’s 6.5%.
Exeter is about 7.3%.
Stuy is about 2.8%.

The public schools at the top of this list are a lot bigger, so reporting it as raw numbers rather than percentages is misleading.

[Anonymous]

This list means nothing for unhooked kids. My kids attend one of these schools. The parent population is chock full of Harvard and Princeton grads. So their kids are Legacy and come first in admissions to Harvard and Princeton (I don't know how MIT works so leaving it out of my reply)

Also, there's a bunch of kids with parents that are worth serious money...multi-millions or billions from China. They give a lot to the school. Their kids get priority in college admissions, some say even over the Legacy kids.

My kids are cut out of the Ivys because they come in under those two groups, and are not athletic recruits. I've been told as much (in carefully worded terms).

I keep them in the school because it's a fantastic school and my kids have learned so much. And they'll go somewhere good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This list means nothing for unhooked kids. My kids attend one of these schools. The parent population is chock full of Harvard and Princeton grads. So their kids are Legacy and come first in admissions to Harvard and Princeton (I don't know how MIT works so leaving it out of my reply)

Also, there's a bunch of kids with parents that are worth serious money...multi-millions or billions from China. They give a lot to the school. Their kids get priority in college admissions, some say even over the Legacy kids.

My kids are cut out of the Ivys because they come in under those two groups, and are not athletic recruits. I've been told as much (in carefully worded terms).

I keep them in the school because it's a fantastic school and my kids have learned so much. And they'll go somewhere good.

Good for you for not living and dying by Harvard. Your kids will do great.

This exactly is what makes TJ and Stuys top two performances so impressive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am surprised there are boarding schools on this list, but they are more academic than people give them credit for. A lot of Harvard professors who live in Lexington same with Princeton high.

That used to be the case (and not just Harvard- many Universities in the area), but most profs are priced of out Lexington now.

The average full professor at Harvard makes 200,000 and often has additional income from consulting gigs. Also many have spouses that are lawyers and doctors.

https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-has-highest-paid-professors-2012-4

But that is the average FULL professor and there are more of the others. The others do not make that much.

Most of the college professors I know have family $$ or are supported by a spouse. Not that many poor kids can afford to get a PhD from the kind of top colleges you'd need to get a teaching gig at Harvard, Princeton or MIT (yes, I know many PhD programs are "fully funded," but not many students can afford to be out of the workforce that long and risk a really tough job market for a potential job that isn't all that lucrative to begin with).

My sibling is a professor at mit. The spouse is a Boston biglaw partner. Not an uncommon pairing.