Class of '26 Instagram College Decisions

[Anonymous]

I'm looking at the decision page now. Focusing on HYP:

I see the head of NBC's daughter. I see Jann Wenner's daughter. I see a recruited athlete to Princeton. Daughter of a hedge fund billionaire (and HBS graduate). A volleyball recruit. A waterpolo recruit (also super rich) .. I could go on. Oh and an "asthma advocate" with zero posts on the "urgent" insta post-college acceptance.

I didn't even scroll long

[Anonymous]

oh an and a famous harvard prof daughter. .. should have kept scrolling

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would say Spence is more like 2/3rds too

I dont know that Brearley is 90% hooked, but I've literally never known a single kid who wasn't hooked. Legacy is less of a thing than it was 20 years ago, but even the most recent data we have shows it's a big big leg up.

the 90% kind of is a made up number which i think you indirectly acknowledge. but i will push back a bit on the brearley comments and feel free to let me know where you think i am wrong.

Brearley class is ~65 girls. 20% on financial aid is probably the right anchor for FGLI — that's 13 girls.

Recruited athletes at a girls school of this size to academic-tier colleges is maybe 3 at most, and one or two overlap with the FGLI/Development bucket.

Real development cases — meaning families where the school dev office will actually go to bat hard at elite schools — is maybe 6-8, and some of those overlap with athletes (squash, crew).

Net of overlap you're at maybe 22-24 hooked girls, or 35-40%. Not 90%.

And more importantly — being URM or FGLI doesn't mean a kid walks into Harvard. FGLI is a real hook but a Brearley FGLI girl still needs the grades, scores, and rigor to be competitive. The hook gets her looked at seriously and the contextual narrative gets weight, but she still has to be competitive against the rest of the applicant pool.
[i][b]
Also note that I don't consider college legacy to be the hook people think it is. many schools have dropped it and where it's still used -it's a tiebreaker between already-admissible candidates, not something that pulls a marginal kid in (outside the 3 comma club)

The Harvard alum on the earlier page said it directly — "the alum bump doesn't work the way I think most people assume it does." So even though plenty of Brearley parents went to HYPS, that's not what's driving these matriculation numbers.

So if 35/60 girls go elite schools and only ~15 of the hooked actually convert that into elite admits, you've got ~20 unhooked girls getting elite outcomes. More importantly the number of really good schools (t30 or whatever) is probably close to 85%.

Brearley girl is genuinely a top-decile candidate by graduation. Selective K admit, further filtering through middle school, deflated grading that admissions offices know is deflated, and 140 years of track record.

The cynical "it's all rich parents and squash" framing is just wrong on the numbers. The opposite framing — "it's all about the students and teaching" — is also probably wrong as hooked is real and does boost top-line numbers. But 90% is not realistic.

The cynical view is sour grapes at least in my opinion.

I agree with this - but harvard will say they could scarp the entire class and offer it to the next group of kids and be just fine. I was on the tour when the presenter said 80% of applicants are qualified. My kids were all over SAT 1550 and great GPAs and didn't bother because they didn't have a hook. they had a lot going and got into T20s, but T5 schools love their hooks. But yes, the squash player and the FG kid all need to also have the stats. But .. what else is new?

FYI. Squash isn't as easy as it looks. Everyone thinks you just walk out on a court and pick up a racket and get preferred admission to an Ivy. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who think the same thing so your kid actually does have to work at it and get good at it. Particularly for boys where a lot of the best players come from abroad. My kid plays squash (because they enjoy it, not to get into college - they are not particularly good) and it is hilarious going to tournaments and seeing all of the tiger moms realizing that their kid with no athletic ability who didn't start playing until high school is not going to leverage squash to get into college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking at the decision page now. Focusing on HYP:

I see the head of NBC's daughter. I see Jann Wenner's daughter. I see a recruited athlete to Princeton. Daughter of a hedge fund billionaire (and HBS graduate). A volleyball recruit. A waterpolo recruit (also super rich) .. I could go on. Oh and an "asthma advocate" with zero posts on the "urgent" insta post-college acceptance.

I didn't even scroll long

Wow. That's kind of scary. I get recognizing the name Wenner. I feel like I am smarter than most about these things and none of the other names popped out at me, though I probably didn't spend as much time thinking about it as you did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking at the decision page now. Focusing on HYP:

I see the head of NBC's daughter. I see Jann Wenner's daughter. I see a recruited athlete to Princeton. Daughter of a hedge fund billionaire (and HBS graduate). A volleyball recruit. A waterpolo recruit (also super rich) .. I could go on. Oh and an "asthma advocate" with zero posts on the "urgent" insta post-college acceptance.

I didn't even scroll long

Lol, you are one sick individual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking at the decision page now. Focusing on HYP:

I see the head of NBC's daughter. I see Jann Wenner's daughter. I see a recruited athlete to Princeton. Daughter of a hedge fund billionaire (and HBS graduate). A volleyball recruit. A waterpolo recruit (also super rich) .. I could go on. Oh and an "asthma advocate" with zero posts on the "urgent" insta post-college acceptance.

I didn't even scroll long

Wow. That's kind of scary. I get recognizing the name Wenner. I feel like I am smarter than most about these things and none of the other names popped out at me, though I probably didn't spend as much time thinking about it as you did.

Again, my kid is in the school and Wenner would be the only one I recognize as well (though I didn’t know that one before; my daughter mentioned it to me). I’m not even sure that poster is right about the others, and the only way she’d know would be a VERY deep dive into each kid, looking at individual instagrams for recruiting posts, googling for possible parent connections, etc. That’s not a quick scroll. That’s extremely creepy behavior (again, if any of it’s even true, which I have real doubts about).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would say Spence is more like 2/3rds too

I dont know that Brearley is 90% hooked, but I've literally never known a single kid who wasn't hooked. Legacy is less of a thing than it was 20 years ago, but even the most recent data we have shows it's a big big leg up.

the 90% kind of is a made up number which i think you indirectly acknowledge. but i will push back a bit on the brearley comments and feel free to let me know where you think i am wrong.

Brearley class is ~65 girls. 20% on financial aid is probably the right anchor for FGLI — that's 13 girls.

Recruited athletes at a girls school of this size to academic-tier colleges is maybe 3 at most, and one or two overlap with the FGLI/Development bucket.

Real development cases — meaning families where the school dev office will actually go to bat hard at elite schools — is maybe 6-8, and some of those overlap with athletes (squash, crew).

Net of overlap you're at maybe 22-24 hooked girls, or 35-40%. Not 90%.

And more importantly — being URM or FGLI doesn't mean a kid walks into Harvard. FGLI is a real hook but a Brearley FGLI girl still needs the grades, scores, and rigor to be competitive. The hook gets her looked at seriously and the contextual narrative gets weight, but she still has to be competitive against the rest of the applicant pool.
[i][b]
Also note that I don't consider college legacy to be the hook people think it is. many schools have dropped it and where it's still used -it's a tiebreaker between already-admissible candidates, not something that pulls a marginal kid in (outside the 3 comma club)

The Harvard alum on the earlier page said it directly — "the alum bump doesn't work the way I think most people assume it does." So even though plenty of Brearley parents went to HYPS, that's not what's driving these matriculation numbers.

So if 35/60 girls go elite schools and only ~15 of the hooked actually convert that into elite admits, you've got ~20 unhooked girls getting elite outcomes. More importantly the number of really good schools (t30 or whatever) is probably close to 85%.

Brearley girl is genuinely a top-decile candidate by graduation. Selective K admit, further filtering through middle school, deflated grading that admissions offices know is deflated, and 140 years of track record.

The cynical "it's all rich parents and squash" framing is just wrong on the numbers. The opposite framing — "it's all about the students and teaching" — is also probably wrong as hooked is real and does boost top-line numbers. But 90% is not realistic.

The cynical view is sour grapes at least in my opinion.

I agree with this - but harvard will say they could scarp the entire class and offer it to the next group of kids and be just fine. I was on the tour when the presenter said 80% of applicants are qualified. My kids were all over SAT 1550 and great GPAs and didn't bother because they didn't have a hook. they had a lot going and got into T20s, but T5 schools love their hooks. But yes, the squash player and the FG kid all need to also have the stats. But .. what else is new?

hopefully your kids will do well and your grandkids can get some hooks into a t5 school! That's how we are going to approach it!

Looks like you had a pretty good outcome - T20s is really great. Was this from a private school (perhaps Brearley or another TT school) or from a public school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking at the decision page now. Focusing on HYP:

I see the head of NBC's daughter. I see Jann Wenner's daughter. I see a recruited athlete to Princeton. Daughter of a hedge fund billionaire (and HBS graduate). A volleyball recruit. A waterpolo recruit (also super rich) .. I could go on. Oh and an "asthma advocate" with zero posts on the "urgent" insta post-college acceptance.

I didn't even scroll long

interesting most people scroll from the top to the bottom as that's how the page gets displayed. however, Jann Wenner's daughter is near the bottom.

kind of creepy i have to say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking at the decision page now. Focusing on HYP:

I see the head of NBC's daughter. I see Jann Wenner's daughter. I see a recruited athlete to Princeton. Daughter of a hedge fund billionaire (and HBS graduate). A volleyball recruit. A waterpolo recruit (also super rich) .. I could go on. Oh and an "asthma advocate" with zero posts on the "urgent" insta post-college acceptance.

I didn't even scroll long

Lol, you are one sick individual.

i would say sick and pathetic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking at the decision page now. Focusing on HYP:

I see the head of NBC's daughter. I see Jann Wenner's daughter. I see a recruited athlete to Princeton. Daughter of a hedge fund billionaire (and HBS graduate). A volleyball recruit. A waterpolo recruit (also super rich) .. I could go on. Oh and an "asthma advocate" with zero posts on the "urgent" insta post-college acceptance.

I didn't even scroll long

Wow. That's kind of scary. I get recognizing the name Wenner. I feel like I am smarter than most about these things and none of the other names popped out at me, though I probably didn't spend as much time thinking about it as you did.

Again, my kid is in the school and Wenner would be the only one I recognize as well (though I didn’t know that one before; my daughter mentioned it to me). I’m not even sure that poster is right about the others, and the only way she’d know would be a VERY deep dive into each kid, looking at individual instagrams for recruiting posts, googling for possible parent connections, etc. That’s not a quick scroll. That’s extremely creepy behavior (again, if any of it’s even true, which I have real doubts about).

pathetic, creepy and sour grapes.