College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a feeling if schools were race and region blind, these numbers would be higher.

They are lower than expected.

Especially for schools like Carnegie Mellon and Swarthmore

CMU national acceptance rate = 23.6%
Bethesda rate = 22.9

Swarthmore national rate = 12%
Bethesda rate = 10.3%

They seem fine to me. Of course, I don't believe that Bethesda kids should somehow magically far exceed the national acceptance rate at the most highly selective schools

This is a meaningless comparison unless you assume that the applicant pool does not vary across different locations. How likely is that going to be if the schools are of different quality, as is being assumed when people claim that Bethesda schools are among the best? If you assume that better schools schools prepare kids better for college, then you will find more kids applying from better school districts. And that may lead to higher, lower or unchanged acceptance rates depending on how good the extra kids applying are at the margin.

Another way of saying that is that most kids will choose a mix of reach, match, and safety schools. In good school districts the schools the reach schools will be more selective because the kids are better prepared. But they will still be reach schools for those kids and the acceptance rates will still be low. The point is looking at acceptance rates makes no sense.

[Anonymous]

To me the key question is: do the elite universities basically have quotas for each school? With 1 kid in college and another on the way, I've noticed patterns like this.

So if Yale takes 2-3 kid from each school, that's good news for the 15 Yale applicants at St. Albans. It's pretty crummy news for the 40 Yale applicants at Walt Whitman. Even if 15 of the Whitman kids are stellar applicants, there's no way Yale is going to take all 15 from Whitman when there are good kids next door at BCC. So in this completely hypothetical example, St. Alban's acceptance rate is 3/15 = 20% and Whitman's acceptance rate is 3/40= 7.5%.

[Anonymous]

And a 7.5% acceptance rate would be 10 % higher than Yale's actual 6.7% rate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a feeling if schools were race and region blind, these numbers would be higher.

They are lower than expected.

Especially for schools like Carnegie Mellon and Swarthmore

CMU national acceptance rate = 23.6%
Bethesda rate = 22.9

Swarthmore national rate = 12%
Bethesda rate = 10.3%

They seem fine to me. Of course, I don't believe that Bethesda kids should somehow magically far exceed the national acceptance rate at the most highly selective schools

The acceptance rates are lower than the national rate and that is surprising since Montgomery County is one of the best public school system in the country and these 7 schools are supposed to be the best in the county. So, the rate should be substantially HIGHER! They can't even get into Howard.

Eh, maybe they're just not that good. Looks like some suburban Baltimore schools did better on National Merit this year and you don't hear them talking about how great they are.

Walt Whitman - 1,928 students, 9 NMSF
Dulaney (Timonium) - 1,875 students, 12 NMSF

BCC - 1,992 students, 6 NMSF
Towson High - 1,442 students, 6 NMSF

Is there any reason acceptance rates for Bethesda students should be HIGHER! than it is for these Baltimore-area students?

In my DCs year at Whitman (a couple of years ago) there were more than 20 NMSFs and another 70 commended students. 9 is a low year. Same swings happen at the private schools from year to year.

[Anonymous]

There are approximately 37,000 secondary schools in the US (public and private combined), Harvard's freshman class is approximately 2,000. I think that five of the school on the list sent a total of nine students to Harvard (for instance) is actually impressive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are approximately 37,000 secondary schools in the US (public and private combined), Harvard's freshman class is approximately 2,000. I think that five of the school on the list sent a total of nine students to Harvard (for instance) is actually impressive.

It's actually not impressive to have 9 acceptances from 7 top schools from the one ofe of the best public school districts in the country and the richest state in the country as well as the 2nd wealthiest region in the country (DC metro area).

Why Is Maryland America’s Richest State?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-maryland-america-richest-state-105140246.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are approximately 37,000 secondary schools in the US (public and private combined), Harvard's freshman class is approximately 2,000. I think that five of the school on the list sent a total of nine students to Harvard (for instance) is actually impressive.

It's actually not impressive to have 9 acceptances from 7 top schools from the one ofe of the best public school districts in the country and the richest state in the country as well as the 2nd wealthiest region in the country (DC metro area).

Harvard and its peer schools are intentionally recruiting more first-generation college students. Such students represented 16% of Harvard's Class of 2019. So in some ways, rich kids are now fighting each other for an even smaller number of seats than before.

As has been asked before: how much higher than the national acceptance rate would these schools' acceptance rate have to be for folks here to consider it adequate? Are Bethesda's top students twice as special as top students from across the country? Three times more special?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are approximately 37,000 secondary schools in the US (public and private combined), Harvard's freshman class is approximately 2,000. I think that five of the school on the list sent a total of nine students to Harvard (for instance) is actually impressive.

It's actually not impressive to have 9 acceptances from 7 top schools from the one ofe of the best public school districts in the country and the richest state in the country as well as the 2nd wealthiest region in the country (DC metro area).

Harvard and its peer schools are intentionally recruiting more first-generation college students. Such students represented 16% of Harvard's Class of 2019. So in some ways, rich kids are now fighting each other for an even smaller number of seats than before.

As has been asked before: how much higher than the national acceptance rate would these schools' acceptance rate have to be for folks here to consider it adequate? Are Bethesda's top students twice as special as top students from across the country? Three times more special?

Just to cite some examples to try to put this in some context:

I am going off my recollection so the numbers may be off slightly but acceptances to Harvard per year: Boston Latin (Public) around 15-18 per year, Stuyvesant around 8-14 per year, Hunter (Public) 9-14 per year, TJ 4-8 per year, Bergen County 4-6 per year, Bronx Science 3-5 per year etc.

These are public (some magnet schools) schools sending anywhere from 15 to 5 to Harvard each year per school. 7 TOP schools in the top 10 school district in the country together sending 9 total is not impressive how you look at it.

Thea's just Harvard, similar results hold for other top schools as well.

[Anonymous]

LOL at the Stuyvesant comparison.

There are 8.4 million people in NYC alone. Every year 28,000 kids from that population take the Stuyvesant entrance exam, and less than 3 percent are accepted.

If you took the entire Washington-Baltimore metro area and created one single high school that enrolled only the top 3 percent of kids, then you'd have a realistic apples-to-apples comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LOL at the Stuyvesant comparison.

There are 8.4 million people in NYC alone. Every year 28,000 kids from that population take the Stuyvesant entrance exam, and less than 3 percent are accepted.

If you took the entire Washington-Baltimore metro area and created one single high school that enrolled only the top 3 percent of kids, then you'd have a realistic apples-to-apples comparison.

What LOL? They don't just have Stuyvesant, they have Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and several others probably 7 or 8 or more magnet schools for NYC. They also have schools like Hunter as well. We are probably talking about 9 or 10 schools or more. Stuyvesant is 1 of those 10 or so schools. You make it sound like there is only 1 magnet school in NYC. Also, the test is not "Stuyvesant entrance exam" but an entrance exam for all magnet school of NYC except for places like Hunter which may have their own selection process.

[Anonymous]

I am going off my recollection so the numbers may be off slightly but acceptances to Harvard per year: Boston Latin (Public) around 15-18 per year, Stuyvesant around 8-14 per year, Hunter (Public) 9-14 per year, TJ 4-8 per year, Bergen County 4-6 per year, Bronx Science 3-5 per year etc.

These are public (some magnet schools) schools sending anywhere from 15 to 5 to Harvard each year per school. 7 TOP schools in the top 10 school district in the country together sending 9 total is not impressive how you look at it.

I don't understand what is so difficult to understand about this. Selective admissions magnet schools send a higher percentage of their graduating classes to elite colleges than open enrollment schools, even excellent ones in highly affluent, educated areas. It's a completely different beast. Look at the admissions from kids at the Blair Magnet to the schools you have listed for a more apples to apples comparison.

[Anonymous]

Harvard a) has straight up said they prefer students from the Boston area b) give advantages to children of faculty.

Boston Latin has both.

[Anonymous]

There also seems to be a trend of Harvard not admitting as many people from this area as other elite schools. Princeton admits more than you'd expect, especially from Churchill (elitist white people stereotype, anyone?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The following is a chart of the colleges and universities where 2015 graduates from seven Bethesda-area high schools applied and were accepted, based on data provided by the schools over the summer.

http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October-2015/College-Admissions-Chart/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

This is pretty unimpressive showing for the top high schools in MoCo. I would imagine similar results for the top high schools in Fairfax.

LOL

Princeton 20 out of 216 - 9.3% acceptance rate. National - 7.0%
Yale 15 out of 190 - 7.9% acceptance rate. National - 6.5%
Harvard 4.6%. National - 5.3%
Stanford 6.9%. National - 5.1%

Looks like they're doing pretty well to me. Unless you think MoCo is so special that it should far exceed the national averages.

lol, that is exactly what some of these people think. Especially if they moved here "for the schools."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The following is a chart of the colleges and universities where 2015 graduates from seven Bethesda-area high schools applied and were accepted, based on data provided by the schools over the summer.

http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October-2015/College-Admissions-Chart/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

This is pretty unimpressive showing for the top high schools in MoCo. I would imagine similar results for the top high schools in Fairfax.

LOL

Princeton 20 out of 216 - 9.3% acceptance rate. National - 7.0%
Yale 15 out of 190 - 7.9% acceptance rate. National - 6.5%
Harvard 4.6%. National - 5.3%
Stanford 6.9%. National - 5.1%

Looks like they're doing pretty well to me. Unless you think MoCo is so special that it should far exceed the national averages.

lol, that is exactly what some of these people think. Especially if they moved here "for the schools."

education from 0-18 doesn't have much to do with schools and everything to do with your home environment, your innate drive, and basic level of intelligence.

people pay a premium for 'schools' not because of great teachers or anything the school provides, but to try to control their children's peer environment (i.e. wanting them to have a higher chance of being around people just like them).