Arlington: 2018 college admissions

[Anonymous]

I live in the Yorktown zone, and based on the dynamics I see in my neighborhood, these statistics don't concern me. Most of my neighbors are not drowning in money like some people want to believe of 22207, they are people who stretched their budgets a bit more to buy a smaller house on a smaller lot than they could have gotten in Fairfax but who wanted shorter commutes for more family time and better overall quality of life. These same people tend to prefer UVa and similar over Ivies for college because they see it as a better value and thus a better route for setting their kids up for a good quality of life later (lower debt burden after college = less pressure and more flexibility). Yes, Ivies are great, but not the be-all and end-all that someone should bankrupt themselves over. Their kids are more like to apply early to UVa and forego Ivy applications if they get in even if they could be competitive for Ivies. Not everyone fits that mold, of course, but I've also seen a trend for the families who are really gunning for Ivies to put their kids into private school early on (or if they can't afford private move to Fairfax in the hopes of getting into TJ, because they don't want to drive their kid from Arlington to TJ and then back the other way for work every day) because they feel that will maximize their chances. What this leaves is an applicant pool from Yorktown that is somewhat self-selecting and less likely to strive for Ivy for the sake of Ivy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yale seems to really like Bethesda. Just about 12% of the kids that applied got in. Less than 1% of Arlington’s applicants got in.

These stats don't track legacy status (which people are likely to lie about in surveys anyway). Bethesda, Chevy Chase, et al. is full of old money Yale legacies. North Arlington, less so.

People don't realize that if you're white/Asian, and not a huge donor/legacy at the HYP, your chances of getting in are far, far worse than the publicly available data suggest.

Which is fine, because undergrad education at those places ranges from an afterthought to outright terrible.

Unless you're doing STEM, go to a selective liberal arts school. Ivies are for graduate school. And if you do the LA thing, you've probably got a better shot at that anyway.

While I tend agree with you that in many cases the little Ivies (Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, etc.) can be the better choice for many undergrads, your claim that Ivies offer an outright terrible undergrad education is a stretch too far, don't you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yale seems to really like Bethesda. Just about 12% of the kids that applied got in. Less than 1% of Arlington’s applicants got in.

What % of FCPS and ACPS got in?

Don't know about percentages, as I can't find a source for how many students applied, but at least two kids from TC Williams got into Yale this year, which is, of course, twice as many kids as Arlington's four high schools combined.

j

Please feel free to send your kids to TC Williams.

I just very well might. I'm becoming less and less convinced that a move to Arlington would be beneficial. Not with Arlington's embarrassing college stats, anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yale seems to really like Bethesda. Just about 12% of the kids that applied got in. Less than 1% of Arlington’s applicants got in.

These stats don't track legacy status (which people are likely to lie about in surveys anyway). Bethesda, Chevy Chase, et al. is full of old money Yale legacies. North Arlington, less so.

People don't realize that if you're white/Asian, and not a huge donor/legacy at the HYP, your chances of getting in are far, far worse than the publicly available data suggest.

Which is fine, because undergrad education at those places ranges from an afterthought to outright terrible.

Unless you're doing STEM, go to a selective liberal arts school. Ivies are for graduate school. And if you do the LA thing, you've probably got a better shot at that anyway.

While I tend agree with you that in many cases the little Ivies (Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, etc.) can be the better choice for many undergrads, your claim that Ivies offer an outright terrible undergrad education is a stretch too far, don't you think?

DP. I certainly wouldn't agree it's a terrible undergrad education, but IME it doesn't seem to be anything special. Grads from those schools seems to be riding on the name more than education that was superior to what they could have gotten at a good but lower-ranked school. I've done enough interviewing/hiring of college grads at this point that Harvard or Yale on a resume doesn't impress me any more than, say, Emory or Tufts. And my best hires seem to come disproportionately from SLACs like Amherst and Bowdoin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in the Yorktown zone, and based on the dynamics I see in my neighborhood, these statistics don't concern me. Most of my neighbors are not drowning in money like some people want to believe of 22207, they are people who stretched their budgets a bit more to buy a smaller house on a smaller lot than they could have gotten in Fairfax but who wanted shorter commutes for more family time and better overall quality of life. These same people tend to prefer UVa and similar over Ivies for college because they see it as a better value and thus a better route for setting their kids up for a good quality of life later (lower debt burden after college = less pressure and more flexibility). Yes, Ivies are great, but not the be-all and end-all that someone should bankrupt themselves over. Their kids are more like to apply early to UVa and forego Ivy applications if they get in even if they could be competitive for Ivies. Not everyone fits that mold, of course, but I've also seen a trend for the families who are really gunning for Ivies to put their kids into private school early on (or if they can't afford private move to Fairfax in the hopes of getting into TJ, because they don't want to drive their kid from Arlington to TJ and then back the other way for work every day) because they feel that will maximize their chances. What this leaves is an applicant pool from Yorktown that is somewhat self-selecting and less likely to strive for Ivy for the sake of Ivy.

So why 138 applications from Yorktown to Ivies last year? It's not the number of applications that is low, but the number of admissions.

Public schools elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic and elsewhere in the DMV fare much better. APS has really done a poor job with YHS.

[Anonymous]

APS should pay Arlington Magazine not to publish these statistics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yale seems to really like Bethesda. Just about 12% of the kids that applied got in. Less than 1% of Arlington’s applicants got in.

What % of FCPS and ACPS got in?

Don't know about percentages, as I can't find a source for how many students applied, but at least two kids from TC Williams got into Yale this year, which is, of course, twice as many kids as Arlington's four high schools combined.

j

Please feel free to send your kids to TC Williams.

I just very well might. I'm becoming less and less convinced that a move to Arlington would be beneficial. Not with Arlington's embarrassing college stats, anyway.

If your kid gets good grades with 10+ APs, does test prep and hits the 75% of test target school test range, and has solid ECs, the choice of HS won’t matter. Mine did that coming out of YHS and got into an elite school. I feel TC Williams would have yielded the same result.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in the Yorktown zone, and based on the dynamics I see in my neighborhood, these statistics don't concern me. Most of my neighbors are not drowning in money like some people want to believe of 22207, they are people who stretched their budgets a bit more to buy a smaller house on a smaller lot than they could have gotten in Fairfax but who wanted shorter commutes for more family time and better overall quality of life. These same people tend to prefer UVa and similar over Ivies for college because they see it as a better value and thus a better route for setting their kids up for a good quality of life later (lower debt burden after college = less pressure and more flexibility). Yes, Ivies are great, but not the be-all and end-all that someone should bankrupt themselves over. Their kids are more like to apply early to UVa and forego Ivy applications if they get in even if they could be competitive for Ivies. Not everyone fits that mold, of course, but I've also seen a trend for the families who are really gunning for Ivies to put their kids into private school early on (or if they can't afford private move to Fairfax in the hopes of getting into TJ, because they don't want to drive their kid from Arlington to TJ and then back the other way for work every day) because they feel that will maximize their chances. What this leaves is an applicant pool from Yorktown that is somewhat self-selecting and less likely to strive for Ivy for the sake of Ivy.

So why 138 applications from Yorktown to Ivies last year? It's not the number of applications that is low, but the number of admissions.

Public schools elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic and elsewhere in the DMV fare much better. APS has really done a poor job with YHS.

From my limited view, I think there are kids from YHS applying to schools where they have no shot. I know one kid last year with 34 ACT, good grades, normal ECs, rejected from Harvard, Penn, and Princeton. These applications were a waste of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in the Yorktown zone, and based on the dynamics I see in my neighborhood, these statistics don't concern me. Most of my neighbors are not drowning in money like some people want to believe of 22207, they are people who stretched their budgets a bit more to buy a smaller house on a smaller lot than they could have gotten in Fairfax but who wanted shorter commutes for more family time and better overall quality of life. These same people tend to prefer UVa and similar over Ivies for college because they see it as a better value and thus a better route for setting their kids up for a good quality of life later (lower debt burden after college = less pressure and more flexibility). Yes, Ivies are great, but not the be-all and end-all that someone should bankrupt themselves over. Their kids are more like to apply early to UVa and forego Ivy applications if they get in even if they could be competitive for Ivies. Not everyone fits that mold, of course, but I've also seen a trend for the families who are really gunning for Ivies to put their kids into private school early on (or if they can't afford private move to Fairfax in the hopes of getting into TJ, because they don't want to drive their kid from Arlington to TJ and then back the other way for work every day) because they feel that will maximize their chances. What this leaves is an applicant pool from Yorktown that is somewhat self-selecting and less likely to strive for Ivy for the sake of Ivy.

So why 138 applications from Yorktown to Ivies last year? It's not the number of applications that is low, but the number of admissions.

Public schools elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic and elsewhere in the DMV fare much better. APS has really done a poor job with YHS.

Those applications also likely are not 138 kids but multiple applications from a smaller set of kids so you can't tell what the actual % admitted to at least one Ivy is.

[Anonymous]

I'm not surprised by the low admit rates to the Ivies. I AM surprised by the low admit rate to UVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in the Yorktown zone, and based on the dynamics I see in my neighborhood, these statistics don't concern me. Most of my neighbors are not drowning in money like some people want to believe of 22207, they are people who stretched their budgets a bit more to buy a smaller house on a smaller lot than they could have gotten in Fairfax but who wanted shorter commutes for more family time and better overall quality of life. These same people tend to prefer UVa and similar over Ivies for college because they see it as a better value and thus a better route for setting their kids up for a good quality of life later (lower debt burden after college = less pressure and more flexibility). Yes, Ivies are great, but not the be-all and end-all that someone should bankrupt themselves over. Their kids are more like to apply early to UVa and forego Ivy applications if they get in even if they could be competitive for Ivies. Not everyone fits that mold, of course, but I've also seen a trend for the families who are really gunning for Ivies to put their kids into private school early on (or if they can't afford private move to Fairfax in the hopes of getting into TJ, because they don't want to drive their kid from Arlington to TJ and then back the other way for work every day) because they feel that will maximize their chances. What this leaves is an applicant pool from Yorktown that is somewhat self-selecting and less likely to strive for Ivy for the sake of Ivy.

So why 138 applications from Yorktown to Ivies last year? It's not the number of applications that is low, but the number of admissions.

Public schools elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic and elsewhere in the DMV fare much better. APS has really done a poor job with YHS.

Those applications also likely are not 138 kids but multiple applications from a smaller set of kids so you can't tell what the actual % admitted to at least one Ivy is.

These people are correct. Also, many of the top students in the Yorktown zone transfer to W-L for IB, so it's not really a straight comparison and you can't dismiss that in evaluating the college prospects for someone living in the Yorktown zone; Yorktown's Ivy admission rate is below average, but W-L's admission rate is above average. Yorktown's admission rate to UVa, though, is above average, which corroborates the point above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not surprised by the low admit rates to the Ivies. I AM surprised by the low admit rate to UVA.

According to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, UVa admitted 35.5% of applicants from Arlington County this past year. Granted, some of those students will have gone to private school, but it still tends to suggest that Arlington Magazine's reported admission rate of 27% is underreporting by some amount.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yale seems to really like Bethesda. Just about 12% of the kids that applied got in. Less than 1% of Arlington’s applicants got in.

What % of FCPS and ACPS got in?

Don't know about percentages, as I can't find a source for how many students applied, but at least two kids from TC Williams got into Yale this year, which is, of course, twice as many kids as Arlington's four high schools combined.

j

Please feel free to send your kids to TC Williams.

I just very well might. I'm becoming less and less convinced that a move to Arlington would be beneficial. Not with Arlington's embarrassing college stats, anyway.

Cool, we'd rather the gunners go elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YHS had a paltry 2.5% admission rate to Ivies last year (3 acceptances out of 118 applications). I feel sorry for anyone who bought in North Arlington for the schools.

So? All of NoVA is bad.

Maybe FCPS had better luck?

It would be hard to do worse than Yorktown.

They need more tiger moms.

While I disagree that more tiger moms would be beneficial to anyone, anywhere, I do believe that this gets to the crux of the issue. Parents who feel a strong need for their kids to succeed academically above all else tend to gravitate to Fairfax County, NoVa’s tiger mom paradise. Test prep for kindergarteners, AAP, Kumon as far as the eye can see. Not everyone wants that for their kids. I know lots of parents in Arlington who attended Ivies themselves, and many of them disapprove of the soul crushing years-long grind it usually takes to get there now.

Pp should take her misplaced pity for those who bought in Arlington and apply it to the kids who miss out on a real childhood for the sake of premium brand name colleges with price tags to match but dubious added value.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YHS had a paltry 2.5% admission rate to Ivies last year (3 acceptances out of 118 applications). I feel sorry for anyone who bought in North Arlington for the schools.

So? All of NoVA is bad.

Maybe FCPS had better luck?

It would be hard to do worse than Yorktown.

They need more tiger moms.

While I disagree that more tiger moms would be beneficial to anyone, anywhere, I do believe that this gets to the crux of the issue. Parents who feel a strong need for their kids to succeed academically above all else tend to gravitate to Fairfax County, NoVa’s tiger mom paradise. Test prep for kindergarteners, AAP, Kumon as far as the eye can see. Not everyone wants that for their kids. I know lots of parents in Arlington who attended Ivies themselves, and many of them disapprove of the soul crushing years-long grind it usually takes to get there now.

Pp should take her misplaced pity for those who bought in Arlington and apply it to the kids who miss out on a real childhood for the sake of premium brand name colleges with price tags to match but dubious added value.

The point is that the metric in question, Ivy League admit rates, depends far more on the tiger mom population in a district than the school itself. High school don’t do test prep or provide high priced college consultants. Tiger moms provide that.