St Albans Exmissions

[Anonymous]

I was wondering if they provide this information regarding college acceptances from their graduating classes - just curious as to numbers who get into Ivy Leagues, etc...........

[Anonymous]

check website

[Anonymous]

Checked website - nothing about numbers accepted to certain schools - except to list various schools alumn have attended. I was tryingto get an idea of how many kids in a graduating class got into Harvard/Yale/Princeton per year - like, do they only accept one from St. Alban's or would a few boys from the same class get offers from Harvard?

[Anonymous]

I recall there was a paid site prepreview.com which looked at each school's placement to what they considered to be "top colleges". It may have been Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT. I know that St. Albans was top ranked among DC area schools (I believe it was ranked 20th nationwide based on that placement, with only NCS -- an all girls' school -- ranked higher in the area). I can't remember how many were placed in one of those schools, but I do remember that in the area, it was ranked higher than other schools, if that means anything.

[Anonymous]

I think Holton was ranked the highest.

[Anonymous]

There are several such lists, and they result in somewhat different rankings, depending on the year and the particular subset of "top colleges" that the ranking tracks. Since the they usually track only a small subset of "top colleges" they are not really measuring the right thing. Also, a school that has a tradition of sending students to a top college not tracked in a particular ranking will not be properly ranked. Even if these issues could be ignored, knowing that 9% of the class in school A made it to the subset of tracked colleges, whereas only 7% of the class from B made it is not that informative, since it translates into different outcomes for 2-3 children in any one year, and is most likely within the statistical margin of error.

Many of the private schools do testing and benchmark themselves against the population of independent schools. To say anything useful we would have to several years this data for all the schools. However, this is unlikely to be available any time soon. In the meanwhile, the information on the full range of college acceptances on the schools' websites is probably the best way to go.

[Anonymous]

I've seen yearly reports that list each member of the St. Alban's graduating class and the college that they'll be attending. (Probably in the alumni magazine as my husband is an alum.) My recollection is that there are 0-3 kids accepted at each Ivy. So I don't think there is an absolute limit, but they rarely take more than 2 or 3 from a class.

[Anonymous]

STA's website says the following, which at least gives you a clue:

Over the past five years, the following universities have enrolled the most St. Albans graduates: Yale University (17), University of Michigan (15), Georgetown University (14), University of Pennsylvania (14), University of Virginia (14), Harvard University (13), Princeton University (13) and Vanderbilt University (13).

If this is the case, you are looking at about 2-4 each going to Yale, Harvard and Princeton each year. The graduating class size is 78.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:STA's website says the following, which at least gives you a clue:

Over the past five years, the following universities have enrolled the most St. Albans graduates: Yale University (17), University of Michigan (15), Georgetown University (14), University of Pennsylvania (14), University of Virginia (14), Harvard University (13), Princeton University (13) and Vanderbilt University (13).

If this is the case, you are looking at about 2-4 each going to Yale, Harvard and Princeton each year. The graduating class size is 78.

That's actually lower than I might have expected, given the number of legacies from those schools who attend St. Alban's.

In some ways, attending a "top tier" private make the hurdle higher for your child if you did not attend an Ivy League college because they are competing against so many legacy children for a limited number of acceptances.

Anyone else worry about this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: That's actually lower than I might have expected, given the number of legacies from those schools who attend St. Alban's.

In some ways, attending a "top tier" private make the hurdle higher for your child if you did not attend an Ivy League college because they are competing against so many legacy children for a limited number of acceptances.

Anyone else worry about this?

That's actually around 15% per year (including UPenn). I think that's pretty good, especially if you consider that some (even legacies) don't want to attend an Ivy. I assume some don't even apply. Even for those that do, that doesn't mean they didn't get accepted -- perhaps they just decided not to enroll.

[Anonymous]

In fact, about 20-25% of St. Alban's class each year matriculate to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford or MIT. I don't know how many go on to the other great universities, but the acceptance ratio is outstanding. On that criteria alone (and obviously, that should not be the only criteria for evaluating a school), St. Albans has the best record in the DC area (outside of NCS, to which obviously boys cannot go).

[Anonymous]

Often specific schools have relationships with certain colleges, or rather with a particular AD at that college.

Do any schools have a relationship w/ Amherst/Smith/Wellesley/Williams?

[Anonymous]

Not sure this belongs on the St. Albans thread...

[Anonymous]

You're worried about this?

I am an NCS grad and i can tell you that the girls whose parents put pressure on them to get into one of these schools suffered. There were two suicide attempts my senior year. You really need to think about what is most important for your child, not how to win a gold medal in competitive parenting. There are plenty of terrific colleges in this country.

[Anonymous]

Seriously, you could stick half of these threads on the farce thread and no one would know the difference.