Can a kid who is not an URM, or recruited athlete or legacy get into an Ivy from a DC private?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one has data because the schools don't want you to know this.

-But talk to any parent of a senior this year or last.
-Talk to a NW DC college admissions counselor.
-Look at the schools' student-run Instagram pages from last year and this year (not prefect but give trends)

Listen, we're not making this up for kicks and thrills or to start drama for fun. Pretty much no one is getting in who isn't a minority or an athlete or a big donor's kid.
OR feel free to keep paying the $55K per year and keep your head in the sand until your kid's senior year and you see this play out with your own kid. That's honestly probably the best approach.

I'm in this camp. Everyone who is denying the veracity of this thread hasn't been the parent of a 2021 2022 HS senior in a DC top private school. Drop a post here when you get to senior year and see then yourselves that it's all changed. Maybe not for the bad but it's not table stakes you assumed when you signed up 4 or 8 years ago to pay $50k a year for your kids.

Once again, no one cares about your anecdotal data. Private school kids have comprised about 40% of Ivy League entering classes for years. Hasn’t changed.

This discussion is about how the composition of that 40% has changed. Ten years ago it was 50% hooked kids, 50% unhooked high stats. Today, it’s 95% hooked kids, 5% unhooked high stats. The fact that it’s still 40% of the entering class at Ivies is immaterial.

.

College first Gen applicants are now a 10% admit quota at many private ugrad universities and have displaced the legacy bucket.
Thanks for those decades of donations and school spirit!

I keep reading about first gen. Does that mean immigrants or first one to go to college?

Would an immigrant kid from Asia whose parents didn’t go to college be considered first gen?
How about an immigrant from South America whose parents were college educated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private school kids are overrepresented at Ivy League and other top schools, relative to the overall student population.

But sure — keep up the myth.

I believe you, but this happens in areas where the public schools just can't keep up. The DC area is not a normal metropolis. It is where overly-educated workers congregate, which makes the area public schools really competitive. So for this area, your general statement may not be true.

Most of Harvard’s class comes from the Northeast, where public schools are arguably the strongest. Your argument simply doesn’t hold water against actual data.

Right, but there are other Ivies than Harvard, and we're talking about a trend - that Ivies recruit LESS from private schools nowadays, compared to before.


I think this conversation is moot anyway, because the REAL problem is that admissions are becoming more and more unpredictable. Test-optional is a nightmare for admissions officers who now lack national standardized data to compare kids across regions and school systems with varying levels of grade inflation. The advantage of high-reputation privates lies in the fact they do not inflate grades, and are therefore "trusted" by colleges, but test-optional is still wreaking havoc on every single high school in the US, public and private. Hence why privately-hired counselors are now advising students to apply to more colleges than ever before - if the candidate is a regular white bread American without an unusual life story, it's a lottery and they have to apply widely.

But the percentage of kids from private schools going to Ivies hasn’t changed. Unless you can show data that proves otherwise?

The point (made upthread) is that the people with the data, private schools, are changing the way they recruit for 9th so that they can maintain the quality of their college lists. They used to pick off the smart kids. Now they pick off VIPs/URMs/athletes. So the numbers from the school are roughly the same, but the analysis for the parents of a smart kid is very different.

And part of the analysis is that such kids don't apply to ivies as much anymore. I checked naviance recently for our shcool and the number of applicants to each ivy has decreased significantly. The non-ivies are full of extremely bright students who are getting a ton of merit aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private school kids are overrepresented at Ivy League and other top schools, relative to the overall student population.

But sure — keep up the myth.

I believe you, but this happens in areas where the public schools just can't keep up. The DC area is not a normal metropolis. It is where overly-educated workers congregate, which makes the area public schools really competitive. So for this area, your general statement may not be true.

Most of Harvard’s class comes from the Northeast, where public schools are arguably the strongest. Your argument simply doesn’t hold water against actual data.

Right, but there are other Ivies than Harvard, and we're talking about a trend - that Ivies recruit LESS from private schools nowadays, compared to before.


I think this conversation is moot anyway, because the REAL problem is that admissions are becoming more and more unpredictable. Test-optional is a nightmare for admissions officers who now lack national standardized data to compare kids across regions and school systems with varying levels of grade inflation. The advantage of high-reputation privates lies in the fact they do not inflate grades, and are therefore "trusted" by colleges, but test-optional is still wreaking havoc on every single high school in the US, public and private. Hence why privately-hired counselors are now advising students to apply to more colleges than ever before - if the candidate is a regular white bread American without an unusual life story, it's a lottery and they have to apply widely.

But the percentage of kids from private schools going to Ivies hasn’t changed. Unless you can show data that proves otherwise?

The point (made upthread) is that the people with the data, private schools, are changing the way they recruit for 9th so that they can maintain the quality of their college lists. They used to pick off the smart kids. Now they pick off VIPs/URMs/athletes. So the numbers from the school are roughly the same, but the analysis for the parents of a smart kid is very different.

And part of the analysis is that such kids don't apply to ivies as much anymore. I checked naviance recently for our shcool and the number of applicants to each ivy has decreased significantly. The non-ivies are full of extremely bright students who are getting a ton of merit aid.

It's a wasted application for unhooked kids, especially in the ED round. Kids know this. Why spend the time writing the essays?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one has data because the schools don't want you to know this.

-But talk to any parent of a senior this year or last.
-Talk to a NW DC college admissions counselor.
-Look at the schools' student-run Instagram pages from last year and this year (not prefect but give trends)

Listen, we're not making this up for kicks and thrills or to start drama for fun. Pretty much no one is getting in who isn't a minority or an athlete or a big donor's kid.
OR feel free to keep paying the $55K per year and keep your head in the sand until your kid's senior year and you see this play out with your own kid. That's honestly probably the best approach.

I'm in this camp. Everyone who is denying the veracity of this thread hasn't been the parent of a 2021 2022 HS senior in a DC top private school. Drop a post here when you get to senior year and see then yourselves that it's all changed. Maybe not for the bad but it's not table stakes you assumed when you signed up 4 or 8 years ago to pay $50k a year for your kids.

Once again, no one cares about your anecdotal data. Private school kids have comprised about 40% of Ivy League entering classes for years. Hasn’t changed.

Assuming this hasn't changed, what else hasn't changed is that most are from NYC and New England top privates not DMV schools, which are of course the relevant metric in this forum.

[Anonymous]

As someone who has been following the numbers, it is apparent that admission to Ivy's has gotten harder and harder, across the board. There are more qualified students competing for basically the same number of spots. There are legacy kids, sports kids, kids whose families will pay not only cash tuition but contribute to financial aid scholarships to help out others, etc. So if your goal is to find a school to get your kid into an Ivy, that's a specific and very narrow focus that isn't likely to be successful, just by the numbers. (I'm not sure why that would be anyone's exclusive goal but that's another topic.) However, there are many good reasons to send your child to private that have nothing to do with getting them into an Ivy and everything to do with the quality of their education right now. I'm saying this as someone in a supposedly very good public school district who sent one child public and one private. We're currently looking at moving the older public child over to private. We've tried both, and honestly wanted public to work out. But we've seen both and private offers many advantages that we want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one has data because the schools don't want you to know this.

-But talk to any parent of a senior this year or last.
-Talk to a NW DC college admissions counselor.
-Look at the schools' student-run Instagram pages from last year and this year (not prefect but give trends)

Listen, we're not making this up for kicks and thrills or to start drama for fun. Pretty much no one is getting in who isn't a minority or an athlete or a big donor's kid.
OR feel free to keep paying the $55K per year and keep your head in the sand until your kid's senior year and you see this play out with your own kid. That's honestly probably the best approach.

I'm in this camp. Everyone who is denying the veracity of this thread hasn't been the parent of a 2021 2022 HS senior in a DC top private school. Drop a post here when you get to senior year and see then yourselves that it's all changed. Maybe not for the bad but it's not table stakes you assumed when you signed up 4 or 8 years ago to pay $50k a year for your kids.

Okay, I will. Parent of unhooked kid who got into first choice early at a private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:37% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 went to private school. 20% were legacies. I don’t believe every legacy went to private school, which means at the very least 17% of the class was non-legacy private — though it’s almost certainly more.

Only 10% of US seniors go to private school.

The reality is that private schools continue to overrepresent at these schools and it’s not just legacies/hooked kids.

https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

This does not disprove OP's and PP's point. "Private" is not a proxy for unhooked stats kids of course. Private schools recruit/admit URMs and athletes with similar fervor as the colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:37% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 went to private school. 20% were legacies. I don’t believe every legacy went to private school, which means at the very least 17% of the class was non-legacy private — though it’s almost certainly more.

Only 10% of US seniors go to private school.

The reality is that private schools continue to overrepresent at these schools and it’s not just legacies/hooked kids.

https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

This does not disprove OP's and PP's point. "Private" is not a proxy for unhooked stats kids of course. Private schools recruit/admit URMs and athletes with similar fervor as the colleges.

So are you positing that all or most of the private school kids getting in are hooked, at a higher rate than public school kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private school kids are overrepresented at Ivy League and other top schools, relative to the overall student population.

But sure — keep up the myth.

I believe you, but this happens in areas where the public schools just can't keep up. The DC area is not a normal metropolis. It is where overly-educated workers congregate, which makes the area public schools really competitive. So for this area, your general statement may not be true.

Most of Harvard’s class comes from the Northeast, where public schools are arguably the strongest. Your argument simply doesn’t hold water against actual data.

Right, but there are other Ivies than Harvard, and we're talking about a trend - that Ivies recruit LESS from private schools nowadays, compared to before.


I think this conversation is moot anyway, because the REAL problem is that admissions are becoming more and more unpredictable. Test-optional is a nightmare for admissions officers who now lack national standardized data to compare kids across regions and school systems with varying levels of grade inflation. The advantage of high-reputation privates lies in the fact they do not inflate grades, and are therefore "trusted" by colleges, but test-optional is still wreaking havoc on every single high school in the US, public and private. Hence why privately-hired counselors are now advising students to apply to more colleges than ever before - if the candidate is a regular white bread American without an unusual life story, it's a lottery and they have to apply widely.

But the percentage of kids from private schools going to Ivies hasn’t changed. Unless you can show data that proves otherwise?

The point (made upthread) is that the people with the data, private schools, are changing the way they recruit for 9th so that they can maintain the quality of their college lists. They used to pick off the smart kids. Now they pick off VIPs/URMs/athletes. So the numbers from the school are roughly the same, but the analysis for the parents of a smart kid is very different.

LOL.

They’ve always given preference to those categories.

Completely agree - the only difference is that now those kids need to be in the top 20% of the class/high stats to get admitted to elite colleges. Top half of the class and legacy/URM/VIP isn’t enough anymore.

IMHO as a parent of a Walls grad and a Big 3 grad, the college outcomes were similar. The ivy admits at Walls may have been SLIGHTLY better. Still nearly all legacy/URM/1st Gen and top students like at the Big 3. It’s easier to have all As at Walls than at a Big 3. So if you are a legacy, and want to increase your DC’s chances of getting into an Ivy, Walls is the way to go. Both DCs received an excellent education and got into their 1st choice college.

Nice!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:37% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 went to private school. 20% were legacies. I don’t believe every legacy went to private school, which means at the very least 17% of the class was non-legacy private — though it’s almost certainly more.

Only 10% of US seniors go to private school.

The reality is that private schools continue to overrepresent at these schools and it’s not just legacies/hooked kids.

https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

This does not disprove OP's and PP's point. "Private" is not a proxy for unhooked stats kids of course. Private schools recruit/admit URMs and athletes with similar fervor as the colleges.

So are you positing that all or most of the private school kids getting in are hooked, at a higher rate than public school kids?

No. No one has said that there are zero unhooked private school kids getting into ivies. But the continued overrepresentation of privates at ivies is being used by some posters to prove that little or nothing has changed. So, what I'm positing is the point that has also been made upthread: top privates have already been recruiting/admitting hooked candidates at 9th (and even 7th in my experience) and it's at least in part to adjust to the new reality in college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:37% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 went to private school. 20% were legacies. I don’t believe every legacy went to private school, which means at the very least 17% of the class was non-legacy private — though it’s almost certainly more.

Only 10% of US seniors go to private school.

The reality is that private schools continue to overrepresent at these schools and it’s not just legacies/hooked kids.

https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

This does not disprove OP's and PP's point. "Private" is not a proxy for unhooked stats kids of course. Private schools recruit/admit URMs and athletes with similar fervor as the colleges.

So are you positing that all or most of the private school kids getting in are hooked, at a higher rate than public school kids?

No. No one has said that there are zero unhooked private school kids getting into ivies. But the continued overrepresentation of privates at ivies is being used by some posters to prove that little or nothing has changed. So, what I'm positing is the point that has also been made upthread: top privates have already been recruiting/admitting hooked candidates at 9th (and even 7th in my experience) and it's at least in part to adjust to the new reality in college admissions.

Just to make a connection — maybe the reason Big3 numbers are down on the presidential scholars eligibility list, and Walls numbers are up, is that the Big3 have been admitting fewer high-scoring 9th graders. And WIS is less affected, because it admits very few students in 9th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:37% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 went to private school. 20% were legacies. I don’t believe every legacy went to private school, which means at the very least 17% of the class was non-legacy private — though it’s almost certainly more.

Only 10% of US seniors go to private school.

The reality is that private schools continue to overrepresent at these schools and it’s not just legacies/hooked kids.

https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

This does not disprove OP's and PP's point. "Private" is not a proxy for unhooked stats kids of course. Private schools recruit/admit URMs and athletes with similar fervor as the colleges.

So are you positing that all or most of the private school kids getting in are hooked, at a higher rate than public school kids?

No. No one has said that there are zero unhooked private school kids getting into ivies. But the continued overrepresentation of privates at ivies is being used by some posters to prove that little or nothing has changed. So, what I'm positing is the point that has also been made upthread: top privates have already been recruiting/admitting hooked candidates at 9th (and even 7th in my experience) and it's at least in part to adjust to the new reality in college admissions.

Just to make a connection — maybe the reason Big3 numbers are down on the presidential scholars eligibility list, and Walls numbers are up, is that the Big3 have been admitting fewer high-scoring 9th graders. And WIS is less affected, because it admits very few students in 9th grade.

No, the current seniors at both schools were admitted using admissions tests. It will get interesting beginning with the class of 2025 when both Walls and the privates tossed the admissions tests. Some privates reinstated testing last year (NCS), developed their own test last year (Sidwell), a few more reinstated it this year (STA) and and others still aren't using any test (GDS, Maret and Walls)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:37% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 went to private school. 20% were legacies. I don’t believe every legacy went to private school, which means at the very least 17% of the class was non-legacy private — though it’s almost certainly more.

Only 10% of US seniors go to private school.

The reality is that private schools continue to overrepresent at these schools and it’s not just legacies/hooked kids.

https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

This does not disprove OP's and PP's point. "Private" is not a proxy for unhooked stats kids of course. Private schools recruit/admit URMs and athletes with similar fervor as the colleges.

So are you positing that all or most of the private school kids getting in are hooked, at a higher rate than public school kids?

No. No one has said that there are zero unhooked private school kids getting into ivies. But the continued overrepresentation of privates at ivies is being used by some posters to prove that little or nothing has changed. So, what I'm positing is the point that has also been made upthread: top privates have already been recruiting/admitting hooked candidates at 9th (and even 7th in my experience) and it's at least in part to adjust to the new reality in college admissions.

They’ve always recruited that way. Do you have data to show they’ve changed how they recruit?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one has data because the schools don't want you to know this.

-But talk to any parent of a senior this year or last.
-Talk to a NW DC college admissions counselor.
-Look at the schools' student-run Instagram pages from last year and this year (not prefect but give trends)

Listen, we're not making this up for kicks and thrills or to start drama for fun. Pretty much no one is getting in who isn't a minority or an athlete or a big donor's kid.
OR feel free to keep paying the $55K per year and keep your head in the sand until your kid's senior year and you see this play out with your own kid. That's honestly probably the best approach.

I'm in this camp. Everyone who is denying the veracity of this thread hasn't been the parent of a 2021 2022 HS senior in a DC top private school. Drop a post here when you get to senior year and see then yourselves that it's all changed. Maybe not for the bad but it's not table stakes you assumed when you signed up 4 or 8 years ago to pay $50k a year for your kids.

Once again, no one cares about your anecdotal data. Private school kids have comprised about 40% of Ivy League entering classes for years. Hasn’t changed.

This discussion is about how the composition of that 40% has changed. Ten years ago it was 50% hooked kids, 50% unhooked high stats. Today, it’s 95% hooked kids, 5% unhooked high stats. The fact that it’s still 40% of the entering class at Ivies is immaterial.

.

College first Gen applicants are now a 10% admit quota at many private ugrad universities and have displaced the legacy bucket.
Thanks for those decades of donations and school spirit!

I keep reading about first gen. Does that mean immigrants or first one to go to college?

Would an immigrant kid from Asia whose parents didn’t go to college be considered first gen?
How about an immigrant from South America whose parents were college educated?

It means your parents did not go to college anywhere.
Not sure to what extent you need to prove this but your essays are certainly themed around how difficult your life was, a struggling immigrant story, and how a teacher or counselor or non profit took you under their wing to guide you through the American school experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:37% of Harvard’s Class of 2025 went to private school. 20% were legacies. I don’t believe every legacy went to private school, which means at the very least 17% of the class was non-legacy private — though it’s almost certainly more.

Only 10% of US seniors go to private school.

The reality is that private schools continue to overrepresent at these schools and it’s not just legacies/hooked kids.

https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/

This does not disprove OP's and PP's point. "Private" is not a proxy for unhooked stats kids of course. Private schools recruit/admit URMs and athletes with similar fervor as the colleges.

So are you positing that all or most of the private school kids getting in are hooked, at a higher rate than public school kids?

No. No one has said that there are zero unhooked private school kids getting into ivies. But the continued overrepresentation of privates at ivies is being used by some posters to prove that little or nothing has changed. So, what I'm positing is the point that has also been made upthread: top privates have already been recruiting/admitting hooked candidates at 9th (and even 7th in my experience) and it's at least in part to adjust to the new reality in college admissions.

Just to make a connection — maybe the reason Big3 numbers are down on the presidential scholars eligibility list, and Walls numbers are up, is that the Big3 have been admitting fewer high-scoring 9th graders. And WIS is less affected, because it admits very few students in 9th grade.

No, the current seniors at both schools were admitted using admissions tests. It will get interesting beginning with the class of 2025 when both Walls and the privates tossed the admissions tests. Some privates reinstated testing last year (NCS), developed their own test last year (Sidwell), a few more reinstated it this year (STA) and and others still aren't using any test (GDS, Maret and Walls)

Oh, yes, I understand that about the timing. I meant, maybe in deciding who to admit, the privates have been putting less weight on high test scores, even while they were still using the tests.