Message
Although it only addresses college matriculation statistics, my website (which has been commented on around here for day schools) does have a page devoted to boarding schools. I don't claim that it's exhaustive, but it does include all the "big names". http://matriculationstats.org/boarding-school-stats
Anonymous wrote:This has been repeated over and over again in this forum, but once again, just because so many folks seem to be focusing on college matriculation stats as a key indicator when deciding on a school: in getting into competitive colleges, most particularly the ivies, three factors overwhelm almost all others: legacies, $$, sports. What's left over goes to the otherwise unconnected kids, and they generally need to be stars, and then it's a lottery. You would have to analyze the stats of these local schools on that basis (i.e., how many were legacies, "development cases," or recruited athletes) to know whether attending the school made any difference for the otherwise unconnected kids. In fact, there is anecdotal evidence that going to such a school actually disadvantages the bright unconnected kid, because the schools are going to meet their "quota" from the school with the kids with a "hook." If you think about it, the fact that an Ivy legacy was admitted (to St. Alban's, for example) tells you that he probably is capable of Ivy-League level work, so he's going to have a good shot at getting in, once his legacy preference is taken into account. I suspect St. Alban's also has a relatively high number of "development cases" (which can be $$ or political connections, as well), even compared to the other competitive boys' schools. It all gets to be a self-fulfilling prophecy after a while.
And although I'm certainly not disagreeing that there are many factors that play a role in gaining admissions to competitive colleges, I wanted to throw my 2 cents in.
As to $$, it takes a lot of $$ to "buy" your child's way into a top school. It certainly can and is done, but it isn't cheap. There are probably fewer cases of this than you might think. Fame and political power counts too. Even if Obama is not in office when Sasha and Malia are applying to college (no political statement of any kind intended here), I'm sure their college entrance prospects are just fine (and their probably bright kids, too).
Legacy preference is another funny thing. Everybody who doesn't have it thinks that it's the be all and end all for those that do. I happened to have attended one of the HYPMS schools and like many who did, I feel like it won't really help my kids all that much. Maybe a "thumb on the scale" but nothing that's going to really give them a huge leg up. And other classmates of mine generally feel the same way. They don't think they will get much mileage from their legacy status particularly since we all know so many classmates with kids all applying at the same time.
Sure athletics helps. But the kid has to be in the right place at the right time. That is, he/she has to play the right position in the right sport for the right school. And then the coach has to have the clout to make it all work. Otherwise, being an athlete is just another resume item that helps round out your application along with your grades, test scores and other extracurriculars.
Someone was kind enough to forward me matriculation statistics for Georgetown Day School which I have now included on my website. This information is not available on the school's website but I judged it to be legitimate. http://matriculationstats.org/day-schools-outside-of-nyc
Please remember, though, that these are simply college matriculation statistics. Schools are much more multi-dimensional than that.
Please remember, though, that these are simply college matriculation statistics. Schools are much more multi-dimensional than that.
Anonymous wrote:Can't wait to read a good NYC message board! What is the DCUM equivalent?
http://www.urbanbaby.com, if you go to Talk and filter down to NYC Schools.
I do have to agree with the above comment about K admissions in NYC. There's an awful lot of "who you know", "how much you have", and "who you are" that goes on.
The obvious observation is that the older the childer gets, the greater the effect of the child's own qualities on any school admissions decision and the less the effect of the parent's qualities. Think about it. For N, it's almost all about the parents. For K, the child's qualities start to play a role. For middle school, the child's test scores and interviews are taken more seriously. For HS, even more so. For college, it's mostly about the child. Sure, even as late as college, there are some cases in which who the parent is will be the determining factor (what college will possibly turn down Sasha or Malia in a few years?), but for the vast majority, it's about the child.
The degree to which a decision at any given age depends on the child or the parent of course varies from case to case, but doesn't that trend seem clear?
Anonymous wrote:Oh no, OP. You have no idea the chaos will will now create with your post. There will be so many highly offended parents of local schools, mostly the alleged Big 3, who will vocalize and justify why the list is inconclusive. I can just hear it now....'if only this list had not been incomplete in considering such and such data, then surely St. Albans (or plug in school of your choice) would be on there". When the heated exchange starts flying, words like "troll" will pop up, which will be a sure indicator of sources. Prepare yourself.
Maybe that has been my diabolical plot all along! As a foreign terrorist, I'm here to distract the Washington elite from the task of governing the country by forcing them to focus on what kindergarten their beloved offspring attend. Once you all are sufficiently bamboozled into thinking that "The Big Three" consists of three one-room school houses located in rural West Virginia, my legions of loyal followers will strike just as the lunch bell rings simultaneously at the schools you obsess over.
In all seriousness, exactly the same sorts of conversations occur on NYC message boards. "School X would have been rated higher, but because of its progressive nature..." "School Y was just having an off year." And then the same accusations that you note, using almost the exact same lingo, start to fly.
That's fine. I can live with it. I've just compiled a few possibly meaningful statistics (assuming they're interpreted correctly) for your reading pleasure.
Anonymous wrote:Where would Sidwell fall on your list if you assume matriculation data comparable to STA/NCS?
I'm not sure I understand the question. If Sidwell had data comparable to STA/NCS it would fall where STA or NCS fall.
Anonymous wrote:When will someone with your drive and ability make a similar index that statistically accounts for, and separates out, the legacy factor? I've never seen one and I assume it's near impossible to do.
Until then, I'd like to see a richer, broader index that equally weights matriculation with SAT -and- ACT scores (to capture those Chicago, etc schools); AP tests taken -and- points awarded (vs. "offered" by the school); and national merit finalists and semi-finalists.
Thanks for the compliment.
I agree that your first suggestion is near impossible to do given available data though I'm beginning to think that simply being a "normal" legacy (i.e. no special level of donations) doesn't do all that much for a student's admissions chances. I don't have any hard data to back that up, of course, but I'm starting to amass tidbits of confirmatory evidence. There are certainly other admissions preferences that do affect a student's chances that are
Sure, a richer, broader index would be nice. Be prepared for lots and lots of bickering over the details. By not aiming that high and confining myself to fully objective statistics (for which one can offer whatever explanation one feels appropriate), I've stayed below most of those sort of shenanigans.
Last week, Forbes published an article ranking the top 20 prep schools (day schools were included) in the country based on college matriculation statistics (50%) and endowment, student/factulty ratio, faculty with advanced degrees (50%). Since they weren't very clear about their methodology, it's hard to determine exactly how the ratings turned out the way they did. In any event, DC area schools were shut out. I can't tell if they weren't considered because the leading candidates aren't very revealing about their matriculation statistics (I had to do some inferential work to determine what I use for St. Alban's and NCS and am still stymied by Sidwell), or the leading DC candidates simply didn't qualify.
Because I don't like the matriculation statistic they use (Ivy + Stanford + MIT), I created my own Top 25 list based on my favorite statistic (a weighted average index which looks at the top 25 national universities, top 15 liberal arts colleges and a handful of foreign universities - full methodology is disclosed on my website). Using this methodology, both NCS and St. Alban's make the top 25. Whether Sidwell would or wouldn't will have to remain a mystery unless my friend Michelle with 2 daughters there sends me a copy of their matriculation list (just joking!) You can see which DC area schools I have data for by looking at the day schools outside NYC page of my website.
Anyway, the list is at: http://matriculationstats.org/top-25
And some of my comments on the Forbes article are at: http://matriculationstats.org/musings
Because I don't like the matriculation statistic they use (Ivy + Stanford + MIT), I created my own Top 25 list based on my favorite statistic (a weighted average index which looks at the top 25 national universities, top 15 liberal arts colleges and a handful of foreign universities - full methodology is disclosed on my website). Using this methodology, both NCS and St. Alban's make the top 25. Whether Sidwell would or wouldn't will have to remain a mystery unless my friend Michelle with 2 daughters there sends me a copy of their matriculation list (just joking!) You can see which DC area schools I have data for by looking at the day schools outside NYC page of my website.
Anyway, the list is at: http://matriculationstats.org/top-25
And some of my comments on the Forbes article are at: http://matriculationstats.org/musings
Anonymous wrote:Georgetown Day School (which is not the same as Georgetown Prep).
Anonymous wrote:Georgetown Visitation.
I'd like to oblige, but neither of these schools make appropriate statistics available on their websites.
Before you begin bashing the statistics that SAM2 worked hard to compile and has made available for everyone's use, or non-use, as they see fit, note that SAM2 has also compiled a large number of useful links to make life easier for anyone who is interested in the topics discussed in this thread. Those links are provided certainly contain much opinion but are of nonetheless of value. Please keep that in mind when chastising.
(And in the interest of full disclosure, I am certainly pleased that my son's and my website is one of the links included).
(And in the interest of full disclosure, I am certainly pleased that my son's and my website is one of the links included).
DC area schools that have now been included on the website page http://www.matriculationstats.org/day-schools-outside-of-nyc are:
Georgetown Preparatory School
Holton-Arms School
Landon School
Maret School
National Cathedral School
St. Alban's
St. Anselm's
Washington International School
Also, Episcopal High School is included on the boarding school page.
Potomac School and Sidwell Friends did not make either any or adequate data available on their websites to be included.
I have the data for Gonzaga College High School and will be adding it in the next day or two.
I had previously overlooked Georgtown's data, but a helpful person (probably from the DC area) pointed me in the right direction.
Any other suggestions for schools to be included? Can anybody help with providing data for schools that I don't have it? I check in here occasionally or can be contacted via the website.
Georgetown Preparatory School
Holton-Arms School
Landon School
Maret School
National Cathedral School
St. Alban's
St. Anselm's
Washington International School
Also, Episcopal High School is included on the boarding school page.
Potomac School and Sidwell Friends did not make either any or adequate data available on their websites to be included.
I have the data for Gonzaga College High School and will be adding it in the next day or two.
I had previously overlooked Georgtown's data, but a helpful person (probably from the DC area) pointed me in the right direction.
Any other suggestions for schools to be included? Can anybody help with providing data for schools that I don't have it? I check in here occasionally or can be contacted via the website.
Anonymous wrote:MatriculationStats wrote:Anonymous wrote:MatriculationStats: Do you have data on SAT scores for these schools? Seeing how well differences in SAT scores predict college placement should enable you to say something about the role of these other factors.
I'm not exactly sure where you would be going with such an analysis. Let's assume you have SAT information for all the schools and you can determine how well SAT scores predict college placement. Then each school presumably does somewhat better or worse than that prediction and you ascribe that difference to something. Fine. But what is that something? It's everything else which includes GPA/Class rank, legacy status, prestige of the school, athletic ability, other special skill or talent, etc. But what have you discovered? I'm not really sure. It seems that you still need some more data to make some meaningful conclusions.
Agreed. But suppose you plot college placement on the y-axis and SATs on the x-axis, and then put a regression line. Then the regression line is a benchmark (assuming that you have enough data points, which might be an issue). For each school you can then find the deviation from the benchmark --- how it has placed students, relative to predicted given the students SAT. What do the deviations look like? Are the schools at the top or bottom of your lists there because they have students with SATs that look different from those of schools in the middle (selection effect) or are the SATs all similar but all the other factors kick in (better academics and athletics or more legacies etc).
We're saying the same thing with the regression line/graphing (I went with the less technical description but I was a math major at the HYP school I went to), but without more data you can't separate out which of those factors gives you the extra something. I do agree that this analysis would provide some useful information. Feel free to go ahead and do it. I'll include it on my website with full credit to you. I have a full-time job and this project has already taken up enough time.
Anonymous wrote:MatriculationStats wrote:Anonymous wrote:MatriculationStats, thanks for the link to your website -- it is really informative and clearly took a lot of work. I will make one comment to those perhaps too prone to assume admission to a school with good matriculation statistics means your specific child's path will be that much easier statistically. Computer programmers used to talk about "GIGO": "Garbage in, garbage out." I would change this to "DIDO" "Diamonds in, Diamonds out." Bright kids attend these schools, and they get the good grades and high standardized tests scores needed for college acceptance (and throw in a little bit of athletics in lacrosse, crew, squash, etc). Your kids will get great educations at these DC independent schools, and they will most likely do very well in college -- but what college they get into does, I think, depend on what they bring along at the start of the process.
First, thanks for the compliment. Yes, it has taken a fair amount of work by both me and my 8th grade son.
As to your comment of DIDO, sure, the raw material (whether it be mental, physical or other characteristics) that the entering student brings with them is the most important factor that enables them several years later to gain admission to a selective college. And to a large extent, the lion's share of the results that you see on the website for each school are determined by the students admitted who choose to enroll at a particular school. Nonetheless, I do feel that if a school is doing its job properly it does add value to its students during their time on campus. That value can be added in many different ways, some of which have been mentioned above. Associating with other bright students, having the benefit of motivated teachers who have the time (because they aren't stretched too thin) to devote to individual students, access to numerous resources (academic or athletic), college placement counselors who can help manage the system to help place the students one notch up than they otherwise would be entitled. I'm sure there are other perfectly valid reasons, but I think I've given some sense of the flavor of the possibilities.
A number of people have suggested that I should just account for such factors as legacy status, et al. Well, it just isn't that easy to do. I don't have access to adequate data to perform that kind of analysis. And even if I did, that kind of analysis isn't always so straightforward. In lieu of that, I've provided a summary of basic data and leave it to the user to interpret it correctly for their own purposes.
Matriculation Stats: Your website is terrific, but I would caution you on your methodology: You include Top 25 National Universities and only Top 15 Liberal Arts Colleges, yet the #25 National University (UCLA, Overall Score of 73) is actually rated lower than the #33 Liberal Arts College (Trinity College Conn., Overall Score of 74). You might want to stick to Top 25 for both categories, or just use only all "Overall Scores" over 70 (you could call this cut-off the "passing grade" for top-school consideration), for example (all from the 2010 US News Rankings). Obviously, one can slice and dice the data however one pleases; it just might make more sense to compare apples to apples in the two categories, rather than use arbitrary and different cut-offs that don't correlate, just to include more "larger" national universities...You're nevertheless still performing a useful service, and I commend you... I'd be interested in how many unique visitors have come to your site.
I am certainly aware that my methodology is not perfect. I don't believe the perfect methodology can exist for this task. And the part of the methodology that has been taken to task most has been the decision to use the Top 25 National Universities and Top 15 Liberal Arts Colleges for the "Top Schools" (and something analagous for the "Strong Schools"). I describe that on the home page of my website. I felt it very important to attempt to unify those two rankings lists in some reasonable way. I believe I accomplished that. Of course, there was an element of arbitrariness to those choices.
The issue with the Overall Score that you point out may isn't quite the problem that you seem to think it is, though. The US News Rankings assigns a score of 100 to the top school in each of the National U. and Liberal Arts categories and then works down from there relative to the top schools. But I'm not assuming that the top school in each category is identical. For better or worse, I'm placing more value on Harvard and Princeton than Williams. You're free to disagree with that, of course. And yes, even after making that assumption, there are some other issues in the methodology. As I said, I admit it's not perfect. The reaction I've generally received, however, is similar to yours - appreciation for creating something more or less reasonable.
As to the visitors to the website, through yesterday there have been about 1,100 unique visitors (thank you google analytics). Upon setting up the website, I wasn't sure what to expect. 79 unique visitors have come to the website through links on this discussion forum.
Anonymous wrote:MatriculationStats: Do you have data on SAT scores for these schools? Seeing how well differences in SAT scores predict college placement should enable you to say something about the role of these other factors.
I'm not exactly sure where you would be going with such an analysis. Let's assume you have SAT information for all the schools and you can determine how well SAT scores predict college placement. Then each school presumably does somewhat better or worse than that prediction and you ascribe that difference to something. Fine. But what is that something? It's everything else which includes GPA/Class rank, legacy status, prestige of the school, athletic ability, other special skill or talent, etc. But what have you discovered? I'm not really sure. It seems that you still need some more data to make some meaningful conclusions.
Anonymous wrote:MatriculationStats, thanks for the link to your website -- it is really informative and clearly took a lot of work. I will make one comment to those perhaps too prone to assume admission to a school with good matriculation statistics means your specific child's path will be that much easier statistically. Computer programmers used to talk about "GIGO": "Garbage in, garbage out." I would change this to "DIDO" "Diamonds in, Diamonds out." Bright kids attend these schools, and they get the good grades and high standardized tests scores needed for college acceptance (and throw in a little bit of athletics in lacrosse, crew, squash, etc). Your kids will get great educations at these DC independent schools, and they will most likely do very well in college -- but what college they get into does, I think, depend on what they bring along at the start of the process.
First, thanks for the compliment. Yes, it has taken a fair amount of work by both me and my 8th grade son.
As to your comment of DIDO, sure, the raw material (whether it be mental, physical or other characteristics) that the entering student brings with them is the most important factor that enables them several years later to gain admission to a selective college. And to a large extent, the lion's share of the results that you see on the website for each school are determined by the students admitted who choose to enroll at a particular school. Nonetheless, I do feel that if a school is doing its job properly it does add value to its students during their time on campus. That value can be added in many different ways, some of which have been mentioned above. Associating with other bright students, having the benefit of motivated teachers who have the time (because they aren't stretched too thin) to devote to individual students, access to numerous resources (academic or athletic), college placement counselors who can help manage the system to help place the students one notch up than they otherwise would be entitled. I'm sure there are other perfectly valid reasons, but I think I've given some sense of the flavor of the possibilities.
A number of people have suggested that I should just account for such factors as legacy status, et al. Well, it just isn't that easy to do. I don't have access to adequate data to perform that kind of analysis. And even if I did, that kind of analysis isn't always so straightforward. In lieu of that, I've provided a summary of basic data and leave it to the user to interpret it correctly for their own purposes.