Anonymous wrote:I know someone who turned down Yale for William and Mary and another, Harvard for Amherst. In both cases the kids said they picked the school that was the best fit. Both are very happy and successful.

Anonymous wrote: So the question is whether these matriculation figures really reflect where the brightest kids go to school, or if they reflect other factors, such as legacy, wealth, athletic recruitment, etc.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.