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).

Anonymous wrote:

Isn't the point that if there are 12.7% legacy slots at Princeton, then the kids from top DC schools, who are legacy kids, are getting these slots? Which is why Sidwell asks where you went to school?

Two points:

1) We were really turned off that Sidwell asked where we (i.e., the parents) went to school (and I went to an Ivy). I could not think of any reason other than improving their students' college admissions odds. I was very favorably impressed by GDS, which did not ask for this information.

2) Most everyone on this board seems highly intelligent, and, I'll wager, quite successful in whatever field they've chosen. Yet many are upset that they are not legacies and that therefore their kids won't benefit from legacy status and possibly won't get into some highly competitive university. Where did most of you go to college, and would you be upset if your child chose to go there?

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown Day School (which is not the same as Georgetown Prep).

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown Visitation.

Anonymous wrote:There are several small liberal arts colleges are are very highly regarded--arguably even more so than Ivies--for undergraduate education. This is especially true for those undergraduates who plan on attending graduate programs to earn PhDs. The graduates of these schools (Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Carleton, Pomona, Oberlin, Reed, Bryn Mawr, some of the 7 sisters, etc.) have disproportionately high numbers of graduates who go onto post-graduate education.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are several small liberal arts colleges are are very highly regarded--arguably even more so than Ivies--for undergraduate education. This is especially true for those undergraduates who plan on attending graduate programs to earn PhDs. The graduates of these schools (Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Carleton, Pomona, Oberlin, Reed, Bryn Mawr, some of the 7 sisters, etc.) have disproportionately high numbers of graduates who go onto post-graduate education.

Yuck. If you want your kid to hide out in a little town and avoid black people -- these are great places for white preppy, pampered, entitled kids. If you want them in the real world -- choose other great schools. Your idea that these schools might be better than Ivy Universities is laughable and defensive.