Reply to Wow -- look at the college placement of my cousin's DD school in SFL....

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Wow -- look at the college placement of my cousin's DD school in SFL...."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]... St. Albans had 20% go Ivy this year, and 30% last year ...[/quote]
I hate to risk taking this thread off-track, but I don't want to let this rough assertion stand unchallenged, since that may lead others on DCUM to quote (or misquote) it as gospel.  While the percentages quoted (20% for class of 2013, and 30% for class of 2012) are certainly possible, I suspect they might be slightly (and surely inadvertently) inaccurate.

STA posts a partial list of common college destinations for the past 5 years on its website (http://www.stalbansschool.org/page.aspx?pid=2722).  That list identifies 67 grads going to 6 of the 8 Ivy colleges, out of a class of roughly 78 grads per year (390 grads over 5 years).  Taken at face value, that suggests 17% Ivy attendance each year.  Given how strong a school STA is though, it's reasonable to assume some STA grads also chose the other 2 Ivy colleges not listed (Brown and Cornell).  Since the cut-off for the list is 6 grads attending, there must be 0-5 grads attending Brown and Cornell.  So the possible average Ivy% for STA grads in the past 5 years ranges from 17.1-19.7%, with a midpoint at 18%.

So to be clear, it is mathematically possible PP is correct that 20% of the 2013 class, and 30% of the 2012 class, are attending Ivy colleges.  However, if that's accurate, then only an average of 8% of STA grads from the prior three years attended Ivy league colleges.  Given how consistently strong a school STA is, I think it is unlikely STA's Ivy% over 2009-13 looked like this: 8%, 8%, 8%, 30%, 20%.

Sorry to go on about this; I'm sure some will mock me for wasting the time to do these calculations.  However, I've seen many situations on DCUM over the years where someone will make a claim that goes untested, and then that inaccurate claim gets repeated over and over as gospel truth.  I don't want to see that happen here.

I have a lot of respect for STA, so none of this is meant as criticism.  18% Ivy attendance year-after-year is an amazing statistic, and I'd hate to see it cheapened by other posters who might inaccurately mischaracterize PP's 20%/30% numbers.  I also don't mean to criticize the PP I quoted, because she probably was just speaking loosely and not meaning for her numbers to be taken literally.  (And of course it's also possible PP was entirely correct that the 2012-13 numbers are 30%/20%, and the 2009-11 numbers actually are 8%.)

Anyway, sorry again to clog the thread. Thanks for being forgiving of my obsessiveness about details.

Sam2[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics